Brief Definitions of the Key Terms for Chapter 6
Great Man Theory: An early leadership theory that said leaders possessed fundamentally
different qualities than followers.
Personality: One’s public reputation or the unseen processes driving one’s behavior.
Trait approach: An approach for explaining human behavior based on personality traits.
Traits: A person’s characteristic day-to-day behavioral patterns.
Weak situations: Ambiguous situations that increase the likelihood of trait-based
behavior.
Strong situations: Unambiguous situations that decrease the likelihood of trait-based
behavior.
Five Factor Model (FFM) or OCEAN model of personality: A well-accepted
framework for categorizing personality traits.
Openness to experience: An OCEAN category concerned with problem solving and
staying informed.
Conscientiousness: An OCEAN category that concerns how one approaches work.
Extraversion: An OCEAN category that concerns the need for influencing or controlling
others.
Agreeableness: An OCEAN category that concerns the need for approval.
Neuroticism: An OCEAN category that concerns how one reacts under stress.
Public reputation: Judgments or evaluations about the personalities of others that can
help predict future behaviors.
Types: Fundamentally and qualitatively different categories of people.
Personality typology: Maintains that human behavior can be explained through types that
are assumed to be qualitatively distinct from one another (as opposed to traits that are
thought to occur along a continuum).
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI): A popular assessment that categorizes people into
one of 16 different personality types.
Extraversion-introversion: The MBTI personality dimension that focuses on where a
person draws their energy from—others or themselves.
Sensing-Intuition: The MBTI personality dimension that refers to information gathering
functions—those who prefer concrete and tangible versus those who prefer the abstract or
theoretical.
Thinking-feeling: The MBTI personality dimension that refers to the decision-making
function—those with a preference for making decisions with the people, context, and
emotion in mind versus those who can be more detached and logical.
Judging-perceiving: The MBTI personality dimension that describes the amount of
information a leader needs before feeling comfortable making a decision.
Strengths-based leadership: An approach based on three tenets, which are to (1) get
clarity about what a person is good at, (2) find jobs or tasks that leverage each person’s
strengths, and
(3) minimize the time spent improving weaknesses, as this negatively impacts overall
effectiveness.
Intelligence: A person’s all around effectiveness in activities directed by thought.
Triarchic Theory of Intelligence: A framework for categorizing different mental abilities.
Analytic intelligence: The triarchic component concerned with general problem-solving
ability.
Practical intelligence: The triarchic component concerned with relevant knowledge or
experience.
Single-loop learning: Reviewing data and facts and identifying the underlying root
causes from the information gathered.
Double-loop learning: Determining what to do differently to avoid problems in the
future
Creative intelligence: The triarchic component concerned with developing novel and
useful solutions to problems.
Divergent thinking: Thinking creatively. Tests of creativity or divergent thinking
generally have multiple correct answers.
Convergent thinking: The ability to follow some set of logical steps to arrive at the one
correct answer. Tests of convergent thinking generally have one best correct answer.
Creeping elegance: The tendency of leaders without a clear vision to expand a project’s
scope beyond the needs of customers.
Cognitive Resources Theory (CRT): A theory that maintains leaders with practical
intelligence perform better under stress and those with analytic intelligence perform
better when not stressed.
Emotional Intelligence (EQ): The ability to accurately interpret one’s own and others’
emotions, and manage and leverage emotions in order to accomplish goals.