Browsing by Author "Simelius, Saana"

Leadership emergence and successful leadership are caused by a large group of individual characteristics and abilities, such as personality traits, gender, previous life experiences and cognitive abilities. According to previous studies, these individual qualities are associated with leadership outcomes via leadership motivation and leadership styles, which are also connected to each other. Cognitive ability is known to be connected to leadership outcomes; however, the mechanism of action has been left unclear by previous studies. In this study, the association of cognitive ability with leadership motivation and leadership styles were examined, while using the link between gender and leadership motivation and styles as a comparison point. Additionally, to establish the Model of Leadership Background Factors, connection between leadership motivation and leadership styles were examined. Data (n=603) was collected from Finnish personal assessment context where cognitive ability was measured with matrices testing, and leadership motivation and styles were assessed through self-rating questionnaires. Cognitive ability was not associated to either leadership motivation or leadership styles. Only small effects between coaching leadership style and lack of inspirational leadership were found, and they are likely to be explained by competitive people acquiring better than average results from the cognitive ability testing battery. On the other hand, gender made a difference in leadership motivation by women feeling less motivated to lead team’s actions and bigger picture of the business. Gender didn’t have a notable effect on leadership style apart from women scoring a bit higher on collaborative and responsibility sharing leadership. Finally, association between leadership motivation and leadership styles were found; higher leadership motivation tended to associate with strong, demanding leadership and lower motivation with collaborative and non-independent leadership. Knowledge of background factors in leadership outcomes enables appropriate assessment, selection and training of leaders, and this study already suggests that the Model of Leadership Background Factors might be useful in Finnish working life as well. This study supports leadership concepts as complex phenomena which need to be examined carefully also when it comes to challenging topics such as intelligence and gender.