Trait Theory of Leadership

Trait theory of leadership is an approach to understanding leadership that seeks to identify the specific personal characteristics, such as intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity, and sociability, that distinguish effective leaders from non-leaders. Early trait research in the first half of the twentieth century sought a fixed, universal set of traits common to all leaders, but produced inconsistent results; later reviews, notably Ralph Stogdill's influential 1948 survey, concluded that the relevance of any given trait depends heavily on the situation in which leadership is exercised. Trait theory is generally regarded in management literature as an important early stage in the study of leadership, giving way to behavioral and later contingency and situational theories that examined what leaders do and the circumstances they act within, rather than only who they innately are.