ABSTRACT
To be effective as a leader, a person needs a wide variety of personal attributes, including the right personality traits and cognitive skills. The leader also needs to work in a setting appropriate to these attributes. At the same time, the leader’s combination of attributes must impress constituents that he or she is competent enough to carry out the role of a leader. As leadership researcher and theorist Bernard M. Bass notes, it is the leader’s perceived competence that determines if he or she will be able to influence followers. For example, the leader must convince the group that he or she has the appropriate experience to help with the group task for his or her ideas to be accepted.1 This is why self-confidence has long been associated with leadership effectiveness-the leader has to look the part of a person capable of being in charge.2 Convincing others of one’s skills and capabilities is one of the essential purposes of impression management.
