Running Head : PERSONALITY AND EXECUTIVE EFFECTIVENESS Personality Correlates of Perceived Senior Executive Effectiveness : An Application of the Five-Factor Model

Previous work has suggested how the personality correlates of effective leadership can be understood within the Five-Factor Model of trait structure. Yet this has not been demonstrated with executive samples. In this exploratory study, senior executives’ Adjective Check List scores were correlated with reliable self, superior, peer, and subordinate ratings of overall effectiveness. Analyses were interpreted within the five-factor/Big Five framework. The traits measured by the ACL scales were significantly related to coworkers’ perceptions of effectiveness, with multiple Rs ranging from . 19 to . 44 across rating sources. Moreover, the relationship between the Big Five and executive effectiveness appeared to be more complex—and somewhat contradictory— when compared to previous suggestions gleaned from research with lower level managers. Personality and Executive Effectiveness 3 Personality Correlates of Perceived Senior Executive Effectiveness: An Application of the Five-Factor Model Behavioral scientists have long been interested in the link between individual differences and leadership. Yet, at least historically, consensus on the utility of personality in understanding corporate leadership performance has been ambivalent at best (Bass, 1990; Yukl & Van Fleet, 1991). Since Stogdill’s literature review in 1974, however, there has been mounting recognition of an important relationship between personality and business leadership effectiveness(e.g., Hogan, Curphy, & Hogan, 1994; House & Aditya, 1997). There are many reasons for this surge in interest, to be sure. Perhaps the most influential reason is traceable to recent conceptual and empirical work which has raised the state-of-the-art in personality theory and research. Maddi (1980) and Hogan (1987; 1991) have called attention to the important distinction between two different meanings ascribed to the term “personality” (see also McAdams, 1992). Although these two conceptualizations of personality are undoubtedly related, albeit in ways that are not presently well understood, it is useful to recognize the distinction as the two views are clearly not equivalent. One approach is personality considered from the observer’s point of view. In this context, personality refers to the ways in which a person’s typical and largely decontextualized manifest behaviors are described (either by her self or by others) in order to convey a general sense of what she is usually like. In other words, personality from the observer’s perspective is tantamount to one’s social reputation and might be thought of as a collection of relatively static and enduring surface (Hogan, 1987) or periphery traits (Maddi, 1980). Surface traits are phenotypic in nature because they are based on observations of social behavior. Hogan has argued convincingly, as have others (e.g., McAdams, 1992), that these reputational characteristics are what is measured by most standard personality inventories. Personality and Executive Effectiveness 4 In contrast to personality from the observer’s perspective is personality from the actor’s perspective (Hogan, 1987; 1991). Here, personality is construed as the core of individuality (Maddi, 1980)—the dynamic intrapsychic structures, networks, and processes which interact with situational contingencies to motivate behavior (see also, e.g., Mischel & Shoda, 1996; Pervin, 1994). Because this view of personality invokes the notion of causality, it might be thought of as the collection of source factors which gives rise to one’s reputed personality. Source factors are not directly observable and thus can only be inferred. Fundamental to this theoretical view of personality is the recognition that behavior is a complex dynamic function of personal and contextual variables that are in an ongoing and reciprocal state of flux. Such individual difference variables include, but are not limited to: the relative situational salience of multiple and sometimes conflicting needs and motives (Allport, 1958; Epstein, 1994a; McClelland, 1985; Murray, 1938); levels of ego functioning and development (Loevinger, 1976; Vaillant, 1993) and ego-control and ego-resiliency (Block & Block, 1980); identity, life themes, and idiographic experiential history (McAdams, 1985); and, perhaps ultimately, the phenomenological experience or subjective psychological meaningfulness of situations and events (Kegan, 1983; 1994; Mischel & Shoda, 1996). It would seem apparent that personality from the actor’s perspective provides a richer and more differentiated understanding of a person’s nature than does personality from the observer’s point of view. However, the study of personality at either level of analysis can yield important and useful information (Hogan, 1991; McAdams, 1992; Mischel & Shoda, 1996). Few would deny that it is important to appreciate behavior in the context of how a person interprets the experience of reality. At the same time, few would argue that one’s reputation—a social construction based in part on the manifest expression of the internal dynamics of the actor—is Personality and Executive Effectiveness 5 not important. In the context of leadership in corporate institutions, one’s relatively enduring or characteristic ways of behaving and his or her resultant reputation can have a dramatic impact on innumerable social processes and managerial outcomes. The present research explores the link between reputational personality traits and perceptions of senior executive effectiveness. The Five-Factor Model of Trait Structure The development and refinement of the Five-Factor Model (a.k.a. the Big Five) has provided a powerful and widely adopted framework for organizing and understanding phenotypic reputational personality traits. This hierarchical model of personality trait structure can be thought of as a sort of Rosetta Stone for interpreting within a common conceptual system the wide array of specific traits identified by personality theorists and test constructors (John, 1990; McCrae, 1989; McCrae & John, 1992). It is not a theory of personality per se; rather the Five-Factor Model (FFM) is an empirical way of summarizing—at a relatively abstract and broad level—the pattern of covariation among objective measures of personality constructs. As demonstrated in factor analyses of personality trait scales conducted by Fiske (1949) and Tupes and Christal (1961) and later popularized by McCrae and Costa (1987), Digman and Innouye (1986), and Goldberg (1993), the FFM holds that five general factors can comprehensively account for the intercorrelations among the domain of specific reputational personality traits, regardless of how they are measured. These five broad-band, relatively abstract, and fundamental taxonomic dimensions are often identified as: Extraversion (including such traits as activity, assertiveness, gregariousness, positive emotionality), Agreeableness (friendliness, trust, sympathy, cooperation), Conscientiousness (responsibility, organization, persistence, achievement), Neuroticism or (low) Emotional Stability (insecurity, anxiousness, vulnerability, negative emotionality), and Openness to Experience or Intellectance (imagination, Personality and Executive Effectiveness 6 curiosity, unconventionality, broad-mindedness). The ubiquitous finding of these five factors in repeated factor analyses of trait personality data suggests that most, if not all, reputational trait scales can be understood as a specific “taste” representing a particular blend of “ingredients” from one or more of the Big Five classes of trait dimension “flavors. ” The FFM and leadership effectiveness. A compelling argument for the usefulness of the FFM in understanding leader effectiveness was offered by Hogan et al. (1994). Casting cumulative studies of objective personality measures and various effectiveness criteria in terms of the FFM, they concluded that potent leaders, more so than less effective leaders, tend to be regarded as assertive, talkative, and active (Extraversion); better adjusted, more stable and resilient (Emotional Stability); responsible, organized, and achievement-oriented (Conscientiousness); and likable, supportive, and trustworthy (Agreeableness). Although a generally insightful discussion, close reading of Hogan et al.’s review and integration indicates that, while we do indeed know a good deal about reputational personality traits and leadership effectiveness in general, we are far less informed about these phenomena in the specific context of the corporate executive suite. Perhaps understandably given the elite nature of this population, published quantitative data linking objective measures of personality and explicit measures of effectiveness at senior executive levels is virtually non-existent. (Not one study in the Hogan et al., [1994] review was of senior executive personality and effectiveness.) It remains an open question whether or not findings linking reputational personality to leadership outcomes in middle-management samples generalize to the senior executive population. Senior leadership and personality. Middle-management and senior corporate management functions place unique sets of demands upon incumbent leaders (e.g., Jaques & Clement, 1991; Personality and Executive Effectiveness 7 McCall, Lombardo, & Morrison, 1988). It seems prudent, then, to question the tenability of assuming that the personality correlates of effectiveness in lower levels are the same as those at the highest levels. For example, it is well documented that some personal qualities associated with success in lower levels and rapid career progression can also undermine performance in senior positions (Hogan, 1994; Kaplan, 1996; Leslie & Van Velsor, 1996; Lombardo & McCauley, 1988; Lombardo, Ruderman, & McCaulley, 1988; McCall et al., 1988). Quite frequently managers are promoted based on a solid track record of bottom-line results, but when they reach senior levels, relationship problems often