Claim 7: A small handful of personal traits explains a high proportionof the variation in leadership effectiveness
Why are some leaders more expert than others? Why do some people seem to develop leadership capacities to higher levels and more quickly than others? These important questions direct our focus to what is known about successful leaders’ personal traits, dispositions, personality characteristics and
the like. A substantial body of research conducted outside schools provides a reasonably comprehensive answer to these questions as it applies to private sector leaders. However, within schools the evidence is less comprehensive. Little research has focused on personality characteristics or intelligence, though there have been significant contributions concerning cognitive processes and leaders’ values.
One recent American study on school leaders’ confidence or sense of collective efficacy illustrates the potential value of future research about headteacher traits. Using a database comparable to the ones summarised in Figure 2 and noted under Claim 6, this study found that some characteristics of school districts (for example, a clear focus on pupil learning and achievement and a commitment to data-based decision-making) had a significant influence on school leaders’ sense of how well they were doing their jobs. This sense of efficacy in turn shaped the nature of headteachers’ leadership practices; highlighted the relationship between these practices and such things as decision-making processes in their schools; and had an indirect but significant influence on pupils’ learning and achievement.
Although not setting out to be research on leader traits, recent studies of leaders’ efforts to improve low-performing schools have begun to replicate evidence from private sector research. This evidence warrants the claim that, at least under challenging circumstances, the most successful school leaders are open-minded and ready to learn from others. They are also flexible rather than dogmatic in their thinking within a system of core values, persistent (eg in pursuit of high expectations of staff motivation, commitment, learning and achievement for all), resilient and optimistic. Such traits help explain why successful leaders facing daunting conditions are often able to push forward when there is little reason to expect progress.