ABSTRACT
At an individual level, personal background factors that impinge on leadership include family and childhood experiences, education, professional and career experiences. Also important are elements of personality, traits that may be innate or that developed early in childhood. Hunt has described them as a set of predispositions or preferences that act as a springboard for leadership, such as a need for power and influence, an internal drive to achieve and succeed or a combination of passion, curiosity and daring. The bright side comprises intelligence and two major personality traits: extroversion and ambition. Those personality traits that are included as key predictors of leadership potential in these meta-analyses are curiosity, extraversion and emotional stability. In leadership roles one needs to stay true to their own values and apply them consistently it helps enormously if those values are agreed and shared by the institution that one is leading. Coherence between personal values and institutional values is very important.
