Personality and Intellectual Predictors of Leadership

Abstract

Contemplate the lives of these historical figures: Moses, Buddha, Mohammed, Pope Urban II, Martin Luther, and Joseph Smith; Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Genghis Khan; Richelieu, Cavour, and Bismarck; Demonsthenes, Cicero, Lincoln, and Winston Churchill; Spartacus, Joan of Arc, Bolívar, Garibaldi, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King; Tiberius Gracchus, Robespierre, Lenin, and Mao; Hammurabi, Kublai Khan, Ivan the Terrible, Queen Elizabeth I, and Louis XIV; Franco, Mussolini, Hitler, and Tojo; Cosimo Medici, Meyer Rothschild, Andrew Carnegie, and Alfred Krupp. Now think about the persons who occupy one of these contemporary roles: president of the United States, prime minister of Great Britain, secretary general of the United Nations, CEO of Ford Motor Company, pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, Dalai Lama of Tibetan Buddhism, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, chief justice of the Supreme Court, governor of the state of California, mayor of Berlin, and president of the American Psychological Association. Finally, to get closer to what some of us may have directly experienced, recall persons whom you have actually known: the manager who supervises your unit at work, the lieutenant who commanded your platoon, the president of your local parent-teacher association, the captain of your college track team, the student body president back in your high school days, the master of your youth club, or the head of the street gang in the old neighborhood.