ABSTRACT
The topic of leadership remains one of the most actively researched areas in the organizational sciences, and has for many years. Some of the earliest efforts to understand leadership were the “great man theories” focusing on the traits possessed by individuals who generally were perceived as effective leaders. Unfortunately, such early trait approaches tended to relate leader traits to measures of leadership effectiveness virtually devoid of any attempts to explain how or why these traits made a difference (e.g., Yukl, 2006). In recent years, we have witnessed renewed interest in the trait view approach, but this new work has focused on multistage models that more precisely articulate the intermediate linkages or mediating processes that occur between leader traits/characteristics and leadership effectiveness (e.g., DeRue, Nahrgang, Wellman, & Humphrey, 2011; Van Iddekinge, Ferris, & Hefner, 2009; Zaccaro, 2007; Zaccaro, Kemp, & Bader, 2004).
