This article provides a qualitative review of the trait perspective in leadership research, followed by a meta-analysis. The authors used the five-factor model as an organizing framework and meta-analyzed 222 correlations from 73 samples. Overall, the correlations with leadership were Neuroticism = −.24, Extraversion =.31, Openness to Experience =.24, Agreeableness =.08, and Conscientiousness =.28. Results indicated that the relations of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, and Conscientiousness with leadership generalized in that more than 90% of the individual correlations were greater than 0. Extraversion was the most consistent correlate of leadership across study settings and leadership criteria (leader emergence and leadership effectiveness). Overall, the five-factor model had a multiple correlation of.48 with leadership, indicating strong support for the leader trait perspective when traits are organized according to the five-factor model.

The great Victorian era historian Thomas Carlyle commented that“the history of the world was the biography of great men” (Carlyle, 1907, p. 18). This“great man” hypothesis—that history is shaped by the forces of extraordinary leadership—gave rise to the trait theory of leadership. Like the great man theory, trait theory assumed that leadership depended on the personal qualities of the leader, but unlike the great man theory, it did not necessarily assume that leadership resided solely within the grasp of a few heroic men. Terman’s (1904) study is perhaps the earliest on trait theory in applied psychology; other discussions of the trait approach appeared in applied psychology in the 1920s (e.g., Bowden, 1926; Kohs & Irle, 1920). Cowley (1931) summarized well the view of trait theorists in commenting that“the approach to the study of leadership has usually been and perhaps must always be through the study of traits” (p. 144).

Despite this venerable tradition, results of investigations relating personality traits to leadership have been inconsistent and often disappointing. Most reviews of the literature have concluded that the trait approach has fallen out of favor among...