Born or Made? Trait Theories Meet Behavioral Theories

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Born or Made? Trait Theories Meet Behavioral Theories

Principles of Management · Chapter 10: Classic Theories and Models of LeadershipSection 10.6 · lesson 60 of 11710 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

What a leader is, what a leader does, and why an organization needs both answers.

  • Describe the trait approach and its findings
  • Describe the behavioral approach and its 2 dimensions
  • Explain why no best combination was found
  • Explain why the 2 approaches are complements

Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (1,330 words). Read along, or search it.

Classic Theories and Models of Leadership

Born or Made? Trait Theories Meet Behavioral Theories

Are leaders born, or made? It's one of the oldest questions in the field, and two research traditions tried to answer it. The trait approach asked what a leader is. The behavioral approach asked what a leader does. We'll follow the trait approach from early dominance, through apparent failure, to a more careful reconsideration. We'll see why even a perfect list of traits couldn't tell anyone how to lead. Then we'll see the behavioral response, and the two dimensions it found. We'll see why the search for one best leadership style failed, and where that failure led. And we'll land on a practical, evidence-based answer to born or made.

The Trait Approach

The Search for the Leader's Characteristics

The trait approach was the field's earliest sustained research program. It searched for stable personal characteristics that distinguish leaders from non-leaders. The premise was reasonable. If effective leaders share identifiable, stable traits, organizations could simply select for those traits directly. That idea dominated early leadership research. Then came what looked, at the time, like a genuine failure. Early reviews of the accumulated research found no consistent set of traits across the many studies. For a period, the trait approach was widely regarded as a dead end. But that verdict turned out to be premature.

The Reconsideration

2 Questions That Had Been Conflated

A later reconsideration found something more nuanced. It wasn't a simple reversal. With better measurement and clearer criteria than the earliest studies used, certain characteristics did show consistent associations. They were linked to leader emergence, and to leader effectiveness. So what had gone wrong? Part of the problem was a failure to separate two genuinely different questions, with different answers. The first is who emerges as a leader in the first place. The second is who is effective, once actually in the role. Traits associated with one question aren't necessarily the traits associated with the other. Mixing the two together had obscured findings that became clearer once they were properly separated.

Reasonable Support

Characteristics, Not a Formula

Which characteristics have reasonable support? Here they are, described at a general level. A drive toward achievement, and genuine honesty and integrity. Self-confidence that's appropriate to the situation. And cognitive ability sufficient to process the complexity that leadership roles typically involve. Now the caution, stated directly. These associations are modest. None of this is a formula. Possessing all of them doesn't guarantee effective leadership. And lacking one doesn't rule it out. The associations are statistical tendencies across large groups of people. They're not deterministic predictions about any specific individual.

The Crucial Limitation

Who to Select, Not How to Lead

The trait approach carries a crucial limitation, and it's worth stating plainly. First, traits may predict emergence better than they predict effectiveness. Second, and more fundamentally, a trait account says nothing about what a leader should actually do. Imagine a fully confirmed list of the traits associated with effective leadership. It would tell an organization who to select. But it wouldn't tell a manager how to actually lead, once selected. And most organizations have to work with the leaders they already have. That's exactly the gap the behavioral approach was built to address.

The Response

From What a Leader Is to What a Leader Does

The behavioral approach emerged directly in response to that limitation. The reasoning went like this. If traits can't be selected for with full reliability, identify what effective leaders actually do. Behavior, unlike a fixed trait, can be trained. So the question shifted, from what a leader is, to what a leader does. That shift opened an entirely different research program. It also opened a different organizational lever. Not selection alone, but development. Selection decides who leads. Development shapes what they actually do.

2 Dimensions

Consistently Found, and Independent

Across the major behavioral research programs, two dimensions emerged consistently. The first concerns task, structure, and production. That's behavior aimed at getting the work done efficiently and correctly. The second concerns people, consideration, and relationships. That's behavior aimed at the well-being and development of the people doing the work. These two dimensions recurred across separate, independently conducted research programs. And the finding that mattered most was this. The two dimensions are independent. They aren't opposite ends of one continuum. A leader can be high on both, low on both, or high on either one. That's precisely the two-dimensional structure behind the managerial grid, from Subchapter nine point nine. The grid was built directly on this earlier behavioral research.

Figure 10.6.1

The Search for One Best Quadrant Failed

Figure ten point six point one shows the two dimensions as independent axes. Concern for task, or production, runs along the bottom. Concern for people runs up the side. That gives four leader profiles. High people only, high-high, low-low, and high task only. Once researchers had two independent dimensions, they naturally searched for a universally best combination. They wanted one quadrant that would outperform every other, regardless of circumstance. That search failed. The center of the figure marks it. No single combination of task and people orientation consistently beat the others across every situation studied. And that failure is precisely what opened the way to contingency theory. That's covered generally in Subchapter five point five, and specifically through Fiedler's model in Subchapter ten point one. If no combination is universally best, the right one must depend on the situation a leader actually faces.

Complements, Not Rivals

Each Approach Pulls a Different Lever

So which approach was right? That's the wrong question. They're best understood as complements, not rivals, because each addresses a different organizational lever. Traits are what selection can act on. An organization deciding whom to hire, or promote into leadership, can reasonably weigh the modestly predictive characteristics. Behaviors are what development can act on. With the leaders it already has, an organization can train and reinforce task-oriented and people-oriented behaviors. A sensible organization uses both, for genuinely different purposes. Subchapter thirteen point one treats selection and development more fully, as distinct organizational functions.

Table 10.6.1

The 2 Approaches Compared

Table ten point six point one compares the two approaches side by side. The trait approach asks what stable characteristics distinguish leaders from non-leaders. The behavioral approach asks what effective leaders actually do. The trait approach predicts leader emergence more reliably than leader effectiveness. The behavioral approach identifies which behaviors are associated with effectiveness across situations. In organizational use, traits serve selection. Who to hire, or who to promote. Behaviors serve development, training the leaders already in place. Each has its limitation. The trait approach says nothing about what a leader should actually do. And for the behavioral approach, no single combination of behaviors proved universally best.

Born or Made?

The Evidence Says Both

There's one thing neither approach explains, and that's the situation itself. Why does a given trait or behavior succeed in one context, and fail in another? That gap is exactly what the contingency models were built to fill. They're in Subchapters ten point one through ten point three. So, born or made? The practical position, based on the evidence, is genuinely both. Some characteristics linked to leadership show modest, consistent heritability, and stability. That fits a trait-like origin. But a substantial share of what makes leadership effective is behavioral, and demonstrably trainable. Neither extreme matches the research. Leadership isn't entirely innate. And it isn't entirely a product of training either, as if people had no relevant starting differences.

Case Vignette

Selected Well, Developed Not at All

Here's a composite case, constructed for instruction. Harborline Manufacturing's leadership development program selected new managers almost entirely on measured personal characteristics. Confidence, drive, and demonstrated integrity were screened carefully during hiring and promotion. The organization invested heavily in getting selection right, and by most internal accounts, it generally succeeded. But once selected, these managers got essentially no structured behavioral development. No training in task-structuring behavior. No coaching on consideration. And no feedback loop connecting daily conduct to either dimension. Several capable, well-selected managers struggled visibly in their first year. Their teams described inconsistent direction, and uneven attention to people issues. Yet those same managers had tested strongly on every trait the selection process screened for. Selection had done exactly what trait research says selection can do well. What was missing was the development side, translating good characteristics into learnable task and people behaviors. Selection had supplied the raw material. Nothing had supplied the behavior. Next, Subchapter ten point seven closes the chapter with the attribution perspective, on how observers explain a leader's behavior.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Born or Made? Trait Theories Meet Behavioral Theories

What is the trait theory of leadership?
The trait approach searched for stable personal characteristics that distinguish leaders from non-leaders, so organizations could select for them. Early reviews found no consistent set, but later work with better measurement found modest associations for drive toward achievement, honesty and integrity, situation-appropriate self-confidence, and sufficient cognitive ability. Traits tend to predict who emerges as a leader better than who is effective.
What are the two dimensions found in behavioral leadership research?
Behavioral research programs consistently found two dimensions: task-oriented behavior, concerned with structure, production, and getting work done correctly, and people-oriented behavior, concerned with consideration, relationships, and well-being. Crucially, they are independent, so a leader can be high on both, low on both, or high on one. This finding later underpinned Blake and Mouton's managerial grid.
Why did the search for one best leadership style fail?
Once researchers had two independent dimensions, task and people orientation, they looked for one combination that would outperform the others everywhere. No single combination consistently won across all the situations studied. That failure opened the way to contingency theories, such as Fiedler's model, which argue that the right leadership approach depends on the situation a leader faces.
Are leaders born or made?
The evidence suggests both. Some characteristics linked to leadership show modest heritability and stability, which fits a trait-like origin, but much of effective leadership is behavioral and trainable. That makes the two approaches complements: organizations can use traits to guide selection and behavior training to develop the leaders they already have. Neither the purely innate nor the purely trained view matches the research.

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