Introduction
The Topic and Its Context
Leaders of various organizations strive to apply strategies to boost the performance of their subordinates. Workers are the driving force of organizational success; hence, correct methods of coordinating their work are essential. The tactics of motivation and communication with employees define the leadership styles implemented. However, personality traits also play a crucial role in how individuals lead a group of people because internal motives, goals, and characteristics affect one’s decisions (Schattke and Marion-Jetten, 2021). The notion of personal characteristics can be defined as a set of dynamic yet persistent traits that determine a person’s cognition, attitudes, and behaviors (Oladeji and Ayinde, 2018). A leader with positive personal features is communicative, purpose-driven, and charismatic, while the one with negative characteristics is often manipulative, callous, and entitled (Bentley and Saklofske, 2021). In fact, the latter three, combined with the desire for unlimited power, may lead to the formation of the so-called dark triad of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy (Bentley and Saklofske, 2021). These features may reduce productivity among staff in the long term, whereas the former three can inspire workers to high productivity.
Since the primary aim of any employer is to direct workers’ efforts to achieve organizational goals, the choice of leading methods is critical. The three main leadership styles are passive, transitional, and transformational. The other two leadership styles are transitional, which offers a team rewards for specific achievements, and Laissez-faire or passive. The latter is considered inefficient since there is a lack of dynamics and interaction (Schattke and Marion-Jetten, 2021). Transformational leaders focus more on the quality of communication with subordinates rather than completing particular projects successfully, indicating that they are process-oriented (Rani, 2018). However, it does not suggest that tasks are not done in such firms; instead, connection with the process creates a stronger dedication to attaining goals among workers (Rani, 2018). Transitional leaders are often goal-oriented and results-driven, motivating their employees to move from one task to another by recognizing desired outcomes (Rani, 2018). This leadership style creates external incentives for people to maintain high work efficiency, which is often sufficient for organizations to advance. Transitional and transformational styles are believed to be effective because they tie a company’s objectives to internal or external motives.
Personality traits may impact the choice of strategies for leading organizations. Although leaders nowadays try to be mindful of their choices of tactics for coordinating their employees, their personality traits still influence their style choice on the subconscious level. The abovementioned positive characteristics tend to raise work effectiveness by encouraging teams for increased effort and commitment to completing tasks (Ekizler and Bolelli, 2020). In contrast, the dark triad seems to cause counterproductive and unethical behavior that may harm the company and subordinates’ emotional or even physical well-being (Ekizler and Bolelli, 2020). Nevertheless, when present in moderation, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy are only viewed are personality characteristics and methods of attaining goals and not psychiatric disorders (Ekizler and Bolelli, 2020). It is because they do not normally interfere with the workflow process and sometimes even facilitate it (Ekizler and Bolelli, 2020). Still, the accumulation of these characteristics to toxic levels will inevitably lead to a drop in productivity because employees, unable to withstand continuous bullying or manipulation, will not stay long with that organization.
Apart from good communication style, being purpose-driven, and charismatic, a leader with positive characteristics should possess characteristics that help one understand people and connect with them. These features include openness to experience, conscientiousness, honesty, agreeableness, and empathy (Jovic and Jovancevic, 2018; Oladeji and Ayinde, 2018). Conscientiousness can be described as the desire to achieve something combined with incredible impulse control and thoughtfulness (Oladeji and Ayinde, 2018). Indeed, research shows that there is a link between positive personality traits, effective leadership, and better job performance (Ali et al., 2021). Other terms are self-explanatory from their titles, and they, in combination, comprise a set of characteristics of an effective and non-toxic leader.
One of the styles that is often left separate from the classification is servant leadership, which appears to be more closely related to positive personality traits than the other three. Both transformational and transitional leadership styles are implemented by human beings; thus, it is inevitable that they possess some or all of these characteristics. However, in servant leadership, being empathetic, putting subordinates’ interests first, being open-minded, and having immense self-control seem to be the fundamental features of these leaders (Gandolfi and Stone, 2018). Servant leaders are known to be persuasive, healing, and committed to the personal growth of their employees (Gandolfi and Stone, 2018). Furthermore, they are usually good at conceptualization and building community (Gandolfi and Stone, 2018). The focus on humility does not indicate that servant leaders forget about organizational goals and success. Conversely, they are as ambitious and driven as transformational and transitional leaders, but their approach is different (Gandolfi and Stone, 2018). Servant leadership allows for inspiring subordinates to improve their work by comforting them physically and emotionally, creating an additional external incentive as well as internal motivation to produce better results.
Aim of the Research
This research project aims to explore positive personality characteristics associated with transformational and servant leadership styles. Additionally, this study will explore negative personality traits that have a correlation with these two types of leadership. Finally, this research aims to utilize these findings to develop recommendations for small businesses to help them enhance the use of positive features and be mindful of the dark triad in their organizations.
The Scope of the Study
This study will explore positive and negative personality traits associated with two leadership styles, transformational and servant. The target sample size is 50 individuals who should be the leaders of small businesses or start-up companies with less than 200 employees. The process of recruiting participants across the United Arab Emirates, conducting interviews, as well as analyzing and interpreting results is planned to be completed within twelve months. The positive traits that will be included are good communication style, being charismatic and purpose-driven, honesty, conscientiousness, openness to experience, empathy, and agreeableness. All negative characteristics of the dark triad will be used in this research. This study will be limited to evaluating the two abovementioned leadership styles and will not assess two other types, passive and transitional.
Research Objective
To explore what positive and negative personality characteristics have a statistically significant association with transformational and servant leadership styles used by the leaders in small for-profit organizations in the UAE.
Research Question 1
What positive personality characteristics have a stronger association with transformational style, and which are correlated with servant leadership?
Research Question 2
What negative personality traits have a stronger association with transformational style, and which are correlated with servant leadership?
Chapter Summary
Chapter presents the background of this research’s topic, aim, scope, and objectives. An introduction to different leadership styles and personality traits of effective and toxic leaders is provided. Additionally, the chapter briefly discusses the possible role of leaders’ various personality characteristics in employee performance. Chapter 2 will be focused on a more detailed review of the literature about positive and negative personality traits, leadership styles, and the studies that describe the connection between these concepts.
Reference List
Ali, A.M.K. et al. (2021) Leadership styles and personality traits of health professions educators: a scoping review. Superior Journal of Medical Education, pp. 1-13.
Bentley, M. and Saklofske, D. (2021) Dark leaders: examining the relation between dark triad personality traits and leadership styles in business students. Western Undergraduate Psychology Journal, 9(1), pp. 1-20.
Ekizler, H. and Bolelli, M. (2020) Effects of dark triad on transformational, transactional and Laissez-Faire leadership styles. OPUS International Journal of Society Researches, 16(32), pp. 4621-4648.
Gandolfi, F. and Stone, S. (2018) Leadership, leadership styles, and servant leadership. Journal of Management Research, 18(4), pp. 261-269.
Jovic, M. and Jovancevic, A. (2018) Relation between personality traits and leadership styles. Knowledge International Journal, 22(1), pp. 281-286.
Oladeji, O.O. and Ayinde, A.T. (2018) Leadership styles and personality traits as predictors of job embeddedness among employees of Ibadan electricity distribution company, Nigeria. Journal of Management, 6(2), pp. 8-23.
Rani, P. (2018) Impact of personality traits on conflict management and leadership styles. Amity Journal of Management Research, 3(2), pp. 64-80.
Schattke, K. and Marion-Jetten, A.S. (2021) Distinguishing the explicit power motives: relations with dark personality traits, work behavior, and leadership styles. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, pp. 1-10.