Character for Leadership: The Role of Personal Characteristics

Character for Leadership 
65 
 
This study is consistent with the perspective of leadership as a 
developmental process (McCall, 1998). At the core of such development is leaders’ 
self-identity. Leadership schemas have a profound impact on enacted leadership 
behavior. Murphy (2002) addressed this issue specifically as it relates to leader 
self-regulation. However, much is still unknown about how these different 
constructs develop in a leader’s schema. Further research needs to be done 
regarding how these schemas develop throughout life since they are so fundamental 
to leadership function. Even further, the self-concept of the leader should be 
examined to see in what ways it affects the self-concepts of followers (Lord & 
Brown, 2001, 2004). 
One area related to leader self-concepts that is addressed in the literature is 
that of individual differences, specifically the motivation to lead (Chan & Drasgow, 
2001). According to an extension of the theory (Lee, 2005), motivation is the 
interplay of cognitive and affective components. Many of these affective 
components overlap conceptually with the character traits addressed in this study. 
Could character be a significant antecedent to the motivation to lead and tie the 
theory together more substantively with the conceptual foundations of 
transformational leadership? Future research should address these areas to 
determine overlap of the theories and functional consideration of implications for 
leadership and its development. 
Character and its Components 
Character is a robust psychological construct that is part of personality but 
distinct from temperament. The results of this study demonstrate that character is a 
significant predictor of visionary leadership behavior. This has been implicitly 
understood based on the theoretical literature. This study moved beyond the 
implicit and provides empirical evidence that character should become an explicit 
part of leadership theory. This study is an entrance into the study of character traits 
with leadership instruments. Future research should be conducted to determine the 
significance of these traits to leadership as operationally measured by such 
instruments as the MLQ (Bass & Avolio, 1990) and the LPI (Kouzes & Posner, 
2003). 

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Character for Leadership 
66 
 
This study revealed the differences between leaders with high levels of 
character and their demonstration of transformational behaviors. In addition to this 
link with transformational leadership, conceptual relationships also exist between 
character traits and the practice of servant leadership. Greenleaf (1977) emphasized 
the servant-first aspect of servant leadership. As the theory has developed, various 
people have developed frameworks to operationalize the theory. The framework 
offered by Russell and Stone (2002), which they developed from the literature on 
servant leadership, includes the dimensions of vision, credibility, trust, service, 
modeling, pioneering, appreciating others, and empowerment. Many of these 
dimensions, especially credibility, trust, appreciating others, and empowerment, 
related directly to the aspects of self-directedness and cooperativeness. Further 
research should be done to determine if the strength of relationship between servant 
leadership and character exists as it does for transformational leadership. 
In addition to general implications that can be drawn from the study of 
leadership and character, specific implications can be drawn from the character 
traits identified and assessed in this study. 
Self-directedness. 
According to the research regarding Cloninger, Przybeck, 
et al.’s (1994) TCI, self-directedness is the key trait that determines a healthy 
personality. In fact, low self-directedness predicted personality disorder in the 
original TCI validation sample; by antithesis, high self-directedness was consistent 
with healthy function. This study supported that same finding but associated high 
self-directedness with healthy leadership function. 
Self-directedness is a trait that primarily addresses one’s internal self-
regulatory function. Such intrapersonal as well as interpersonal abilities act as part 
of a set of competencies shown to predict effective leadership (Boyatzis, 2007). 
However, many visible deficiencies are often evidenced first by internal self-
regulatory failures (Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996; Baumeister & Vohs, 2004). 
These types of failures are related to executive derailment (Lombardo & Eichinger, 
1991; Leslie & Van Velsor, 1996), overactive ambition (Kaplan et al., 1991), and 
even burnout. Future research needs to consider the primacy of self-directedness to 
leadership function. This study has confirmed that self-directedness is significant to 

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