common to even as many as four of the investigations. In other words, there was a wide disparity in the traits that were identified as leadership traits.
However, there were some general categories of traits that were identified as increasing the chance of the individual becoming a leader, whether or not that leader was a successful one. Kirkpatrick and Locke (1991) indicated that leaders tend to be distinguished from non-leaders in the categories of energy, ambition, desire to lead, honesty, integrity, self-confidence, intelligence, and job-relevant knowledge. Yet, the possession of all of these traits does not guarantee that the individual will become a leader, or a successful leader, nor does their lack eliminate one as a potential leader. One has only to look at Hitler to recognize that fact.
The next category of theories are the behavioral approaches. Essentially they contended that leaders can be identified by what they do, their actions, as opposed to their innate characteristics. Behavioral approaches assumed that individuals could be trained to behave as leaders if the appropriate behaviors were identified.
The early research began at Ohio State University centered on the work of R.M. Stogdill. Researchers at the university sought to identify independent dimensions of leader behavior. The eventual result of their work was a model that focused on the way in which the individual was measured on the dimensions of initiating structure and consideration (Bass, 1990). Another way of looking at that is that individuals were studied to determine what kinds of goal-oriented, or people-oriented behaviors were characteristic of their style and how that led to results as leaders.
These studies were similar to those conducted at Michigan State University, although the dimensions had different names. The Michigan State studies focused on dimensions that they termed employee-oriented or production-oriented. They...