all right it's time to discuss some of our leadership theories the first series of theories a series of theories say that three times quickly the first series of theories we're going to look at are going to emphasize leadership from the perspective of the leader in this video we're going to talk specifically about trait leadership theory or what's been also referred to as the great man theory trait leadership or the great man theory uh the way we're gonna work through these theories is we're gonna first discuss what it is we're gonna then tell you how it works and then we'll talk about some of the strengths and weaknesses of each of these theories so let's talk about trait theory what is a trait a trait is a set of distinctive characteristics a trait is a set of distinctive qualities or attributes that describe a person these are kind of like these inherent inherent inherent sorry and relatively unchanging qualities over time so the kind of the internal factors that make up your personality these are the things that make each of us unique as individuals and it's not really what you do as much as sort of those immutable hardwired traits it's it's who you are less what you do trait theory emerged in the early days it was the earliest and honestly the most enduring of our leadership theories and from the early days researchers tried to figure out how are people leaders what makes somebody a leader versus someone who's not a leader and they started to look at leaders and they started to identify the traits or the characteristics that influential people had and are there certain things that are true certain characteristics certain hardwired immutable attributes that are true for every leader in every situation is a leader born and it does does he have certain qualities that make him a leader or uh absent of those qualities someone can't be a leader or if i have those qualities i will automatically become a leader this was really the dominant theory in the dominant research uh enact in in leadership academics for really the early part and it wasn't until the late 1940s 1948 to be exact that there was a researcher named stogdale and what stogdale started to do was challenge this notion that there were certain things that made a leader if you had them you were a leader if you didn't have these traits you weren't a leader and couldn't become one and he had identified eight factors that that leaders had in common so did they question became did those factors did those attributes did those traits make them a leader or were they a leader and because they were now leading those traits became more obvious and more pronounced and what stockdale did in the process of his research in 1948 is he discovered that it wasn't just even though he narrowed down to eight factors eight traits that leaders had it wasn't those weren't enough to determine if someone was a leader he started to identify that the situation began to play a role so there were traits that in certain situations certain cultural context that are called upon for leadership and in a different situation those traits could actually be detrimental to leadership now i'm sure you're tired of hearing me talk about my height but you'll see when we get together at the intensive i have to duck through doorways my height is great when i'm playing sports my height is not great when i have to get on an airplane seat right so it's is it a good trait or a bad trait depends on the situation and what stogdale was starting to find is there were traits that leaders had but situation was starting to really play more of a role some of those traits were good leading in certain situations not good in other situations now what happened in the leadership research until that point based on stockdale's findings everybody not everybody the vast majority of academics started to study situations started to study behaviors started to study interactions and in so doing they kind of left the idea of traits behind so from 1948 to about 1974 we see a tremendous amount of research on the idea of interactions situations coming into play with regards to leadership in 1974 ironically stogdale again went back and started to look at traits because as the initiator of this idea of situational leadership he started to realize that something was missing and he started to re-look at traits and pondering the question of whether it's not traits or situation interactional style could there be a merger of both and what stogdale did is he kind of did a big gigantic survey and while situations and interactions certainly matter we all know this in our leadership context he also realized that traits simultaneously mattered now stogdale narrowed it down to uh 10 kind of traits or ten qualities that leaders have marry those to the proper situation and somebody was going to be able to be influential i'll give you those ten you're not going to be tested on them but just so you understand kind of the evolution of the leadership theory it's moved away from height handsomeness those kind of things toward now remember his first one was a drive for responsibility and task completion that makes sense number two was in his words vigor and persistence in the pursuit of goals number three was risk taking and originality and problem solving number four was a drive to exercise initiative in social situations number six was self i'm sorry number five was uh self confidence and sense of personal identity number six is a willingness to accept consequences of decision in action number seven is a readiness to absorb interpersonal stress number eight was a willingness to tolerate frustration and delay number nine is the ability to influence other people's behavior and number ten is the capacity to structure social interaction systems to the purpose at hand so these were the characteristics the factors that stogdale started to say leaders have these it's less a physical characteristic and more sort of a personality like there's there's grit there there's ingenuity there there's creativity though some of those things are hardwired some of them are learned but leaders need those and you take those and now you can craft the the leadership situation around how you're wired and you now can start to create influence research and academics now kind of took stogsdill who sort of opened up the idea of situations and now he's kind of reintroducing trait and leadership started to now discover traits again and look at traits and how those worked with the various situations and to make a long story short we've kind of distilled down and boiled down all the trait research and and by the way i happen to ascribe strongly to a trait perspective uh you can ascribe to any of the others as you do but i just think that while how we behave as leaders matters there are some things i think that are hardwired but kind of boiling down north house whose book again where a lot of this is coming from north house 9th edition in 2021 identified and kind of distilled it all down to five major leadership traits now there are a lot of other traits that impact our leadership but from a trait leadership perspective these five are the most common most influential and they're simply this number one was intelligence and i shouldn't say number one they're not in any particular order but intelligence self-confidence determination integrity and sociability that's intelligence self-confidence determination that grit that ability to stick through and press through obstacles integrity do my words and deeds match my person of high character and sociability interestingly of all these traits these are these are descriptive these are the things that are found in leaders they're not prescriptive meaning if you just have more integrity you become a leader that's not necessarily the case of all the traits and of all kind of the research that looks at traits be it gallup strengthsfinder or any of the other personality instruments there's only one trait that has actually been shown to move the needle on your leadership so we can identify these five traits that you're intelligent leaders tend to have intelligence but just being intelligent doesn't move your leadership needle leaders have are shown to have self-confidence but just being self-confident doesn't make you a leader or improve your leadership so these are identified but they're not prescriptive except for one sociability other scales that test all this stuff describe it as extraversion and very simply this do you have good social skills can you interact with a wide range of people in a positive way do people like you do they enjoy your sociability think about when pastor kevin york comes and visits your ministry context when you are in a conversation with pastor kevin york you feel like you're the only person in the world that matters to him he stops he interacts with you he smiles he's enjoyable he's very aware of what are the cues in your social context that makes somebody feel important and he he can utilize those he can do them in a large room of people he can do them in individual context and consequently we would all recognize man pastor kevin is an incredible leader he has a lot of other skills he's got talents he's very intelligent but the one trait that moves the needle on our leadership is sociability probably the greatest piece of leadership advice i was ever given came from a pastor in cuba now this pastor is prolific at last count as of count of this recording he has over 130 house churches that have been birthed out of his original house church 130 house churches he's a prolific leader in cuba now cuba at least at the time of this recording is a closed primarily communist his available from the bible because he didn't have access to other leadership material from the bible and from observing his local context the prominent leader during his lifetime in cuba was a leader named fidel castro all kinds of evil but undeniably a charismatic dynamic leader of people from came on the scene in cuba in 1958 led to the communist revolution in the 1960s and was a leader gosh for at least 50 years on that island nation when when if you look up archived video of fidel castro you're going to find two things you're going to find him standing at a microphone wearing a military uniform probably a cigar in his mouth and you are going to find him speaking dynamically a charismatic pulpit leader if you will he could mobilize the masses through his great gifts of passion and oration but the part of his leadership that caught the attention especially when also having observing castro in person and observing jesus in scripture that caught this leader's attention and what he shared with me is the other video you'll see of castro is him walking among the people slowly looking people in the eye shaking their hands laughing patting them on the back doing things that in that latin culture were were totally appropriate for the people he's interacting he's being sociable the piece of advice that this leader with 130 house churches gave me that i find to be tremendously important he said this he said move slowly among your people move slowly among your people not be a great orator like castro was not be a great preacher like jesus was although that matters and is absolutely important to leadership but the one trait that moves the needle that we see in castro the one trait that moves the needle in our leadership we see certainly in jesus is moving slowly among the people taking time to listen taking time to talk taking time to smile taking time to laugh taking time to interact taking time to understand move slowly among the people this trait of sociability this trait of extroversion when you look at this same trait it's not necessarily described in the gallup strengthsfinder you may have used that but gallup found of all their 34 traits there's really only one that is proven to help foster productivity and leadership and it was their trait that they describe as positivity sociability and positivity are very much the same do people feel good do people feel optimistic do people feel safe and trusted and heard do they do they leave an interaction with you filled with hope now that can come from a one-to-many dynamic conversation but it is primarily built as we move slowly among our people they know you they trust you you're smiling they feel positive people walked away from jesus feeling man like this guy can change the world not just on his preaching although we got multiple examples of people being strongly moved by the way he taught but i got to think it's the care he took as he moved among his people he was positive optimistic and sociable all right um another sort of trait that i want to just take a quick minute here and address we're going to have a whole separate teaching on it coming up uh during this term but is this this trait of what's called emotional intelligence uh emotional intelligence is kind of just like what it sounds like whereas intelligence is concerned with our ability to learn information and apply it to life tasks emotional intelligence is concerned with our ability to understand emotions and apply that understanding to life's tasks a simple definition of emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive and express emotions to use emotions to facilitate thinking to understand and reason with emotions and to effectively manage emotions within oneself and within relationships with others we need to be aware of the context we need to be aware of self we need to be aware of others by the way we're going to get an incredible opportunity to work on and develop our emotional intelligence when we're all together in our upcoming intensive where i'm conscious of the context that we're in i'm aware of myself how much i'm talking the volume with which i'm speaking and i'm aware of you right we bring all three of those together and by the way emotional intelligence is highly correlated highly related to effective sociability which is the only trait that actually [Music] improves or influences our leadership in a positive direction so we have a whole session i just want to at least drop that kind of thought in there all right that's trait leadership there are immutable things that i have immutable characteristics among them ideally let sociability or extroversion be one of them or develop that as a skill but have that in your in your leadership toolkit there are traits that effectively help me be a leader now how does it work well it's theoretically pretty straightforward in that it focuses on what traits leaders exhibit and who has those traits if i want to find a leader what are the traits that a leader has who has those this is somebody that might have the potential to toward leadership um having a leader with certain traits is crucial to effective leadership uh the leader and the leaders traits are central to the leadership process that is the the sort of theoretical underpinnings of trait leadership and i think one of the most effective uses for it how it works uh would be for organizations or for hiring you want to get the right traits lined up to the right jobs having the right traits lined up to the right jobs doesn't guarantee success but it certainly increases your optima ability for success so write traits for the right job so we have a church planters assessment center that i know we're rolling out on our various continents and essentially what we're doing there is we we know the traits that have been proven in the situation of church planting there are certain traits that church planters need to thrive in that situation so we ask the candidate about their situation and then we go find are those traits there if those traits are not there for the situation of church planting they're just not gonna be effective at it if the traits are there for the situation of church planting they can be effective it's not a guarantee there are characters there uh external factors that come into a play but without those traits the situation of church planting is going to be exceptionally difficult to not possible with those traits in the situation of church planting they might be very effective so we know that think of other issues of hiring right you want somebody that has the the trait if you're hiring for administration we want organizational traits do they are they organized are they task focused are they deliberate are they intentional do they pay attention to detail if they're big picture visionary don't put them in an administrative role that requires detail right just because they're wired toward detail doesn't mean that they're going to be an effective uh administrator they may have character issues but without administrative traits there's no chance that they can be effective of that worship leading like there are some innate talents toward being musical if they are not musical don't put them in that role so as we're we're looking for a role we define the traits that the role needs and we find somebody that has those traits if we can match that up then we can move on to other things like coachability teachability those kind of things character uh second way that it works is um i really think with regards to like personal awareness and personal development we learned in our last video that self-leadership's not really a thing leadership involves having other people or leadership and influences exerted but but personal development and personal awareness are a thing so if if i'm aware of what traits i possess now i can be much more aware of what situations i'm going to be most effective in if i know my traits i'll know what types of people i might be able to be more influential with right and we spent a lot of year one kind of talking about your traits your leadership style now we find the situation that we marry those traits to and you have a chance to be effective what are some of the strengths of a trait approach we'll talk about strengths and weaknesses and we'll wrap up this video what are some of the strengths um it's kind of in first strength is it's intuitively appealing in my opinion right it sort of fits our cultural understanding people have a deep psychological need to see their leaders as gifted like i want to follow someone who's like great at this i want a coach who's won championships i want a team captain who who hits clutch shots right i want we we we have a desire psychologically to see our leaders as gifted now when people see you as gifted you want to be very mindful that you don't use that to disempower others like i'm the this was the essence of what was i mentioned at the beginning trait theory and what they call great man theory in the early days of trait theory turn of the century 1910s 1920s we thought that leadership was could only be these great people that possess these certain things and it becomes in many ways disempowering to those of us who are less great or less gifted people do want to see their leaders as gifted but be mindful that they're going to see you as gifted as a leader but that doesn't have to be disempowering to them if they can see simultaneously your the traits that you possess that all of us can possess grit i can learn grit tenacity i want to follow a leader who has tenacity but at the same time as i follow a leader with tenacity something in me elevates to be more tenacious as i follow a leader that's great with pastoral care my heart develops toward pastoral care now those are traits and i want to follow a leader who's gifted in them but if the trait isn't height or good looks or something that i can't develop but if it's if if if i'm close enough to my people that the the traits that they see can be developed and they see that i'm really strong in them listen i will not quit i will press through when the times get hard and things get difficult i'm going to relax and i'm going to focus and i see those attributes those traits i actually i'm going to elevate to them i'm not going to be disempowered by them if the only thing that makes you a leader is you're tall and you're not tall i'm disempowered but if it's a characteristic of grit of sociability of tenacity some of the things that we mentioned a little bit earlier self-confidence uh so that's um one of the strengths is that it's kind of intuitive it's just sort of a leader looks like a leader right in many ways second strength of it in my humble opinion is it's biblical romans 12 8 says hey if you're gifted in leadership lead diligently right so so there are some things that god puts in us you know there there are those people that they just kind of can't not lead like before you drop them in a room and even if they're being reserved before long the room sort of tilts in their direction and wants tries to draw out their influence that's a gift from god leadership and influence can be developed as we're going to learn there are skills but there are some traits where some people just got it the chip is in there so i find it to be biblical uh it's another strength of it is it's studied we have over a hundred years of research to back up the fact that traits uh and there are inherent traits that leaders have it was tried to push out a favor after about 50 years for almost 50 years but it's worked its way back in because the reality is when we try to discover leadership outside of the fact that there is sort of a chip that leaders have if we try to discover it solely outside of it without giving account for traits what we're finding is that our theories are lacking and then last is there's a predictability in my humble opinion with regards as a strength for trait leadership there's a predictability we know what innate traits to look for in others again um i need somebody to lead in an administration i know what traits work in that situation so i can predict if i find somebody with those traits and they have character and not you know major ethical defects those traits predictably are going to do better in that regard what are some of the weaknesses well there's one glaring one and it's simply this looks can be deceiving looks like a leader is not always a leader gosh we know this from the selection of saul as the king the people god god gave the people what they wanted we want that guy he looks like a leader scripture says he was a a head taller than everybody else you know he's tall he's handsome he you know that guy you know he looks like a leader and we know that dave god chose differently with his successor david he didn't go for first in line he didn't go for birth order he didn't choose conventionally he didn't go by handsomeness the same features that the people chose but make no mistake when he chose david god did go for a trait right he looked at his heart so it wasn't the outward which early trait leadership looked at as a physical characteristic but it was more the inward which current trait leadership looks at or their facets of personality are there skills that seem to be innate are there things leaders do or or ways that leaders just sort of are in their personality god looks at the heart man looks at the outward god looks at the heart be people who look at the heart or we're going to misjudge leaders if we find ourselves looking at the outward man they they got it okay what's in the heart we want to line up heart we want to line up traits that god has placed in there for how they're going to be a leader now we're going to wrap this one up we're going to head into our next facet of leadership but when we consider this idea of traits there's a fascinating quote by kilpatrick and locke from 1991 they say this it is unequivocally clear that leaders are not like other people it is unequivocally clear from all the research 100 plus years it is unequivocally clear that leaders are not like other people kilpatrick and locke went on and identified their version of what are the traits and they had six and their six match with this guy's ten and match with this guy's five and match with that guy's eight so there's tons and tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of traits that have all kind of come together and we're not totally sure other than sociability which of those traits actually influences leadership but we do know this from observation it's just unequivocally clear that leaders are not like other people by the way the six traits that that that kilpatrick and locke identified is number one drive there's something inside that they can keep going number two is motivation they don't need to be motivated externally you're gonna get more money you'll get a bonus they do well because they should do well there's an internal motivation the third one is integrity we're starting to see this trait appearing over and over and over we should know this as kingdom leaders as spiritual leaders as apostolic leaders integrity is huge even if it's not something that's looked at initially it will will reveal itself down the road and when the when kilpatrick and locke are looking at long-term high-level leaders integrity is there because you can't lead at a high level for a long time without it okay um [Music] they also had confidence do you believe in yourself do you believe in your god do you believe in your mission is there something in you that says this matters this is important and it has to happen uh cognitive ability intellect they can think they can problem solve and last is task knowledge do they know what they're called to do you can be a great leader but if you don't know your bible you can be a great leader but if you don't understand church or campus ministry if you don't have knowledge of the topic i mean i think you drop a leader in there and they're going to start learning it because that's kind of what leaders do if they want to be effective but we do have to have knowledge of the task which by the way is why you are in ens so there are the question to me is are the traits just hardwire things attributes or are there skills and behaviors that can also be learned that now become part of the trait set of the leader well you're gonna have to watch the next video to find out the answer to that question [Music]