Character for Leadership: The Role of Personal Characteristics

Procedure 
Individual participants in the seminary spiritual formation program 
represent a convenience sample for this study. A total of 334 individuals in the 
spiritual formation program were identified as potential participants. Participants 
include both group members and group leaders. Upon review of survey materials, 
permission to invite individuals to participate was given by the Director of Spiritual 
Formation Program, as listed in Appendix D. Participants were invited to 
participate through contact with the group leaders. The researcher addressed these 
group leaders at a scheduled biweekly group leader development meeting. All 
surveys were paper-based with an attached instruction sheet detailing the survey 
procedures. A copy of the survey and attached instruction sheet are included in 
Appendices A and E, respectively. Group leaders were asked to read the 
instructions and distribute the surveys during the normal course of the weekly 
group meeting. All members of the group, including the leader, were asked to 
complete the survey prior to the end of the group meeting. The group leaders then 
returned the completed surveys to the Director of Spiritual Formation. 
Summary 
This research was conducted to examine the differences between those 
potential ministry leaders who possess certain character traits and their ability to 
enact effective leadership practices. 

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Character for Leadership 
48 
 
Chapter 4 – Results 
This chapter presents the demographics of survey respondents and the 
results of the data analyses including descriptive statistics, reliabilities of all scales, 
and analyses of variance for all hypotheses. 
The purpose of this study was to investigate if visionary leadership 
behaviors (which, according to VLT, are characterized as capable management, 
reward equity, communication leadership, credible leadership, caring leadership, 
creative leadership, confident leadership, follower-centered leadership, visionary 
leadership, and principled leadership) differ according to levels of the character 
traits of self-directedness, cooperativeness, and self-transcendence. In addition, this 
study also considered if mature character (defined as the combination of the 
character traits self-directedness and cooperativeness) differ according to levels of 
the character trait self-transcendence. Finally, this study considered if visionary 
leadership behaviors differ according to current level of involvement in a ministry 
capacity. These differences were hypothesized to be significant for a population of 
master’s-level seminary students preparing for positions of ministry leadership at 
the main campus of one large evangelical institution of theological education. 
Specifically, this study examined the following hypotheses: 
H
1
: 
Leaders exhibit confident leadership differently based on their level 
of self-directedness. 
H
2
: 
Leaders exhibit effective visionary leadership differently based on 
their level of self-directedness. 
H
3
: 
Leaders exhibit follower-centered leadership differently based on 
their level of cooperativeness. 
H
4
: 
Leaders exhibit effective visionary leadership differently based on 
their level of cooperativeness. 
H
5
: 
Leaders exhibit effective visionary leadership differently based on 
their level of self-transcendence. 
H
6
: 
Leaders possess different levels of mature character based on their 
level of self-transcendence. 

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Character for Leadership 
49 
 
H
7
: 
Leaders exhibit effective visionary leadership behaviors based on 
their current level of involvement in a ministry capacity.