Case 2.1, Question 2: In what ways is the trait approach helpful in this type of selection?
The trait approach to leadership discussed in Northouse (2022) can be very useful in choosing the new Director of Research at Great Lakes Foods (GLF). The theory emphasizes identifying personality traits that make an individual an effective leader. Using this methodology, Sandra Coke can systematically compare the attributes of the three candidates.
Alexa Smith is a candidate who is creative, persistent, and has been with the company for many years. The candidate’s profile indicates that she has determination and problem-solving skills. She finishes the projects she starts, showing a high level of commitment, which is super important in this position.
Kelsey Metts has been with the company for less time compared to the other candidates, but showed high performance. She showed herself to be a very intelligent candidate and a very sociable person. Her MBA from Harvard is a great differentiator. Her skills show that she can foster collaboration and innovation for the team. Her resume can generate self-confidence.
Thomas Santiago is an honest and upright man. He has a strong commitment to the company’s mission. He is a strategist and aligns himself with GLF’s values. Today, a sense of ethics and responsibility are highly valued within companies, and this can be your differentiator.
What can help Sandra: Northouse’s book Leadership (2022) shows that Zaccaro, Green, Dubrow, and Kolze (2018) found five Major Leadership Traits: intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity, and sociability. Ihwanudin’s work explains more about the five traits (Ihwanudin et al., 2024). Another methodology is the Big Five (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness). Northouse (2022) also shows that Peterson and Seligman (2004) developed an inventory of character strengths called the Values In Action (VIA) Classification. Sandra can use specialized HR services such as www.viacharacter.org to create candidate profiles and make a choice based on what is most important to the company at the time when making this selection.
Case 2.1, Question 3: In what ways are the weaknesses of the trait approach highlighted in this case?
Candidate Alexa Smith is known for being creative and persistent, but these qualities may not be what she needs to do in an environment where she needs to lead more people in a position where there is more pressure to achieve results. Kelsey Metts is very intelligent and sociable, but what would she be like in practice? Santiago is committed to the integrity and values of the company, but how would he resolve a potential conflict as a leader in this position?
The trait approach offers some valuable insights, but it is a method with limitations. One of the weaknesses of the trait approach is that it does not provide a basis for the context in which leadership occurs. Sandra is under pressure, as it is a department that can affect the long-term results of the company. The trait approach does not consider how the candidates’ traits will align with the specific challenges at that moment in the company. In Northouse (2022) there is the following example: “leaders with greater openness to experience may thrive in the innovative, energetic environment of a high-technology start-up company, but once that company is established and running on a routine, they may begin to feel stagnant, negatively affecting their performance.” The author also shows that it is necessary to analyze the relationship with the members, team characteristics and the organizational culture. Angelini’s work showed the importance of taking care with traits tests, as they are related to burnout (Angelini et al., 2023).
A company is dynamic, the trait approach is weak to perceive this requirement, as it focuses too much on the individual and does not consider the dynamism and relational aspects of leadership. It is not enough to just have a trait; it is also necessary to understand how this trait is interpreted in the context with other people on the team.
Case 2.2, Question 1: Based on ideas described in the trait approach, do you think Pat is looking for the right characteristics in the people he hires?
According to the trait approach theory, yes, the qualities that Pat is looking for are desirable, which are: strong interpersonal skills, be confident, poise, initiative, be ethical. In addition to the technical part that he is looking for, which is to be analytical, have experience with computers.
Even though he is looking for all these traits, there is something wrong, there is a misalignment of what he is looking for from Management. If everything were right, there would be no complaints. Maybe when a person goes to work at the bank, his expectations are filtered by Pat’s vision, but the teams may have another interpretation of what a credit analyst does.
The most likely scenario is for the Human Resources teams and the Managements to sit down and talk in a meeting and decide what profile of candidate the company is looking for at that moment. The team is missing “openness” and “extraversion” internally from the Big Five theory (Northouse, 2022) for decision-making, as it seems like a communication problem. As shown by the work of Satriyanto & Wardani (2024), effective communication minimizing misunderstandings.
Case 2.2, Question 2: Could it be that the retention problem raised by upper management is unrelated to Pat’s recruitment criteria?
This is a very delicate question that cannot be answered based on intuition and guesswork. One skill that can be put into practice to address this issue is emotional intelligence. According to Northouse (2022): “Shankman and Allen (2015) developed a practice-oriented model of emotionally intelligent leadership, which suggests that leaders must be conscious of three fundamental facets of leadership: context, self, and others.” Emotional intelligence must be used to analyze the context in terms of data and to make a rational analysis to evaluate these numbers. Based on market data, is this 25% job dropout rate a lot, a little, or about average? Can someone from the company analyze other banks in the sector, or the company’s history before Pat took office? The generational issue must also be analyzed. Are these new graduating seniors less resilient and give up more easily? I believe it is interesting to collect feedback and find out why these employees are leaving. Perhaps it is an internal problem, or some market factor. Perhaps these new employees find a higher salary at another bank, for example. This brings us back to the problem of communication. Does the company not know why these employees are leaving? Hakanen et al. (2024) showed that feedback is one of the most important drivers of work engagement.
Therefore, to answer this question, we need data on what would be an ideal and realistic retention and feedback from those who are leaving, to know the impact of Pat’s choice or whether the problem is something else, such as salary frustration or career advancement, for example.
Case 2.2, Question 3: If you were Pat, would you change your approach to recruiting?
Yes, I would change the selection method, because it focuses too much on a specific group, which ends up creating a pattern that may no longer be sustainable. If it has been doing this for 10 years, it is because it has produced results, but as we have seen, management is putting pressure on it, as the dropout rate has possibly increased a lot in recent times. Northouse (2022) shows that “Zaccaro (2002) defined social intelligence as having such capacities as social awareness, social acumen, self-monitoring, and the ability to select and enact the best response given the contingencies of the situation and social environment”. In other words, it is necessary to use social intelligence, the “self-monitoring” ability and realize that it is necessary to go down other paths, because the contingencies of the environment have changed.
Perhaps graduating seniors are not as interested in working as credit analysts as before, perhaps their desire for employability has changed. Perhaps their new dream is to work in a technology company and at the first opportunity, they leave the banking sector.
The first thing I would do would be to ask the data analytics sector or a company specialized in this to provide me with a market report to define the target audience that is engaged and interested in the role. The article by Adesina et al. (2024) shows that the use of advanced analytics generates “efficiency gains and productivity improvements to cost reductions and enhanced decision-making.” Perhaps the person who really wants the position is someone who is in career transition, or who has more experience in the market. I believe it is interesting to seek more diversity. In the article by Souza (2024), showing a relationship between diversity and productivity in Brazil, it shows that: “Overall, the evidence suggests that workplace diversity, when managed effectively, can serve as a catalyst for increased productivity.”
In a company, it is necessary to align the expectations of candidates with the sector in which they will work, a cultural fit. What are the traits that Management and immediate leaders are looking for? It is time for the company to reorganize; past methods are probably no longer working.
References
Adesina, A. A., Iyelolu, T. V., & Paul, P. O. (2024). Optimizing business processes with advanced analytics: techniques for efficiency and productivity improvement. World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews, 22(3), 1917-1926. https://wjarr.com/sites/default/files/WJARR-2024-1960.pdf
Angelini, G. (2023). Big five model personality traits and job burnout: a systematic literature review. BMC psychology, 11(1), 49. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s40359-023-01056-y.pdf
Hakanen, J. J., Bakker, A. B., & Turunen, J. (2024). The relative importance of various job resources for work engagement: A concurrent and follow-up dominance analysis. BRQ Business Research Quarterly, 27(3), 227-243. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/23409444211012419
Ihwanudin, M., Hadi, S., & Murti, R. H. (2024, February). Understanding Student Leadership Skills for Multidisciplinary Competencies in Vocational Education and Training. In 5th Vocational Education International Conference (VEIC-5 2023) (pp. 1035-1040). Atlantis Press. https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-198-2_145
Northouse, Peter G. (2022). Chapter 2: Trait Approach. In Leadership: Theory and practice (9th ed., p. 27–55). SAGE.
Satriyanto, M. D., & Wardani, R. (2024). Determinants of Occupational Stress in Health Services: Analysis of Communication Skills and Work Units (A Literature Review). International Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary, 3(2), 284-291. https://greenpub.org/IJAM/article/view/606/443
Souza, A. (2024). Relationship between Workplace Diversity and Employee Productivity in Brazil. European Journal of Human Resource, 8(2), 23-33. https://ajpojournals.org/journals/index.php/EJH/article/view/2093/2577
