Northouse's Five Leadership Approach: The Characteristics Of Leadership

In my opinion, the trait approach is the defining leadership from the objective perspective rather than a physical or technical glance. It is the study of consistent patterns in thought, emotion, and behavior of an individual that are linked to effective leadership across various situations. Northouse’s five leadership traits are intelligence, integrity, sociability, determination and self-confidence. The trait approach provides a foundation to what a leader should look like due to it being backed back a century of research; however, there is no definite list of traits or take into account situational traits.

The clip titled, Leaders are born, reference many situations where leaders emerged. Specifically, determination was portrayed by Michael Jordan. Jordan was cut from his school’s basketball team because they believe he wasn 't good enough. That did not discourage him and at the end of his career, he is still the reigning best basketball player of all time. Based off Northouse’s definition of determination which is not to give up, Michael Jordan is an ideal example. Also, Rosa Parks and Gandhi are both models for the all of the traits according to Northouse’s definition. Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat to a white man and fought for civil rights while Gandhi fought for independence in India. Sociability was needed to communicate to their followers, intelligence was required in order to win their goals, and self-confidence remained to motivate them to continue their cause.

Human skills were required by people like Rosa Parks to interact with their followers, conceptual skills to formulate ideas on how to fight their cause and win the battle, and technical skills to bring their ideas to