1. Håvard Karlsen
The Differing Effects of the Extraversion
Facets on Leadership Behaviours
Master's thesis in work and organisational psychology
Trondheim, May 2016
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Faculty of Social Sciences and Technology Management
Department of Psychology
2. i
Preface
I would like to thank all the great people who helped me recruit and get in touch with the
participants in this thesis, and also all the leaders who took the time to respond and recruit their
subordinates. A huge thank you goes to my supervisor, Eva Langvik, for helping me structure my
thesis and shape the questionnaire, as well as for providing important constructive criticism at
several stages of the work. This thesis was not written as part of any project, and all analyses were
done by me.
As we venture through life, we invariably encounter each other at various stages of our
respective journeys. I extend a thanks to those who have kept me company throughout my own
walk, both those who were there from the start and those who arrived gradually. You have all made
the trek a little less rocky, and a little more enjoyable. I hope to repay you all in kind.
Trondheim, May 2016
Håvard Karlsen
4. iii
Abstract
Several meta-analyses have shown extraversion to be an important predictor of leadership
emergence, effectiveness, and behaviours. However, in recent years researchers have shown that
introverts in some conditions are equal or even better leaders. There have also been several calls for
researchers to focus on narrower personality traits, as these might be more valid predictors than
broader traits. For that reason, the relationship between facets of extraversion and leadership
behaviour was investigated. In a preliminary quantitative survey study, leaders and their
subordinates (N = 234) participated. Leaders completed the NEO personality inventory and the
change, production, employee (CPE) instrument, while subordinates rated their leader on the same
instrument. The resulting CPE factor structure supported previously found structures. Factor
analysis of the personality traits and the CPE dimensions revealed mostly the same structure as
previously found, that extraversion was related to change leadership. Further analyses at the facet
level, however, revealed that only three facets, assertiveness, activity and gregariousness were
central in explaining this domain level relationship. The other three facets loaded on other
dimensions. Further regression analyses confirmed that facets are differently related to leadership
behaviours. Assertiveness was positively related to subordinate rated change and production, while
excitement seeking was negatively related to self-rated production and subordinate rated employee.
The negative relations of excitement seeking illustrates the value of facet level analysis of
personality, as high scores on this facet contributes to high scores on extraversion which is usually
thought to be positively related to leadership.
6. THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS 1
A search for the word sociable/outgoing1
among the manager postings on the popular
Norwegian job search engine Finn.no (24. March 2016) returned 55 hits. Comparatively, searches
for adjectives like visionary, inspiring and charismatic—all descriptors of a transformational leader
(Bono & Judge, 2004)—yielded a far lower number of hits: 14, 28 and 0 respectively. This simple
example serves to illustrate an apparent link between manager potential and extraverted behaviour,
at least in the minds of laypeople. Sociability is often considered the core tenet of extraversion, one
of the domains of the Five-Factor Model (FFM; McCrae & Costa, 1987; Wilt & Revelle, 2008). In
addition to other traits, such as assertiveness, this could easily be seen as corresponding to a
stereotypical leader-type, socially fluent and assertive. Indeed, extraversion has often implicitly and
explicitly been linked to leadership: Extraverts often express confidence, assertiveness and
enthusiasm, and are attributed high status, especially in initial meetings (Bendersky & Shah, 2013).
Consequently, they often emerge as leaders (C. Anderson, John, Keltner, & Kring, 2001; C.
Anderson & Kilduff, 2009; Barry & Stewart, 1997; Hogan, Curphy, & Hogan, 1994; Judge, Bono,
Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002; Kickul & Neuman, 2000; Nicholson, 1998; Ones & Dilchert, 2009; Riggio,
Riggio, Salinas, & Cole, 2003; Taggar, Hackett, & Saha, 1999; Watson & Clark, 1997; Zaccaro,
Kemp, & Bader, 2004). Extraversion has also been linked to leadership effectiveness and
performance (Barrick, Mount, & Judge, 2001; Barrick & Mount, 1991; DeRue, Nahrgang,
Wellman, & Humphrey, 2011; Hurtz & Donovan, 2000; Judge, Bono, et al., 2002; Mohammed,
Mathieu, & Bartlett, 2002; Silverthorne, 2001). Most studies investigate the relationship between
leadership and personality at the level of the domains of personality traits instead of the facets
belonging to the domains. Before the 2000s, few studies included personality facets alongside the
domains in their models (Judge, Bono, et al., 2002). In fact, researchers using the FFM traits to
predict leadership criteria have received criticism for the domains being too broad to be used to
predict leadership criteria. Among others, Bono and Judge (2004) advocated the application of
narrower personality traits. Closer inspection of the facets of extraversion might reveal that specific
facets are responsible for the relationships found when including the whole domain, as has been
implicated in research (Rothstein & Goffin, 2006). Others have found that narrower personality
dimensions explained more variance in leadership behaviour than the broad domains of the FFM
(Bergman, Lornudd, Sjöberg, & Von Thiele Schwarz, 2014; Bergner, Neubauer, & Kreuzthaler,
2010). Despite the calls for increased focus on facets in recent years (Chapman, 2007; Judge,
Piccolo, & Kosalka, 2009), few studies have investigated the relationship between extraversion and
leadership at the facet level. In this study I therefore examine the effects of the six facets of
extraversion on subordinate and self-rated leadership behaviour, in an attempt to forward our
1 Corresponding Norwegian translations: utadvendt, visjonær, inspirerende and karismatisk
7. 2 THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS
understanding of personality and leadership.
Theoretical Framework
Leadership. There have been several definitions of the leader throughout the literature, enough
to cause Stogdill (1974, in Northouse, 2013) to comment that there were as many different
definitions of leadership as there were people attempting to define it. In modern times, what most of
the definitions have in common, is that they concern people who can influence individuals to
contribute to a group (Northouse, 2013). In the words of Hogan, Curphy, and Hogan (1994, p. 493):
“Leadership involves persuading other people to set aside for a period of time their individual
concerns and to pursue a common goal that is important for the responsibilities and welfare of a
group.” The research field on leadership is broad and spans many disciplines, taxonomies, theories
and decades. Consequently leadership has been operationalised in several different ways. In the
following section I account for some of the challenges related to measuring leadership and using
leadership as a criterion variable.
With the advent of positive psychology in the 2000s (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000),
researchers turned to the positive factors in life as a reaction to the previously overwhelming focus
on negative factors. The study of leadership has experienced a reverse development, however. Most
of the earlier research focused on the qualities that promoted good leaders. This is illustrated aptly
by historian Thomas Carlyle's statement that: “The History of the world is but the Biography of
great men” (2008, p. 60) which inspired the great man hypothesis (Judge, Bono, et al., 2002) and
the later focus on personality traits as predictors of good leaders. Good and bad forms of leadership
are thought to exist as separate constructs and not as opposite ends of a pole (Ames & Flynn, 2007;
Einarsen, Skogstad, Aasland, & Løsleth, 2002; Hogan & Kaiser, 2005). As a consequence, the
absence of good leadership is not automatically indicative of bad leadership. Good and bad
leadership in this context refers not to morally good and bad, but rather to constructive and
destructive leadership. For instance, a destructive leader is a bad leader because she causes harm
and stress to her subordinates. This is in harmony with Hogan and colleagues' (1994) morally
neutral definition of leaders. While a destructive leader systematically acts in ways that are
detrimental to the organisation (Einarsen, Aasland, & Skogstad, 2007), a lack of constructive
leadership can also have negative consequences. Certain leadership styles might be difficult to
evaluate as either good or bad. Many famous leaders were renowned for causing their companies
success and prosperity, while at the same time treating their subordinates badly, for instance Steve
Jobs (Isaacson, 2012). Hence, it is helpful to consider leadership as a multi-dimensional construct,
with the implications that a leader can excel at certain aspects of leadership while faring more
8. THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS 3
poorly in others.
When examining the antecedents of good leadership, leadership has often been measured as
organisational outcomes. These outcomes can be conceptualised in two broad categories: leadership
emergence and leadership effectiveness (Foti & Hauenstein, 2007; Lord, de Vader, & Alliger, 1986;
Lord & Dinh, 2014). Emergence refers to how an individual is perceived by others in terms of
leadership (Foti & Hauenstein, 2007; Judge, Bono, et al., 2002). In contrast to this, leadership
effectiveness attempts to more directly assess how well the leader influences and guides the
activities of her subordinates towards accomplishing their goals (Judge, Bono, et al., 2002). Studies
have often been criticised for purporting to examine leadership effectiveness while they actually
measured emergence (Hogan & Kaiser, 2005; Judge et al., 2009). People might feel that a person is
leaderlike, or does a good job being a leader, despite not being an effective leader. Such critics
emphasise the need for research that acknowledge this distinction (R. B. Kaiser, Hogan, & Craig,
2008; Morgeson, Campion, Dipboye, & Hollenbeck, 2007). Although certain traits could be related
to being perceived as a leader, they might also be unrelated or even negatively related to leadership
effectiveness. For instance, Judge, Bono and colleagues (2002) found that agreeableness was
negatively related to emergence and unrelated to effectiveness. Evidently, a person who has been
chosen to lead will not automatically become a good leader. Leadership effectiveness is
conceptually more related to organisational outcomes than emergence (Hogan et al., 1994; Judge,
Bono, et al., 2002), and is for that reason more interesting from a research perspective. However,
there are some problems associated with measuring leadership effectiveness.
Challenges related to measuring leadership. Leadership effectiveness can be measured either
objectively or subjectively, and there are arguments for and against both approaches. As advocated
by Hogan and colleagues (1994), leadership effectiveness can be assessed through the effectiveness
of the organisation, work group or team that the leader belongs to. Objective measures usually try to
remove the human factor. They attempt to eliminate the problems inherent in subjective
measurement, and may be less biased. However, such types of data are often more difficult to
acquire from organisations, as these might be more costly and invasive to obtain. There are also a
large number of external factors that might contribute to the more objective measurements of
leadership effectiveness, and which are beyond the influence sphere of leaders (Hogan et al., 1994;
Skogstad & Hetland, 2002). One study found that objective measures attenuated the relationship
between effectiveness and leadership behaviour, whereas subjective measures inflated it (Lowe,
Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996). One example of an objective measure is salary. However, this
measure can be criticised for being more related to the personality of a leader rather than their
ability (Agle, Nagarajan, Sonnenfeld, & Srinivasan, 2006; Tosi, Misangyi, Fanelli, Waldman, &
9. 4 THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS
Yammarino, 2004).
Rating source. Subjective effectiveness can be assessed by asking subordinates, peers, superiors
or even the leaders themselves to rate aspects of their performance. It can further be broken down
into self-ratings and other-ratings: Self-ratings are often more affordable and easier to collect,
because researchers only need one observation per leader. Other-ratings constitute ratings from
superiors, subordinates, or peers of the leader (Vecchio & Anderson, 2009). In the case last two, it
can be necessary to collect several observations per leader from different subordinates/peers in
order to achieve a more complete picture (Hensel, Meijers, van der Leeden, & Kessels, 2010). After
all, individuals may have dissimilar perceptions of the leader and sampling the perception of only
one person will not necessarily represent the general opinion. Therefore other-ratings may be more
expensive and harder to obtain. Especially if researchers need data from both the leader and the
subordinate/peer/superior, the researchers will be reliant on both parties to respond in order to make
use of the data. Both forms of ratings are associated with their respective set of biases and errors:
Studies indicate that leaders tend to rate their own leadership behaviour more positively compared
to ratings from others (Alimo-Metcalfe, 1998; Mount & Scullen, 2001; Skogstad & Hetland, 2002).
The fundamental attribution error and self-serving bias have been offered as an explanation: People
tend to emphasise others' disposition when explaining their behaviour, and they tend to ascribe
personal success to their own internal disposition while blaming external events for personal failure
(Campbell & Sedikides, 1999; Ross, Amabile, & Steinmetz, 1977). Leaders might therefore
attribute their own success/effectiveness to their own achievement, and blame other factors for
failures. Male leaders are also more likely than female leaders to over-evaluate themselves, when
comparing self-ratings to other-ratings (Brutus, Fleenor, & McCauley, 1999; Patiar & Mia, 2008;
Vecchio & Anderson, 2009), regardless of the gender of the ratee (Ostroff, Atwater, & Feinberg,
2004).
Ratings from different sources are strongly correlated with one another (Harris & Schaubroeck,
1988; Scullen, Mount, & Sytsma, 1996, in Skogstad & Hetland, 2002). Kim and Yukl (1995) found
that subordinate ratings were more related to actual effectiveness than self-ratings were. They are
however also subjective, and influenced by several factors like the halo effect, selective recall, how
well liked the leader is, and the rater's implicit leadership theories (Lord, Foti, & De Vader, 1984;
Sandal, 2002)—which traits they implicitly or unconsciously associate with leadership. Another
potential bias in asking subordinates to rate their leaders on leadership behaviour as well as
effectiveness, is common method variance (Avolio, Yammarino, & Bass, 1991; Binning, Zaba, &
Whattam, 1986). As the observations stem from the same source, they are not independent and may
influence one another (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003). A subordinate who rates
10. THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS 5
the leadership behaviour favourably may therefore also rate the leader as effective regardless of
actual effectiveness. It should further be noted that leaders are witness to the entirety of their own
leadership behaviour, wheras others can only witness a small part of it (Skogstad & Hetland, 2002).
Though leaders' self-ratings may be considered more subjective than other-ratings, they also have
more observations on which to base their evaluations on. The degree to which subordinates, peers
and superiors are privy to details of leaders' activities varies across settings. This might offer insight
into the discrepancies between self- and other-ratings. Then again, subordinates' subjective
perception of a leader can also be an important aspect of leadership. A manager with a positive
relationship to her subordinates, supervisors and peers might be thought of as successful in that
aspect of leadership.
As an alternative to leadership as an outcome (effectiveness), leadership can be assessed as
behaviour (Arvonen, 2002). In this approach behaviour theorised or known to be associated with
constructive leadership is assessed. One approach that focus more on what people do than who they
are (i.e the great man theory), is the CPE (Change, Production, Employee), a measure of leadership
behaviour developed by Ekvall and Arvonen (1991). In the following section, I focus on the CPE
instrument of leadership behaviour.
Change, Production, Employee. The CPE instrument measures three distinct leadership
behaviours that have emerged in the literature as important determinants of effective leadership. The
two dimensions production and employee have been demonstrated repeatedly in the literature, often
with other names: Democratic and authoritarian (Lewin & Lippitt, 1938), concern for production
and concern for people (Blake, Mouton, & Bidwell, 1962), directive and supportive (Blanchard,
Zigarmi, & Nelson, 1993), task and relations-oriented behaviour (Yukl, 2009). Production-related
leadership differ in content among the various instruments that measure it, often containing in
various parts autocratic and punitive behaviour, and organising and role clarification. The items of
the production (also called structure) dimension in the CPE instrument contains more role
clarification, planning and controlling behaviour, and does not contain punitive management
behaviour. The employee (also called relations) dimension of CPE can be compared to the scale of
individual consideration in Bass' transformational leadership model (Arvonen, 2002). It includes
items representing trust, respect and consideration. Ekvall and Arvonen expanded on the two-factor
model of leadership by including the dimension of change (also called development), which refers
to visionary qualities, creativity and development (Arvonen & Pettersson, 2002). The reason this
dimension did not appear in earlier studies of leadership has been attributed to the more dynamic
and changing face of modern organisations (Arvonen, 2002). Yukl (1999) found a similar three
factor structure of leadership.
11. 6 THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS
The CPE originally employ subordinate ratings. Employees affect the effectiveness of the work
groups and organisations to which they belong, and their potential and actual behaviour is
influenced by their perceptions and interpretations of their leaders. Thus, how the subordinates
perceive their leaders can be an important determinant of organisational outcomes (Arvonen, 2002).
Although the CPE instrument applies ratings from subordinates, it has also been used from the
perspective of the leaders themselves (Kornør & Nordvik, 2004). The instrument has demonstrated
construct and external validity across various samples from over 13 (western) countries (Bergman
et al., 2014; Ekvall & Arvonen, 1994; Kornør & Nordvik, 2004; Skogstad & Einarsen, 1999;
Sverke, Arvonen, & Lindell, 1999; Yukl, Gordon, & Taber, 2002) and it has been used extensively
in Nordic samples (Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish).
Leadership behaviour is thought to affect organisational outcomes indirectly, through other
organisational and psychological processes (Arvonen & Pettersson, 2002; Yukl, 2009). Ekvall and
Arvonen (1994) found that leaders closer to the top level exhibited more change-oriented leadership
behaviour than leaders at the lower level, and less production leadership behaviour. This was
hypothesised to be caused by change-orientated leadership (e.g. adapting to changing environments)
being more important at higher organisational levels, and production-orientation being more
important at lower rather than higher levels (Arvonen, 2002). Arvonen (1995) found that all three
CPE dimensions were significantly negatively related to dissatisfaction with work. Production and
employee orientations reduced both mental fatigue and psychosomatic load. Change was however
positively related to mental fatigue. It was also related to higher psychosomatic loads, but only if
coworkers were low in commitment. The CPE dimensions were in general related to wellbeing in
subordinates. The CPE dimensions have been shown to be valid predictors of leadership: They have
been related to cost and change effectiveness (Arvonen & Pettersson, 2002), as well as to leadership
effectiveness (Arvonen & Ekvall, 1999). Production and employee dimensions have been related to
subordinates' organisational commitment (Brown, 2003), and to leadership effectiveness (Judge,
Piccolo, & Ilies, 2004). Production-related behaviour can improve individual performance in
subordinates and in small groups (Yukl, 2009). Employee-related behaviour has been related to
higher job satisfaction, lower turnover, and team performance (Yukl, 2009; Zaccaro, Rittman, &
Marks, 2001).
CPE and transformational leadership. Transformational leadership is one of the most popular
leadership styles to have emerged in research during the last forty years, and have amassed a large
body of research pertaining to it (cf. Avolio & Yammarino, 2013). Developed by Burns (1978) and
Bass (1985), it refers to leaders who motivates their followers through idealised influence,
intellectual stimulation, challenges and individual consideration. The change and employee
12. THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS 7
dimensions correspond to transformational leadership, as they represent creativity, visionary
qualities, intellectual stimulation and individual consideration (Arvonen & Pettersson, 2002;
Arvonen, 1995). Thus, research findings concerning transformational leadership should be
transferable to the CPE model of leadership. Several studies and meta-analyses have linked
transformational leadership to several leadership criteria, like subordinate satisfaction with leader,
subordinate motivation, leader effectiveness and organisational effectiveness (Carter, Armenakis,
Feild, & Mossholder, 2013; Detert & Burris, 2007; Erkutlu, 2008; Herold, Fedor, Caldwell, & Liu,
2008; Judge & Piccolo, 2004). Lowe and colleagues (1996) found that various components of
transformational leadership (corresponding to parts of the change and employee dimensions of
CPE) were related to leadership effectiveness criteria. These relationships were stronger when the
criteria involved subjective evaluations from subordinates rather than objective measures of
performance.
Predictors of constructive leadership behaviour: The role of personality traits. Hogan and
Kaiser (2005) called the study of leadership one of the most important topics in the human sciences,
and research have yielded a substantial body of text relating to the correlates, antecedents, theories
and models of leadership (cf. Northouse, 2013). Among these theories is the trait theory of
leadership, which states that leadership qualities depend upon personal qualities (Fleenor, 2006;
Judge, Bono, et al., 2002). One of the early studies of personality and leadership was published by
Terman (1904), while Cowley (1928) commented that “the approach to the study of leadership has
usually been and perhaps must always be through the study of traits” (p.144). Stogdill
(1948) examined studies published during the first half of the century and found several traits and
skills related to leadership. Despite this, he concluded that "the findings suggest that leadership is
not a matter of passive status, or of the mere possession of some combination of traits" (Stogdill,
1948, p. 66). Other researchers, like Mann (1959), would later echo Stogdill's conclusion. Lord, de
Vader, and Alliger (1986) noted the impact of these studies on the research field, in causing a
general decrease in popularity of trait theories of leadership. During this time, other theories and
models would gain popularity over the trait theory (cf. Greenleaf, 1970; Hersey & Blanchard, 1969;
House, 1969). However, the trait theory regained popularity in the 1980s. Lord and colleagues
(1986) reviewed Mann's earlier studies, and re-interpreted his findings in support of the trait theory.
Their own meta-analysis also supported the idea of traits as predictors of leadership. At this time,
the Five-Factor Model was increasing in popularity and afforded a validated, easy and
comprehensive method for researchers to examine personality, re-popularising the trait theory of
leadership (Fleenor, 2006; Tett & Christiansen, 2007). It received further support when Judge,
13. 8 THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS
Bono, Ilies and Gerhardt (2002) published a comprehensive meta-analysis that linked the FFM traits
and leadership. Judge and Zapata (2015) recently published a meta-analysis in which they argue for
an interactionist model of personality and job performance, in which the situation exerts both
general and specific effects on the relationship between personality and job performance. They
showed that situation strength—the degree to which there are situational constraints in the
environment—predicted the validity of the relationship between the big five traits and performance.
In environments with less constraint and more autonomy, the effect of traits on performance
increased. Some traits were more activated in specific contexts.
Personality traits. The study of personality traits has long traditions in social research. It has
resulted in several well-documented and validated personality taxonomies. One of them is the FFM.
The Five-Factor Model and the NEO inventories. The FFM is a representation of personality
as five separate domains that has been studied and validated extensively over many years (De Fruyt,
McCrae, Szirmák, & Nagy, 2004; Digman, 1990). The domains are neuroticism, extraversion,
openness to experience, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. The NEO PI-R/3 (McCrae & Costa,
2010) is one of the most popular personality inventories designed to measure the FFM domains
(Funder, 2001). It further separates the five domains into six facets each, though there also exists a
short version (NEO-FFI) that only measures the domains. This hierarchical model of the NEO-
inventories with six sub-facets for each domain has demonstrated a biological basis (Jang, McCrae,
Angleitner, Riemann, & Livesley, 1998). Recently, there has also been proposed a three-level 6-2-1
hierarchical model of personality, where each of the domains consist of two facets, which again are
composed of the six NEO sub-facets (DeYoung, Quilty, & Peterson, 2007; Judge, Rodell, Klinger,
Simon, & Crawford, 2013). Although the NEO inventories have received criticism (cf. Block, 2010;
Boyle, 2008; Eysenck, 1992), they have been studied extensively (McCrae & Costa, 2010). The
NEO inventories, or other instruments based on the FFM have often been used to study the
relationship between personality traits and leadership, meaning that a benefit of using it to measure
personality allows for a larger basis of comparison. As mentioned above, the domains of the NEO
inventories consist of sub-facets. The question of whether to measure personality at the domain or
facet level has been addressed by the bandwidth-fidelity dilemma.
The bandwidth–fidelity dilemma. The bandwidth-fidelity dilemma concerns whether a lower
order (narrower) or higher order (broader) construct best predicts a criterion. Bandwidth refers to
the breadth of information, whereas fidelity refers to the reliability of the information. Cronbach
and Gleser (1965) formulated this as a “compromise between variety of information (bandwidth)
and thoroughness of testing to obtain more certain information (fidelity)” (p. 100). Broader
14. THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS 9
coverage sacrifices reliability for the constructs measuring that domain coverage (Judge et al.,
2013). It should be noted that not all researchers agree that fidelity has to be sacrificed to increase
bandwidth—some have argued that the two are not necessarily dependent (Ones & Viswesvaran,
1996). Regardless of this, the broader the construct, the more items are needed to reliably measure
it, compared to more narrower constructs (Cortina, 1993). One of the clearest examples of this
comes from Chapman (2007):
If one uses 20 items to measure five specific constructs (e.g., 4 items for each construct), the
reliability (fidelity) of each of those 4-item scales will be less than if all 20 items were expended
to measure the construct of interest. Similarly, all other conditions being equal, the reliability of
the broadband, factorially complex, 20-item composite should also be less than that of a
narrowband, unifactorial, 20-item construct. (p. 2)
In personality tests, however, the broader bandwidth factor (domain) has a higher reliability than
the narrower facets because the factor is actually a composite of several highly intercorrelated
facets, and also because the factor contains more items than any of its composite facets (Chapman,
2007; Ones & Viswesvaran, 1996). Extraversion can be conceptualised as a single, broad domain,
or as consisting of several narrower facets, such as in the NEO inventories. In terms of the
bandwidth-fidelity dilemma, the former would yield better reliability while the latter would offer
more information of the relationship one seeks. It is important to note that increased reliability only
indicate increased precision in measurement. Since facet scores on personality are summarised to
compromise factor score, the factor scores may mask differences at the level of individual traits.
Consider two people, one of which has very high scores on activity, assertiveness, and excitement
seeking and very low scores on gregariousness, positive emotions, and warmth, while the other has
middle scores for all six facets. Despite having very different personalities, they would appear
similar if only the domain score of extraversion was considered (Saucier & Ostendorf, 1999). In
spite of increased reliability, broader traits do not necessarily show better predictive power than
narrower traits despite increased reliability (Ashton, 1998; Chapman, 2007). Though one facet of
the domain is related to a criterion, this may be overshadowed by the other facets that are not
related to the criterion but still constitute the domain. The domain itself therefore shows less
predictive power than the individual facets. Several studies have demonstrated this (Ashton, 1998;
Chapman, 2007; Weiss & Costa, 2005). These aspects of the bandwidth-fidelity dilemma illustrate
the need to examine whether the facets of personality are related to leadership, in addition to
explore the level of the domain.
Among the personality traits, extraversion has most frequently been found to be related to
various leadership criteria (C. Anderson et al., 2001; C. Anderson & Kilduff, 2009; Barrick et al.,
15. 10 THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS
2001; Barry & Stewart, 1997; Hogan et al., 1994; Judge, Bono, et al., 2002; Nicholson, 1998;
Riggio et al., 2003; Silverthorne, 2001; Son Hing, Bobocel, Zanna, & McBride, 2007; Watson &
Clark, 1997). Adjectives associated with extraverts are often included in job listings, which have
attracted attention in the media (Moberg, 2013; Skorstad, 2013). Therefore, I examine the trait of
extraversion more closely in the following section.
The relationship between extraversion and leadership. In the FFM and NEO inventories,
personality traits are measured along a continuum, as opposed to the type dichotomy of other
personality instruments like the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (Myers, McCaulley, Quenk, &
Hammer, 1998). Consequently, people are not either one type or the other, but rather they are
extraverted to a certain degree. For ease of flow, and in keeping with traditions, I will use the
description extravert for individuals scoring high on the extraversion scale, and introvert for
individuals with a low score. In reality, most people will be ambiverts, meaning that they fall
somewhere in the middle of the extraversion scale.
Extraversion at the domain level. Bono and Judge (2004) cites extraversion as the strongest and
clearest correlate of transformational leadership. This is not unexpected, as several of the defining
criteria of the transformational leader matches the behaviours of extraverts: the optimistic and
enthusiastic nature of extraverts help them emerge as group leaders (Judge, Bono, et al., 2002;
Judge, Erez, Bono, & Thoresen, 2002; Kickul & Neuman, 2000; Riggio et al., 2003; Taggar et al.,
1999) and to be perceived as leaderlike (Hogan et al., 1994). Extraversion has been significantly
related to transformational leadership (Bono & Judge, 2004; D’Alessio, 2008; Lim & Ployhart,
2004) at both maximum and typical performance (Ployhart, Lim, & Chan, 2001) and to charismatic,
ethical and supportive leadership (de Vries, 2012). It has also been related to job performance for
managers (Barrick et al., 2001; Barrick & Mount, 1991; Hurtz & Donovan, 2000; Judge, Bono, et
al., 2002). Extraverted followers were also more likely to perceive transformational leadership in
leaders and to rate them more positively, compared to ratings from introverted followers (Felfe &
Schyns, 2006), indicating that the personality of subordinates may affect how their leaders are
perceived. Both extraverts and introverts have been shown to prefer extraverted leaders rather than
introverted leaders (Hendrick & Brown, 1971). In a cross-cultural study, Silverthorne (2001) found
that effective leaders across the U.S., Taiwan, and Thailand were more extraverted than ineffective
leaders.
Extraversion has been linked to a number of leadership roles (Watson & Clark, 1997). In one
study, extraversion was even related to interpersonal leadership skills to a greater degree than
cognitive ability (Oostrom, Born, Serlie, & van der Molen, 2011). A Norwegian study found that the
16. THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS 11
ideal leadership profile was the open and relations-oriented leader (Sandal, 2002), characterised by
being extraverted, possessing good social skill, being change-oriented and being low in anxiety
(Einarsen et al., 2002). Kornør and Nordvik (2004) found that extraversion was significantly
correlated with self-rated change and employee leadership behaviour, as well as a total score of
CPE leadership. When controlling for the other traits, however, it was only a significant predictor of
production and total CPE leadership behaviour. Using factor analysis, they concluded that
extraversion, alongside openness and neuroticism comprised a factor with the change dimension of
leadership. In their study, however, they relied on self-rated measurements of leadership. As
mentioned previously there are potential issues related to self-ratings of leadership, and it is
therefore of interest to see if the results from that study can be replicated.
On the other hand, Rothmann and Coetzer (2003) reported that extraversion did not predict
management performance, though it was significantly related to job performance and creativity.
Bergman and colleagues (2014) found the traits of openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness
were more important than extraversion in explaining the three CPE leadership styles. Rubin, Munz,
and Bommer (2005) found that extraversion did not predict transformational leadership behaviour,
but rather that it moderated the relationship between transformational leadership behaviour and
emotional recognition. Judge and Zapata (2015) found that extraversion was more strongly related
to job performance in competitive environments, and those that required social skills or dealing
with angry people. Atamanik (2013) found that introverted leaders in competitive environments
experienced less perceived organisational support and work engagement than extraverted leaders. In
supportive environments, however, there were no differences in perceived organisational support or
work engagement reported by the two types of leaders. Contrary to Judge and Zapata's (2015)
findings, Atamanik (2013) found no differences among the groups concerning leader effectiveness,
i.e. introverts and extraverts in both competitive and supportive environments performed equally
well. Grant and colleagues (2011) found that extraverted leaders were superior to introverted
leaders, but only when employees were not proactive. Proactive employees performed better under
an introverted leader who was more likely to listen to their suggestions and accept them. The
proactivity of employees thereby moderated the effect of extraversion on leadership. Andersen
(2006) concluded after a literature review that the research on leadership and personality was too
inconsistent and often showed small effects. Despite these findings, however, several large-scale
meta-analyses have concluded that extraversion is linked to leadership (Barrick et al., 2001; Barrick
& Mount, 1991; Bono & Judge, 2004; DeRue et al., 2011; Hurtz & Donovan, 2000; Judge, Bono, et
al., 2002).
Extraversion at the facet level. The extraversion domain consists of six facets: activity,
17. 12 THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS
assertiveness, excitement seeking, gregariousness, positive emotions and warmth (Costa & McCrae,
1995). Research has indicated that narrow traits are equal or even superior to broad traits in
predicting job performance and leadership (Judge, Bono, et al., 2002; Rothstein & Goffin, 2006). In
this section, I explore the possible relationships between facets of extraversion and leadership.
Extraverts tend to seek social situations, be dominant and assertive, and be outgoing and talkative
(Ashton, Lee, & Paunonen, 2002; Riggio et al., 2003), as well as experience positive affectivity and
need for excitement (Costa & McCrae, 1995), need for status, and for achievement (C. Anderson et
al., 2001; Barrick, Stewart, & Piotrowski, 2002). By contrast, introverts are marked by a lack of
these characteristics (McCrae & Costa, 2010), and they tend to avoid competitive environments
which they find to decrease their well-being (Atamanik, 2013; Ryckman, Thornton, Gold, &
Collier, 2011).
Judge and colleagues (2002) found that the facets of sociability and dominance predicted
leadership better than the overall measure of extraversion did—though they did not include other
extraversion facets in their analysis. Kornør and Nordvik (2004) showed that the facets were
significantly correlated with several aspects of self-rated CPE leadership behaviour. Vickers
(1995) argued that assertiveness and activity were positively related to leadership and that
sociability was negatively related to advancement. He interpreted this alongside previous studies to
indicate that the exhibitionistic elements of extraversion, exemplified by being noisy and showing
off, were detrimental to leadership. Nicholson (1998) found that leaders were more active than the
general population, but that they were not more excitement seeking. The Hogan Development
Survey (Hogan & Hogan, 2001) includes excitability as one of the traits associated with destructive
leadership. Gough (1990) found that sociability and dominance, two of the central facets of
extraversion, were linked to both peer and self ratings of leadership. There is some evidence that
charisma, a part of extraversion and transformational leadership, is linked to compensation
packages (salaries, bonuses, etc.) but not to organisational performance (Agle et al., 2006; Tosi et
al., 2004). Rubin and colleagues (2005) found that positive affectivity was related to
transformational leadership. In a study of U.S. presidents, positive emotions and activity were
shown to be related to presidential greatness, though assertiveness was the strongest predictor
(Rubenzer, Faschingbauer, & Ones, 2000).
Dominance/assertiveness and sociability/gregariousness. High scores on assertiveness is
associated with dominant, forceful and socially ascendant behaviour, and speaking without
reservation (McCrae & Costa, 2010). Extraverts prefer to gain influence through dominance of
others rather than being receptive to their ideas (Peterson, Smith, Martorana, & Owens, 2003).
Assertiveness/dominance has been linked to leadership (Judge, Bono, et al., 2002; Nicholson, 1998;
18. THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS 13
Vickers, 1995) and to leadership emergence (McCrae & Costa, 2010; Son Hing et al., 2007).
Nicholson (1998) concluded that assertiveness was one of the strongest requirements for leaders.
Dominance has been related to how leaders rate their own behaviour and effectiveness (Brutus et
al., 1999). Bendersky and Shah (2013) showed that extraverts were initially attributed high status
and expectations as a results of their dominance and assertiveness, at the start of a team project,
relating it to leadership emergence. As extraverts fail to live up to these expectations, their status
were eventually reduced. Driskell and colleagues (2006) suggested that dominance might be related
to leadership through the exertion of power and control, though they also noted the need to suppress
the tendency for social dominance in order to be a good team player. In so far as leadership
concerns a mutual effort between leaders and subordinates—and if one considers the leader as part
of the team—this can indicate that leaders should not be too high in assertiveness. This was
supported by Ames and Flynn (2007), who found negative outcomes for leadership effectiveness
when leaders scored both high and low on assertiveness, and that for ideal effectiveness, leaders
should have an average score on assertiveness. Excessive assertiveness had adverse social
outcomes, while insufficient assertiveness had adverse instrumental outcomes (Ames & Flynn,
2007; Ames, 2008). A study by Grant (2013) found that the relationship between sales performance
for salespeople and extraversion was an inverted U. This might be caused by assertiveness at high
levels of extraversion. While these results are not directly applicable to leadership, extraversion has
often been found to be positively related to job performance for sales people (Barrick et al., 2001;
Barrick & Mount, 1991; Hurtz & Donovan, 2000), and they demonstrate that assertiveness may
have adverse effects.
Sociability concerns the preference for social stimulation: High scorers enjoy and seek out the
company of other people, whereas low scorers are less inclined to such behaviour (McCrae &
Costa, 2010). Sociability has been offered as the core facet of extraversion (McCrae & Costa, 1987;
Wilt & Revelle, 2008), and though this claim has been contested (cf. Ashton et al., 2002;
Cunningham, 1988; Lucas, Diener, Grob, Suh, & Shao, 2000; Watson & Clark, 1997), the
perception of an extravert as a sociable and outgoing person seems firmly rooted in the minds of
laypeople. There also seems to be a general perception of the leader as being sociable and outgoing
(Ones & Dilchert, 2009; Zaccaro et al., 2004). Although sociable leaders may be perceived as
friendly and caring to subordinates, they may also be disposed to spend time talking rather than
working. Vickers (1995) therefore found that sociability was negatively related to leadership.
Contrary to this, in the meta-analysis by Judge et al. (2002) it was found to be positively related to
leadership. Riggio and colleagues (2003) found that social skills were related to leadership
effectiveness perceived by subordinates, but not to other measures of effectiveness. Warmth
19. 14 THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS
(interest in and friendliness towards others), and gregariousness (preference for the company of
others) can be thought to affect the compassion and consideration a leader shows her subordinates,
thus being related to the employee dimension of leadership which contains similar aspects
(Arvonen, 2002). Indeed, friendliness has been found to be related to perceptions of leadership
(Malloy & Janowski, 1992), and warmth was the strongest predictor of self-rated employee and
total CPE in Kornør and Nordvik's (2004) study. In summary, assertiveness and gregariousness are
the facets that most often are associated with leadership in the literature. Depending on how
sociability is operationalised, warmth and positive emotions may also be included. Activity has
referenced as an antecedent of leadership occasionally, while excitement seeking has been related to
destructive leadership.
Summary and Research Questions
Extraversion has consistently been related to various leadership criteria. Despite calls for the
need to examine the narrower facets of personality (Judge et al., 2013), I was not able to find any
studies linking the facets of extraversion to the three leadership behaviour dimensions of CPE—
with the exception of Kornør and Nordvik (2004), though they focus on the domain scores. The
relationship between the domain and facets of extraversion and the CPE styles are therefore
investigated in this study. From what is already known about leadership and extraversion, some
facets seem more likely to show stronger relationships with various leadership domains than others.
Assertiveness is often offered as an explanation to the leadership link. However, there are also
studies that show its detrimental effect. As such, it is expected to predict some of the leadership
dimensions. Gregariousness and warmth seem to overlap with the dimension of employee, as such it
is expected to predict it. As extraversion in general is usually positively related to leadership, it is of
interest to see if this applies to all of its facets as well. Some studies have documented negative
effects of extraversion, which potentially could manifest themselves at the facet level. Leadership
behaviour is reported by both leaders and their subordinates. It is of interest to compare the two
relationships and the structure of the instrument across sources. While previous studies have
employed both subordinate and self-ratings, none have used both sources and compared the
structure of the instrument. Therefore, the structure of the subordinate rated and self-rated CPE
instruments are examined. Then, the factor structure of the CPE dimension and the personality traits
are analysed, to attempt to replicate the dimensions found by Kornør and Nordvik (2004).
Subsequently, the CPE dimensions are regressed on the personality traits and the facets of
extraversion, to study their relationship.
20. THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS 15
Method
Sample and procedure
The sample consisted of managers and leaders in various locations and enterprises in Norway.
The recruitment strategy used was snowball sampling (Meltzoff, 1998), in which I reached out to
acquaintances and asked them to help recruit leaders. Potential respondents were contacted either
through social media or via e-mail, with a request to participate. If they agreed, they then received
an e-mail with an explanation of the purpose of the study, instructions for how to participate, and a
link to the online survey. The e-mail also contained instructions for their subordinates, and a link to
special survey designed for them. Leaders who participated were asked to forward the e-mail to all
their subordinates, with instructions that at least five had to answer. In return for their participation,
the leaders were offered the results of their personality scores along with an explanation of the Five-
Factor Model, which 89% accepted. The instructions, surveys and NEO feedback can be found in
the appendices. The recruitment phase lasted from October to December 2015. The leader survey
included the CPE instrument and the NEO inventory, while the subordinate survey included only
the CPE instrument. In the online survey, the leaders were asked to write their full name, and the
subordinates were asked to specify the name of their leader. This was done in order to match the
subordinates with their respective leader. After the matching was performed, the data was made
unidentifiable, deleting all names and data that might identify participants. This study was approved
by the NSD (Norwegian Center for Research Data).
An estimated 80 to 300 people were initially contacted. The businesses ranged across various
fields like health care, consulting, education, student organisations, and building maintenance, and
were located all over Norway. Forty-seven leaders responded to the survey, though one was
disqualified for not completing the personality inventory. Of those 46 that remained, 37 also had
one or more subordinates who completed the subordinate survey. Nineteen (41%) of the 46 leaders
were female. The average age of leaders was 41 (SD = 13) and average tenure as leader was 10
years (SD = 9). Fifteen percent had seven or fewer subordinates, 61% had 8-20 subordinates, 11%
had 21-50 subordinates and 13% had more than 50 subordinates. A total of 188 subordinates
participated, 59% were female, mean age was 38 (SD = 13). The average amount of years spent
working with a leader was 2.7 (SD = 3.2). For the leaders with responding subordinates, the mean
number of subordinates was 3.9 (SD = 2.9).
Instruments
The NEO Inventory. The extraversion domain and its facets were measured using the NEO PI-
21. 16 THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS
R (McCrae & Costa, 2010). The other four personality domains were also measured, to be able to
control for their effect on the leadership behaviours. In order to make the survey less time-
consuming and increase completion rate, the short form NEO-FFI was used for these domains. For
both of these, Norwegian translations were used. The total number of NEO items was 96 (48 from
each version of the instrument). Only the leaders were asked to fill out the NEO inventory. T-scores
for the NEO traits were calculated on the basis of a large-scale validation study on the Norwegian
population (Martinsen, Nordvik, & Østbø, 2011).
Cronbach's alpha for the scales on NEO domains and extraversion facets is presented in table 1.
Alpha values were generally high. Agreeableness had the lowest alpha of the personality domains,
at α = .69, while the other domains had alpha values well above .70. Among the extraversion facets,
most had α values above .70, with the exception of excitement seeking (α = .60) and warmth (α = .
54).
The CPE Instrument. The Change, Production, Employee Instrument was developed by
Arvonen and Ekvall and has been validated in Nordic samples (Ekvall & Arvonen, 1994; Kornør &
Nordvik, 2004; Skogstad, 1997). It is used to measure leadership behaviour across three
dimensions: change, production and employee. The three domain scores were also combined into a
total CPE score, representing the “complete manager” (Arvonen, 1995). The 15-item version of the
CPE (Arvonen & Pettersson, 2002; Ekvall & Arvonen, 1994; Sverke et al., 1999) was used. The
original instrument used other-ratings, which were adapted to self-ratings for the leadership
questionnaire. For managers whose subordinates rated them on CPE, the subordinate ratings were
aggregated, which can attenuate the standard deviations and coefficients calculated from these
scores (Scullen, 1997). This is discussed in more detail in the limitations section. Alpha values are
shown in table 1. They were acceptable, above .80 for the subordinate ratings, and above .70 for the
self-ratings.
22. THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS 17
Results
A principal component analysis (PCA) was performed on both self-rated and subordinate rated
CPE to examine the structural properties of the CPE instrument. PCA and factor analysis differs in
that the former uses the total variance instead of just the shared variance (Lilienfeld et al., 2015).
However, in order to keep with existing research, the resulting extractions will be referred to as
factors instead of the more correct components. For both analyses the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO)
measure of sampling adequacy (.64 and .88 respectively) was acceptable or better (Hutcheson &
Sofroniou, 1999, in Field, 2013). Bartlett's test of sphericity was significant (p < .001) for both
analyses. This suggested that factors may be extracted. Varimax rotation was used. For the self-
ratings this yielded a total of five factors with an eigenvalue of greater than 1 (Kaiser’s criterion, H.
F. Kaiser, 1960). However, two of these had values of approximately 1.1, only slightly above the
succeeding factor. The first three factors had eigenvalues of 4.2, 2.2, and 1.9 respectively, and
explained a total of 55.5% of the variance. Visual inspection of the scree plot indicated that the
point of inflexion was at the fourth factor, suggesting that extraction should be performed on the
three factors preceding it (Yong & Pearce, 2013). Taken together, this indicated that three factors
were to be extracted. For the subordinate ratings only three factors satisfied Kaiser's criterion of
eigenvalues above 1, they were 6.1, 2.2, and 1.7 respectively and explained a total of 66.9% of the
variance. The scree plot also indicated that three factors should be extracted. The resulting
component matrices from the two analyses are shown in table 2. Two items differed in which factor
they loaded highest on: allow my subordinates to decide and gives thoughts and plans about the
future. In the subordinate rated CPE they loaded on the employee factor, while in the self-rated CPE
they loaded on the change factor.
23. 18 THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS
Descriptive statistics and correlations between personality domains, extraversion facets and
leadership behaviour are shown in table 1, alongside Cronbach's alpha for the NEO and CPE
instruments. The table shows T-scores for the personality domains and facets, to allow for
comparisons to norms. The mean T-scores of the personality traits show how the sample differed
from the population (based on a previous study, Martinsen et al., 2011). Among the personality
domains, only extraversion seemed to match the Martinsen et al. study, with a mean T-score of 50.2.
The leaders in the current sample scored higher on openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness
and lower on neuroticism. Extraversion was the only domain that was significantly correlated with
any of the subordinate rated CPE dimension (r = .51 with change), and it was strongly related to the
self-ratings of change, employee, and a total score of CPE (r = .57, .43, and .53 respectively). There
were several significant relationships between the extraversion facets and the subordinate and self-
ratings of CPE, the strongest correlations being those between positive emotions and self-rated
employee, as well as warmth and self-rated employee (r = .55 and r = .62 respectively). Nearly all
significant correlations were positive. The exception to this was excitement seeking, which was
negatively related to subordinate rated employee (r = -.37). Intercorrelations among the three CPE
Table 2
Rotated orthogonal factor matrix of subordinate and self-ratings of CPE items
Subordinate-ratings Self-ratings
As leader I… 1 2 3 1 2 3
experiment with new ways of doing things .81 .05 .17 .80 -.28 -.04
push for growth .75 .28 .24 .75 .23 .18
offer ideas about new and different ways of doing things .82 .12 .19 .75 .21 -.06
initiate new projects .83 .18 .06 .71 .19 .06
give thoughts and plans about the future .23 .30 .59 .58 .18 .19
allow my subordinates to decide .12 .06 .81 .40 -.10 .29
am very exacting about plans being followed .00 .83 .19 .04 .78 .01
am controlling in my supervision of the work .17 .72 .06 .11 .73 -.15
make a point of following rules and principles .10 .77 .06 -.05 .71 .17
plan carefully .29 .64 .40 .23 .66 .10
give clear instructions .31 .67 .35 .13 .55 .33
am considerate .19 .22 .79 .12 .26 .83
show regard for the subordinates as individuals .23 .13 .81 .20 -.05 .80
am friendly .04 .10 .85 .24 .24 .80
rely on my subordinates .09 .03 .81 -.08 -.02 .54
Eigenvalues 6.13 2.18 1.73 4.22 2.17 1.94
Percent explained variance 40.89 14.51 11.50 28.10 14.50 12.91
24. THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS 19
dimensions were low to moderate of size, and the subordinate and self-ratings of respective CPE
dimensions were low to moderately correlated with each other.
PCA was performed on the personality domains and the self-ratings of leadership dimensions,
using Varimax rotation. To ease comparisons to earlier studies (Kornør & Nordvik, 2004), similar
methods were used. The KMO was .65, and Bartlett's test of sphericity was significant (p < .001),
both indicating that extraction could be performed. Three factors with eigenvalues above 1 were
extracted. The results are presented in table 3. The three domains of CPE loaded strongly on
separate factors. All the personality traits had high loadings on one specific factor with the
exception of neuroticism, whose strongest loadings were -.41 and -.34. Though the results were not
entirely unambiguous, they seemed to indicate that each of the three CPE dimensions constituted a
separate factor alongside some of the personality traits. Factor 1 consisted of change, extraversion
and openness. Factor 2 consisted of production, conscientiousness and (negatively related)
neuroticism. Factor 3 consisted of employee and agreeableness.
Table 3
1 2 3
Personality
Neuroticism -.18 -.41 -.34
Extraversion .73 .27 .34
Openness .72 -.51 .23
Agreeableness -.05 .15 .89
Conscientiousness .38 .71 .26
Leadership
Change .81 .36 -.09
Production .01 .84 .06
Employee .43 .07 .71
Eigenvalues 3.07 1.49 1.05
% explained variance 38.42 18.57 13.16
Rotated orthogonal factor matrix of personality
domains and self-ratings of CPE
Note. Highest loadings bolded. 70.1% of variance explained by
extracted factors.
26. THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS 21
To further explore the role of extraversion, a similar factor analysis was performed with the
facets of extraversion and self-ratings of CPE. The KMO = .72 and Bartlett's test of sphericity was
significant (p < .001). Three factors had eigenvalues above 1, which was also indicated by visual
inspection of the scree plot. Therefore three factors were extracted, shown in table 4. Again the
three dimensions of CPE loaded on separate factors. Three facets, gregariousness, assertiveness and
activity loaded highest on Factor 1 alongside change. Excitement seeking loaded highly
(negatively) on Factor 3 (-.70) with production. The results were not unanimous, as excitement
seeking had a load of more than .5 on two factors. However, it was larger for Factor 3 (-.70) than
Factor 1 (.55).
Regression analyses were performed with the three domains of CPE regressed on the five
personality traits. Additionally, a sum score of CPE, indicating total CPE, was calculated and
included as a dependent variable. A total of eight regression analyses were performed, for both
subordinate and self-ratings of CPE, and the results are displayed in table 5. The Durbin-Watson
statistic was within acceptable range (Durbin & Watson, 1951), ranging from 1.7-2.3 for the
analyses. VIF and tolerance was also within acceptable ranges. None of the models with
subordinate ratings as the dependent variables had significant F values, despite some of the
Table 4
1 2 3
Personality
Activity .68 .32 -.05
Assertiveness .74 .04 .33
Excitement Seeking .55 -.22 -.70
Gregariousness .60 .39 -.02
Positive Emotions .28 .84 -.13
Warmth .27 .85 .08
Leadership
Change .72 .23 .02
Production .38 -.02 .82
Employee .07 .82 .18
Eigenvalues 3.54 1.47 1.27
% explained variance 39.34 16.27 14.10
Rotated orthogonal factor matrix of extraversion
facets and self-ratings of CPE
Note. Highets loadings bolded. 69.7% of variance explained by
extracted factors.
27. 22 THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS
predictors having significant and large β coefficients. In contrast, all the models with self-ratings
were significant. All the models had moderate to large R2
values, ranging from .10 for subordinate
rated employee, to .52 for self-rated total CPE. Extraversion predicted subordinate and self-rated
change, subordinate rated production and subordinate rated total CPE. Openness was negatively
related to production for both ratings of production, and positively to self-rated employee.
Conscientiousness was related to self-ratings of change, production and total CPE, but not to any of
the subordinate rated CPE. Agreeableness was significant in predicting self-rated employee,
neuroticism had no significant effects.
A series of regression analyses were performed on the effect of the personality domains and
extraversion facets on CPE dimensions. To increase power, only facets that were significant in the
correlation analysis were included. The personality domains that were significant in previous
analyses and regressions models were controlled for (not listed in the table). The results are shown
in table 6. The Durbin-Watson statistic ranged from 1.7 to 2.4, which is within acceptable values.
VIF and tolerance were also within acceptable ranges for the predictors in the analyses.
Assertiveness was significantly related to subordinate rated change, production and total CPE.
Excitement seeking had a negative effect on subordinate rated employee and self-rated production.
All the models had large R2
values, though the actual correlation coefficients for the subordinate
ratings might be inflated because of the aggregated subordinate scores (Scullen, 1997).
Table 5
Standardized regression coefficients of personality domains CPE
Change Production Employee Total Change Production Employee Total
Neuroticism .17 .26 .11 .24 .07 .11 -.16 .03
Extraversion .62* .58* .11 .57* .44* .04 -.02 .24
Openness .00 -.43* .10 -.17 .15 -.31* .39* .05
Agreeableness -.05 .16 .24 .16 -.17 .09 .31* .07
Conscientiousness -.01 -.01 -.18 -.08 .31* .56*** .26 .55***
F 2.51 2.19 .66 1.64 5.76*** 5.41** 6.23*** 8.51***
df 5, 31 5, 31 5, 31 5, 31 5, 40 5, 40 5, 40 5, 40
.29 (.17) .26 (.14) .10 (-.05) .21 (.08) .42 (.35) .40 (.33) .44 (.37) .52 (.46)
Subordinate ratingsa
Self-ratingsb
R2
(adj.)
Note. *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001. a
N = 37, b
N = 46.
28. THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS 23
Table 6
Standardized regression coefficients of personality domains and extraversion facets on CPE.
Change
Activity .08 Activity .23
Assertiveness .36* Assertiveness .08
Gregariousness -.07 Gregariousness .21
Positive emotions .19 Positive emotions .00
Warmth .23
F (df) 3.75** (5, 31) F (df) 4.71** (6, 39)
.38 (.28) .42 (.33)
Production
Assertiveness .56*** Assertiveness .22
Excitement seeking -.25 Excitement seeking -.31*
F (df) 8.81** (2, 34) F (df) 10.93***
.34 (.30) .44 (.40)
Employee
Excitement seeking -.35* Gregariousness .08
Positive emotions .13 Positive emotions .14
Warmth .28 Warmth .22
F (df) 4.36* (3, 33) F (df) 6.02*** (6, 39)
.28 (.22) .48 (.40)
Total CPE
Assertiveness .28 Activity -.05
Excitement seeking .12 Assertiveness .14
Gregariousness .34 Gregariousness .17
Positive emotions .31
Warmth -.16
F (df) 5.60** (3, 33) F (df) 7.35*** (7, 38)
.34 (.28) .58 (.50)
Subordinate ratingsa
Self-ratingsb
R2
(adj.) R2
(adj.)
R2
(adj.) R2
(adj.)
R2
(adj.) R2
(adj.)
R2
(adj.) R2
(adj.)
Note. *p< .05, **p< .01, ***p< .001. a
N = 37, b
N = 46.
29. 24 THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS
Discussion
Despite the popularity of the trait theory of leadership, and evidence that narrower facets are
important in explaining job and leader performance, few studies have investigated the effects of the
NEO facets on leadership. In order to examine the effects of the personality trait extraversion and
its facets on leadership behaviour, regression and factor analyses were performed. The structure of
the CPE leadership behaviour instrument was also analysed. Here I give a short summary of the
findings, and elaborate on them in the following sections. Factor analyses of the items of CPE were
in general supportive of the original factor structure proposed by Ekvall and Arvonen (1994). The
findings of the factor analyses of the personality domains and CPE dimensions mostly follow the
structure shown in Kornør and Nordvik (2004) with extraversion loading strongly on a factor with
change, yet the picture changes when investigating the facets of extraversion. The regression
analyses further emphasised the benefit of examining the narrower facets of personality domains.
These results are discussed in terms of the existing literature. Limitations and future directions are
also discussed.
The CPE Instrument
Validation of the CPE instrument across sources. A visual inspection of the matrices for
subordinate and self-ratings (table 2) show that they more or less match earlier studies inspecting
the composition of the CPE instrument (Ekvall & Arvonen, 1994; Kornør & Nordvik, 2004). Both
self- and subordinate ratings of the instrument had one item that loaded higher on a different factor
than expected. Gives thoughts and plans about the future loaded higher on the employee factor
rather than change for subordinate ratings. Allows my subordinates to decide loaded higher on
change rather than employee for self-ratings, which was also observed in Kornør and Nordvik
(2004). Similar ambiguity has been observed concerning the item Gives thoughts and plans about
the future in a previous study (Arvonen & Pettersson, 2002), where it loaded higher on production.
Interestingly, the item Allows my subordinates to decide, which has consistently loaded on the
employee dimension for subordinate ratings of CPE (Arvonen & Ekvall, 1999; Arvonen &
Pettersson, 2002; Sverke et al., 1999), loaded on change when it was being reported by leaders. This
might indicate that leaders and subordinates perceive that item differently. The item contains both
elements of autonomy of the relationship between leader and subordinates. Leaders might interpret
giving subordinates autonomy to indicate progressive and modern leadership, and therefore
consider it “change behaviour”. Previous studies have measured CPE from more than one source
(Bergman et al., 2014; Zampieron, Spanio, Bernardi, Milan, & Buja, 2013), yet did not validate the
structure of the instrument. The current study therefore contributes to the research field in showing
30. THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS 25
support for the notion that leaders and subordinates interpret leadership behaviours similarly.
When selecting the items to include in the shorter 15-item version of CPE, Ekvall and Arvonen
(1994) chose the items with the most unambiguous factor loadings, rather than simply the items
with the highest factor loadings. The reason for this was to avoid intercorrelations among the three
dimensions of CPE. In their original study (Ekvall & Arvonen, 1994) correlation coefficients
between the three dimensions were therefore low. In later studies, however, they varied between
low and moderate/high (Sverke et al., 1999). In the current study, intercorrelations were generally
low, with the exception of subordinate ratings of change and production. Overall, the factor
structure of the CPE dimensions did not differ substantially from previous studies.
CPE: self-ratings and other-ratings. The mean scores of the CPE dimensions were generally
slightly higher than in previous studies (Arvonen & Pettersson, 2002; Arvonen, 1995; Sverke et al.,
1999), with the exceptions of a study that reported slightly higher mean values for a sample from
the private sector in Sweden (J. A. Anderson, 2010), and the U.S. sample from Sverke, Arvonen,
and Lindell (1999). An explanation for this might be the voluntary nature of the study, and that
leaders who were more confident in their own leadership behaviour were more inclined to
participate. The current sample had the highest scores on employee, followed by change, and then
production. This was true for both self and subordinate ratings. The self-ratings were generally
slightly higher than the subordinate ratings. Of interest was the degree of harmony between CPE
ratings from subordinates and the leaders themselves. Arvonen (1995) recommended future studies
discuss this. In the current study, there were moderate correlations between the different ratings of
the dimensions. Employee had the largest correlation across sources. As expected from previous
studies (Bergman et al., 2014), self-rated CPE was correlated with other-ratings from subordinates,
and the personality traits showed the strongest relationships in general with self-ratings of CPE (cf.
Alimo-Metcalfe, 1998; Bergman et al., 2014; Mount & Scullen, 2001).
The results differed depending on who did the rating, as has been observed in similar studies
using the same measures of leadership (Bergman et al., 2014). At the domain level, extraversion
was more related to subordinate ratings than self-ratings, which was reflected in lower β values in
the models with self-rated CPE as dependent variables. Conscientiousness was strongly related to
several of the self-rated CPE dimensions however. An explanation for this may be that extraversion
is a more interpersonally focused personality trait, marked by sociability and positive affectivity.
Conscientiousness, on the other hand, has a more internal orientation, characterised by orderliness,
self-discipline and deliberation (Langvik & Martinsen, 2015; McCrae & Costa, 2010). It could be
easier for subordinates to observe leaders' extraversion rather than leaders' conscientiousness. This
might explain why conscientiousness did not predict subordinate rated leadership behaviour, while
31. 26 THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS
extraversion did.
Seeing as the relationship between leadership and personality changes depending on who the
source for leadership is, a timely question is: Which rating source is most appropriate? Oh and
Berry (2009) suggested that raters at different levels of the organisation are best equipped to rate
different versions of behaviours and traits. Subordinates focus more on getting along with their
leaders, while the superiors of managers are more occupied with traits related to getting ahead, for
instance. Possibly, the leaders themselves focused on the amount of work they did, which may
explain why conscientiousness was related to self-rated CPE. Also, while extraversion is often
linked to leadership, conscientiousness is reported to be more related to general job performance
than extraversion (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Rothstein & Goffin, 2006). Though leaders are
explicitly instructed to answer in terms of their leadership capacity, they probably consider their
leadership behaviour as more of their everyday job behaviour. At least when compared to their
subordinates. Ultimately the question has no obvious answer. Rather, one has to take into
consideration the purpose of the data that is being gathered. If, for instance, you are the HR
manager that wants to improve the relationship between subordinates and their leader, it would be
beneficial to assess the subordinates' ratings of their leader's CPE.
Extraversion and Leadership Behaviour
Various studies have related extraversion to transformational leadership (Bono & Judge, 2004;
Lanaj, Johnson, & Lee, 2016), to leadership emergence (Judge, Bono, et al., 2002; Kickul &
Neuman, 2000; Ng, Ang, & Chan, 2008; Taggar et al., 1999), and to leadership effectiveness
(Barrick et al., 2001; Barrick & Mount, 1991; DeRue et al., 2011; Judge, Bono, et al., 2002).
The regression analyses of personality domains and CPE presented in table 5 shows that self-
ratings explained more variance than subordinate ratings, in line with previous studies (Bergman et
al., 2014), though this may be due to common method variance. Apparent discrepancies between the
factor analyses and regression analysis may stem from how the methods treat common variance
(Kornør & Nordvik, 2004). In this study, extraversion and openness loaded on a factor with (self-
rated) change, conscientiousness and neuroticism loaded on a factor with production, and
agreeableness loaded on a factor with employee. These results provide support for the structure
originally found in Kornør and Nordvik (2004). The only difference was that neuroticism in their
study loaded on a factor related to change behaviour. The results from the current study were further
backed up by the regression analyses that showed that extraversion strongly predicted change for
both self-ratings and subordinate ratings. However, when looking at the facets of extraversion, the
results were less unidirectional: Only three facets loaded on (self-rated) change: gregariousness,
32. THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS 27
assertiveness and activity. Warmth and positive emotions loaded on a factor with employee,
whereas excitement seeking loaded negatively on a factor with production. This was in part
supported by regression analyses: Excitement seeking was negatively related to self-rated
production, and to subordinate rated employee. Assertiveness was related to subordinate rated
change, production and total CPE.
Extraverts are more sociable and talkative than introverts (McCrae & Costa, 2010; Riggio et al.,
2003), which helps extraverted leaders present and transfer their visions top down to their
subordinates. Grant and colleagues (2011) showed that teams led by extraverts had lower
performance than teams led by introverts, in the presence of proactive subordinates. In contrast,
passive subordinates achieved greater performance while being led by extraverts. Here, being
proactive meant initiating change by themselves, while passive indicated that subordinates reacted
to others' ideas rather than initiating them themselves. In the modern work life, which is dynamic,
uncertain and unpredictable, leaders struggle to present their visions to subordinates top-down
(Griffin, Neal, & Parker, 2007). Instead, they increasingly rely on proactivity from their employees
to take the initiative for change bottom-up (LePine & Van Dyne, 1998). Extraverts are more
achievement and status seeking (C. Anderson et al., 2001; Barrick et al., 2002), and they prefer to
gain influence through dominance of others rather than being receptive to their ideas (Peterson et
al., 2003). Therefore these leaders may perceive proactivity as threats to their dominance, more so
than leaders normally would (Grant et al., 2011; Morrison & Milliken, 2000). Introverts, by
contrast, are less interested in status or power, and they are more inclined to listen rather than talk
(C. Anderson et al., 2001; Barrick et al., 2002). Extraverts are typically bold and like to be the
centre of attention (Judge et al., 2009), meaning they are less likely to solicit advice from their
employees. Assertive leaders are also verbally dominant, and may reduce communication and
performance in the rest of the team (Tost, Gino, & Larrick, 2013). For these reasons, less
extraverted leaders might be better at dealing with proactive employees, and would cause more
change in a proactive workplace indirectly. Seemingly ironically, they would elicit change by
refraining from engaging in change behaviour. Rather, they would enable their subordinates to
initiate change. As such, it is not surprising that both extraversion and assertiveness in the current
study were related to active change behaviour. Change leadership has been related to change
effectiveness (Arvonen & Pettersson, 2002), supporting the idea that extraverts are better at actively
bringing about change themselves. There is however evidence that introverts are better at passively
enabling employees to participate in change efforts.
A skewed power balance characterises the relationship between managers and subordinates, as
the former holds formal power over the latter. Popular leadership theories like the CPE model of
33. 28 THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS
leadership and transformational leadership emphasise that leaders inspire and empower their
subordinates, however, contrary to dominating and outright controlling them (Arvonen, 2002; Men
& Stacks, 2013; Yukl et al., 2002). Despite this, the current results indicate that the leader's assertive
personality influence the degree to which subordinates see them as engaging in change and
production oriented leadership behaviour. The factor analyses of leadership and personality
indicated that assertiveness alongside activity and gregariousness was related to leader rated change
behaviour, though it was not supported by the regression analyses. This seems to paint a picture of
the change-oriented leader as the traditional active and dominant manager that enjoys spending time
around people.
Friendliness has been related to leadership perceptions (Malloy & Janowski, 1992). In this
study, warmth and positive emotions loaded on a factor with employee. While none of them were
significant predictors for employee in further analyses, one could argue that warmth would be
related to employee rather than the other CPE dimensions. The contents of this facet are
interpersonal affection and friendliness (McCrae & Costa, 2010), which harmonises with the
content of the employee dimension: respect, trust, friendliness and consideration. A leader who
interacts with her subordinates in a friendly and positive manner would probably have a better
relationship to them than a cold, detached and emotionally flat leader. The regression analysis
suggests that the negative impact of excitement seeking is stronger than the effect of positive
emotions and warmth for subordinates' perception of the employee dimension. This might be a case
of “bad is stronger than good,” (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001) in that bad
events associated with excitement seeking overshadows the positive events of positive emotions and
warmth. Gregariousness, the strongest indicator of sociability, loaded on a factor with change, not
employee. This might indicate that simply engaging in social situations is not enough to gain a
positive relationship with employees, and that showing an interest and being positive is more
important.
Excitement seeking was negatively related to subordinate rated employee and self-rated
production in the regression analyses, and loaded negatively on a factor with self-rated production.
This is interesting because it was the only facet that was negatively related to any of the leadership
dimensions. Excitement seeking is related to risk-taking and risky behaviour (Horvath &
Zuckerman, 1993). It might therefore be related to poor employee relations as leaders might engage
in risky behaviours that cause them harm in some way. Excitability has been related to destructive
leadership (Hogan & Hogan, 2001), and an alternative scale for excitement seeking found that high
scores were related to aggressive behaviour (Arnett, 1994). Moreover, excitement seeking might be
detrimental to production as it may make leaders less motivated to engage in the normal day to day
34. THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS 29
maintenance. In the current study, only self-rated production was related to excitement seeking. This
might imply that leaders are aware of the detrimental effect their own personality has on their
leadership style, to a greater degree than subordinates do. Judge and Zapata (2015) found that
competitive environments moderated the relationship between extraversion and job performance.
Introverts are more likely to engage in competition avoidance (Ryckman et al., 2011), and they
report less well-being in competitive environments (Atamanik, 2013). A central part of competitive
environments is increased risk (Bentea & Anghelache, 2012), which may explain why excitement
seeking was negatively related to leadership behaviour in this study. In less competitive
environments, excitement seeking might therefore be detrimental to performance. Beauducel,
Brocke, and Leue (2006) showed that extraverts had poorer performance than introverts during
monotonous task, and also that they had to invest more effort into it. The excitement seeking
extravert might struggle to maintain her enthusiasm for the more mundane tasks and interactions
with her subordinates. Extraversion and the other facets had only positive associations with
leadership variables, which is to be expected from earlier studies which mainly reported positive
relationships. High scores on excitement seeking will contribute to a high score on the extraversion
domain, and while the latter is usually considered to benefit employees, effectiveness and the
organisation in general, the former may actually be detrimental to employee relations and
production leadership. In this case, the positive effect of the domain may mask the negative effect
of a facet. This demonstrates the benefits of studying personality at the facet level in organisations.
Implications
This study builds upon previous results (Kornør & Nordvik, 2004) by showing that analysing
personality at the facet level yields different relationships to leadership compared to analyses at the
domain level. Hence, tests of leadership behaviour that only measure personality domains, like the
NEO-FFI, may lose valuable information. Measuring personality at the facet level carries with it its
own disadvantages. It takes a longer time to complete the full 30-facet NEO inventory than the
short version. Long questionnaires carry with them increased risk of turning away potential
respondents and reduced probability that they will take the time needed to answer each question
truthfully and accurately. In relation to the bandwidth-fidelity dilemma, this study shows that by
focusing on the broad-band traits (domain), effects of the narrow-band traits (facets) may be
masked. For instance, while extraversion was unrelated to subordinate rated employee, the facet
excitement seeking was related to it. Researchers therefore have to make a decision whether to
include facets when measuring personality in relation to leadership.
One area that will benefit from this knowledge is personnel selection. A person might have a
35. 30 THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS
very high score on excitement seeking, positive emotions and warmth, and thereby have an overall
high score on extraversion. Despite not having high scores on the facets that were shown to be
relevant for change leadership (assertiveness, activity and gregariousness), employers might get the
impression that the candidate is a good fit based solely on the domain score. In terms of
extraversion, taking the results of this study alongside the results from earlier studies (Bergner et al.,
2010; Judge, Bono, et al., 2002) there is evidence that the facets explain unique variance in
leadership criteria. As such, people investigating leadership and extraversion should try to measure
facets if possible. Further studies might show that only a few of the facets are strong predictors of
leadership, and that the others are unrelated. In that case, only the strong predictors need to be
assessed, which removes unnecessary items and makes for a shorter questionnaire.
Recently, researchers have identified other facet-structures of the Five-Factor Model (DeYoung
et al., 2007; Judge et al., 2013) that include a level in between the six sub-facets in the NEO
inventories and the five domains of the FFM. These middle-facets have shown promise in
predicting job satisfaction (Judge et al., 2013) and might satisfy the bandwidth-fidelity dilemma
through a compromise. The DeYoung-facets (2007) of extraversion are enthusiasm, corresponding
to gregariousness, positive emotionality, and sociability—and assertiveness, corresponding to
activity level, social dominance, and leadership-striving. Enthusiasm and assertiveness have been
associated with contextual performance and task performance respectively (Judge et al., 2013), and
the facets were better predictors of contextual performance than the broad extraversion trait. Future
studies may examine the relationships between extraversion and leadership at the three levels. If the
DeYoung-facets are more valid predictors than domain-level extraversion, and if they can be
measured by fewer items than the lower-level NEO-facets, a compromise between questionnaire
length and narrowness may be reached. Alternatively, there is also evidence that the short version
NEO-FFI has a hierarchical structure of lower-order facets (Chapman, 2007; Saucier, 1998). If these
facets are shown to be valid predictors of leadership, they would offer an opportunity to measure
narrower personality traits with the short form NEO inventory.
Limitations
There are some limitations associated with this study. First, though a true random sample is
difficult to achieve in studies of specific groups like this, there are some issues related to snowball
sampling (Meltzoff, 1998). The participants were all related to me through direct or indirect
contacts, and participation hinged on individual willingness. Nevertheless, the design fits a
preliminary study like this. Secondly, the low number of leaders participating implies that the
results from the factor analyses including leader reported variables do not follow recommendations
36. THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS 31
for at least 200 observations for factor analysis (Field, 2013; Yong & Pearce, 2013). The number of
subordinates participating approached 200, so those statistics are more reliable. The low number of
leaders participating also limits the statistical power of the analyses, and it prevents non-linear
terms from being analysed (Aiken & West, 1991; Cohen, 1992).
Thirdly, individual subordinate scores were aggregated to form a composite mean score for each
leader. There are methodological issues related to his, as described by Scullen (1997), due to
attenuation of standard deviations. Consequently the subordinate ratings have higher reliabilities
and stronger relationships to outcome variables. To examine the effect of the single-aggregate
approach, separate analyses were performed on a dataset in which individual scores of the
subordinates were used, with each leader's individual scores appearing once for each subordinate.
These analyses showed roughly the same pattern of relationships, though the coefficients were
weaker. The standard deviations of the single-aggregate approach were only slightly smaller than
for the individual subordinate scores. For these reasons, the analyses based on the original single-
aggregate approach were used. Readers should bear in mind that actual coefficients for the
relationships involving the aggregated subordinate rated leadership behaviour might be lower.
Conclusion
The CPE instrument was validated for both subordinate and self-ratings, and was found to show
almost the same structure as in previous studies. There was some support for the notion that leaders
and subordinates interpreted a few of the items differently. Despite this, the CPE instrument seems
to consistently measure three distinct dimensions of leadership behaviour, across both leader and
subordinate ratings. Due to the limitations of the study, the results must be considered as
preliminary. Nevertheless, the findings presented support recent studies that emphasise the
importance of narrower facets. Extraversion was related to subordinate perceptions of leadership
behaviours to a greater degree than to leaders' self-perceptions. Though most facets were positively
related to leadership behaviours, excitement seeking showed a pattern of negative relations that
indicated that low-scorers might show more leadership behaviours. This has important implications
for personality research, as it has usually been shown that extraversion is positively related to
leadership variables. In closing, this study indicates that leaders and subordinates interpret the CPE
instrument similarly, hence indicating that leader and subordinate ratings may be compared to each
other, and supports 360-degree assessments using the instrument. Furthermore, the results
demonstrates the value of analysing personality traits at the facet level in relation to leadership, as
this may reveal patterns invisible at the domain level.
37. 32 THE DIFFERING EFFECTS OF THE EXTRAVERSION FACETS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS
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