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Personal Characteristics of Good Leaders

By Russell Jay Hendel

The Stepping Stone, March 2025

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The Problem

The problem with writing an article on the personal characteristics of good leaders is the overwhelming amount of literature, advice and research on the topic. An attempt to find a consensus seems daunting and elusive.

First, a simple Google search using such search phrases as “effective leaders” or “essential qualities leaders” yields several dozen hits; while there is some commonality in these lists there are also significant differences. A more careful search uncovers four categories of results about good leadership: i) lists of qualities (ii) surveys,[1] (iii) theories,[2] and (iv) regulatory requirements.[3]

To further illustrate the problem of arriving at a clear consensus, consider these two lists of leadership qualities:

  • Forbes [4] lists eight core leadership traits: character, courage, charge, change agility, consistency, cheerleadership, charm, and compassion.
  • The Harvard Business Review [5] lists eight essential qualities of successful leaders: authenticity, curiosity, analytical prowess, adaptability, creativity, comfort with ambiguity, resilience, and empathy.

There doesn’t seem to be much overlap between the two lists. More importantly, the qualities listed are highly ambiguous; a person desiring to become a leader would not understand fully what these characteristics are; they also would not know how to acquire them.

The beautiful survey by U.S. News and the Harris Poll of 4000 American adults [6] is a little more promising. Close to half the respondents list the qualities trustworthy, honesty, and hardworking as most important; notice that these terms are significantly less ambiguous than the terms used by Forbes and Harvard Business Review. The survey also allows comparisons of desired traits by gender, race, ethnicity, urbanicity, income, and state.

A Suggested Approach

Careful analysis of all results exposes a fundamental logical flaw, which once clarified, can help us reach clear guidance: The results do not distinguish between what a good leader should be doing versus the personality characteristics they possess. An example presented below will clarify this distinction.

First, as background, we review the Hersey and Blanchard Situational Leadership model [7] which presents four stages in transforming a new untrained staff member into a person with mastery:

  • Directing. The manager directs all activities of the new staff member training them in the task.
  • Coaching. The manager simply coaches or reminds the staff member of key points,
  • Collaborating/participating. The manager and staff member collaborate as colleagues, the staff member having achieved a basic set of skills.
  • Delegating. The new staff member has now mastered all skills and can independently perform projects without supervision.

While situational leadership is an activity that every good leader should practice, consider the situation where two managers apply the situational leadership model, with one always getting better results. Apparently, besides knowledge of the model’s techniques, there are personality characteristics that assure higher success. The simple question addressed by this article is not what the leader should be doing with staff members, but what personality characteristics leaders should possess in order to facilitate success.

To further clarify, this article’s position is that both leadership activities done with staff—such as situational leadership—and leadership personality traits can be learned and acquired by anyone interested and willing to put in the effort. This contrasts with the viewpoint that good leaders have “charisma,”[8] a very vague term which depends more on one’s genes than one’s effort.

In summary, leadership activities refer to how a leader deals with each new staff member, whether the dealing is transactional (focused on task completion) or transformational (focused on creating a shared vision and creating a relationship with the leader’s team). Contrastively, leadership personality characteristics refer to how a leader behaves in general with everyone and is an important driver of how the leader is perceived.

The Basic Personality Characteristics

Paradoxically, this reformulation of the article’s goals immediately suggests an answer. For to ask, “Why does a new staff member trust one leader over another leader if both are performing the same leadership activities?” is also to answer that the most important personality trait of a leader is trustworthiness, in fact, the result discovered by the U.S. News and Harris Poll.

There is still some work to do; we must operationalize trustworthiness, that is, list the specific activities that enable acquisition of trustworthiness. But this is not hard to do. A person acquires trustworthiness by:

  • Being an equal opportunist: Basing relationships with staff members on their effort independent of their gender, race, ethnicity, age, or religious beliefs.
  • Being ethical: Committing oneself to ethical norms and behavior; not having rumors in one’s past.
  • Being honest: Keeping one’s word; not exaggerating on requirements of effort or the duration needed for a new staff member to acquire proficiency.
  • Being devoted/loyal: Finding satisfaction in enabling each staff member to acquire mastery (rather than finding satisfaction in one’s leadership role or the pay of the job).

Re-visiting Other Sources

The proposed basic personality traits just listed gives a framework to reexamine the varied sources brought above. For example, the U.S. News and Harris Poll lists trustworthiness, honest, and hard working as the three attributes most frequently selected by survey respondents fully consistent with our analysis above. Certain vaguer terms used in the poll such as ethical, loyal, authentic, courageous, and optimistic can easily be reinterpreted consistent with our operational meanings. For example, courageous and optimistic could refer to a manager who is open to training anyone. Furthermore, some of the attributes such as collaborative can be explained using the fundamental logical flaw described in a previous section: collaboration is not a personality characteristic of a good leader but rather a leadership activity performed with staff, and is in fact, one of the four stages of situational leadership.

Similar remarks may be made about the eight characteristics listed by Forbes. Cheerleadership and compassion, while vague and ambiguous, can be operationally translated to refer to the activities of a good leader, who compassionately works with a new staff member as they evolve from novice to master level. The Forbes charm can perhaps be operationally related to ethical, a driver of trustworthiness.

A similar treatment may be made of the eight characteristics listed by the Harvard Business Review. For example, authenticity could relate either to the manager’s honesty, consistency, or their interest in staff succeeding rather than his monetary gain. Empathy and adaptability could relate to leadership activities rather than personality characteristics. A leader who directs a new staff member is empathic with the staff member’s novice state; as the novice gains skills the manager must be adaptive, proceeding to the next of the situational-leadership stages in which the manager only coaches or possibly collaborates with the staff member.

Of importance in this analysis is the lack of commitment to the meaning of authenticity, empathy, and adaptability. It is important to have an unambiguous operational set of personality characteristics giving the manager the trust that enables good leadership activities to succeed. However, it is not critical to uniquely explain each term that appears in some article.

Regulatory Approaches

Both U.S. and biblical law are fully consistent with the basic personality traits listed above. The U.S. government, especially because of its emphasis on equal opportunity, is highly committed to a skills-based approached to leadership and training; every person interested who is willing to put in the effort must be given the opportunity to succeed in their job. The laws governing performance appraisal codify this important attitude [9].

Besides the skill-component of performance appraisal, the U.S. government emphasizes assessment of trust particularly for its senior executive staff (SES). The 360 assessments required for SES status [10] evaluate both trust and competence. These consist of a multi-dimensional evaluation along the three dimensions of customers (internal and external), staff hierarchy (including supervisors and subordinates), and peers (including oneself). The 360 assessment interviews with these diverse groups ensure that SES staff have the trust and competence needed to command respect in their jobs.

Biblical law, similarly, codifies the various basic personality traits listed above:

  • Several biblical laws require equal opportunity with a particular emphasis on not discriminating based on wealth or poverty status [11];
  • The requirements of ethical behavior are spelled out in terms of avoiding falsehood, avoiding bribes, and generally being perceived as God-fearing, which includes according to the commentators, reputational requirements of no rumors or bad name [12];
  • The requirements of judges being people of truth is explicit [13];
  • Finally, the requirement of despising cuts [14] can, in light of the discussions above, be interpreted as not pursuing a job for the sake of pay but for the sake of the people it helps. As already mentioned, the Jewish legal codes codify these biblical passages as indicated.

Conclusion

This article presents a theory of leadership personality qualities which complement the many theories of leadership activities with staff. While there is a rich literature, we attempted to reduce it to the four operationally defined unambiguous drivers of trustworthiness of leaders: equal opportunity, including perceiving all staff as capable of succeeding, ethicality, including lack of rumors and a perceived good name, truthfulness, and pursuit of activities not for pay but for the sake of the development of staff. We encourage readers to apply these principles in their own work situations.

Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries, the newsletter editors, or the respective authors’ employers.

Russell Jay Hendel, Ph.D., ASA, is the vice-chair of the Leadership and Development Section council. He is adjunct faculty III at Towson University, where he assists with the Actuarial Science and Research Methods program. He can be reached at RHendel@Towson.edu.

ENDNOTES

[1] Christopher Wolf, "The Formula for the Perfect Leader," U.S. News, Dec. 12, 2023, https://www.usnews.com/news/leaders/articles/2023-12-12/survey-americans-want-trustworthy-leaders-above-all-else.

[2] See Mahdi A. M. Algahtany and Barjoyai Barda, "Quality Attention/ Contingent Reward and Leadership Styles (Transformational / Transactional)," International Journal of Economics and Management Studies 6, no. 2 (2019): 57–81. DOI: 10.14445/23939125/IJEMS-V6I2P107 or Gary A. Yukl, Leadership in Organizations. (Upper Saddle, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002). Theories include the transactional theories, which focus on completion of tasks, and transformational theories, which focus on creating a shared vision. More generally, there are a wide a variety of theories including the contingency model, situational leadership theory, path–goal theory of leadership, cognitive resource theory, multiple-linkage model, and leadership substitute theory.

[3] See subpart B of Title 5 of the Code of Federal Regulations, accessible at http://ecfr.gov. Also see a variety of biblical requirements on good judicial leadership found at Exodus 18:21, 23:3, 6–9, Lev. 19:15, Deut. 1:13, 16–17. The biblical requirements are further codified in the Jewish legal codes: e.g., Rambam (Maimonides), Laws of Courts, Laws of Sanhedrin, Chapter 2, in Mishneh Torah Set 18 Volumes, (Brooklyn, NY: Rambam / Maimonides and Moznaim Publishers Binding: Moznaim, 1998). Both these regulatory sources are further discussed in the narrative.

[4] Cedrick Webb, "8 Core Leadership Traits," Forbes Agency Council Post, 2022, https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesagencycouncil/2022/11/10/8-core-leadership-traits/.

[5] Rebecca Knight, "8 Essential Qualities of Successful Leaders," Harvard Business Review, 2023, https://hbr.org/2023/12/8-essential-qualities-of-successful-leaders.

[6] Christopher Wolf, "The Formula for the Perfect Leader," U.S. News, Dec. 12, 2023, https://www.usnews.com/news/leaders/articles/2023-12-12/survey-americans-want-trustworthy-leaders-above-all-else.

[7] Paul Hershey, The Situational Leader, (Upper Saddle, NJ: Prentice Hall & IBD, 1986) and Ken Blanchard, Patricia Zigarmi, and Drea Zigarmi, Leadership and the One Minute Manager Updated Ed: Increasing Effectiveness Through Situational Leadership, (New York: William Morrow (A division of Harper Collins), 2013).

[8] Mahdi A. M. Algahtany and Barjoyai Barda, "Quality Attention/ Contingent Reward and Leadership Styles (Transformational / Transactional)," International Journal of Economics and Management Studies 6, no. 2 (2019): 57–81. DOI: 10.14445/23939125/IJEMS-V6I2P107.

[9] Subpart B of Title V of the Code of Federal Regulations accessible at http://ecfr.gov.

[10] Office of Personnel Management, 360-Degree Assessment, An Overview, 1997, https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/performance-management/performance-management-cycle/rating/360assessment.pdf.

[11] Ex. 23:3, 6, and Lev 19:15 explicitly prohibit judicial discrimination based on wealth status (interestingly both directions of discrimination are mentioned: not discriminating against the wealthy because of their power but also not discriminating against the poor because of feelings of compassion). The vaguer requirement that judges should be people of valor (Ex. 18:21) is re-interpreted in light of these other verses as requiring pursuing justice without discrimination.

[12] Ex 23:7–9 spell out the normal judicial ethical requirements of avoiding bribes and falsehood. More generally the vaguer God-fearing (Ex. 18:21) is re-interpreted in light of these other verses as a commitment to ethics and lack of rumors.

[13] The Bible actually coins the term people of truth corresponding to the honesty driver of trustworthiness.

[14] It is most interesting how the commentators approach the requirement of despising cuts(Ex. 18:21). Some commentators shallowly interpret this to mean avoiding bribes which simply duplicates the ethicality requirement. Other commentators interpret this literally as despising wealth possibly contradicting the requirement of judges being people of valor which some interpret as requiring independently wealthy judges since independence enables avoidance of dependency on others and the ability not to discriminate. In light of the analysis in this essay, we interpret despising cuts as meaning not pursuing a job for the sake of pay but rather for the sake of the people helped.