Leaders tend to possess and exemplify the qualities expected or required in their working groups. 

Physical courage (which appears on most of the lists of military leadership) will not actually make you a leader in battle, but you cannot be one without it. If you aspire to be a sales manager you should possess in large measures the qualities of a good salesman. The head of an engineering department ought to exemplify the characteristics of an engineer, otherwise he will not gain and hold respect. Thus, a leader should mirror the group's characteristics. 

Do you have to be tall to be a leader? Research into these more general characteristics bears out what history tells us. De Gaulle was tall; Napoleon was short. It really does not matter. Some general factors, such as intelligence and aptitude, do emerge from the research. 

After a comprehensive survey of 124 books and articles which reported attempts to study the traits and characteristics of leaders, R.M. Stogdill offered two conclusions based on positive evidence from 15 or more of the studies surveyed: 

The average person who occupies a position of leadership exceeds the average member of his group in the following respects: 

• intelligence 
• scholarship 
• dependability in exercising responsibilities 
• activity and social participation, and 
• socio-economic status 

The qualities, characteristics, and skills required in a leader are determined to a large extent by the demands of the situation in which he is to function as a leader. 

Yet everyone agrees that a leader needs to have personality in the common sense of that word. A leader may not be what P.G. Wodehouse called a 'matey' person. But have you ever met a true leader who totally lacked enthusiasm or warmth? Most leaders also have character. Someone once defined character as what you do with your personality and temperament, that inherited bundle of strengths and weaknesses. A better way of looking at it is to say that character is that part of personality that seems morally valuable to us. It is that sum of moral qualities by which a person is judged, apart from such factors as intelligence, competence or special talents. 

Character in Leadership 

'Character stands for self-discipline, loyalty, readiness to accept responsibility, and willingness to admit mistakes. It stands for selflessness, modesty, humility, willingness to sacrifice when necessary, and, in my opinion, for faith in God. Let me illustrate. 

During a critical phase of the Battle of the Bulge, when I commanded the 18th Airborne Corps, another corps commander just entering the fight next to me remarked: "I'm glad to have you on my flank. It's character that counts." I had long known him, and I knew what he meant. I replied: "That goes for me too". There was no amplification. None was necessary. Each knew the other would stick however great the pressure; would extend help before it was asked, if he could; and would tell the truth, seek no self-glory, and everlastingly keep his word. Such trust breeds confidence and success'. 

General Mathew B. Ridgway, later Supreme 

Commander of the United Nations Forces in Korea 

Whether a person tends to be introvert or extrovert is morally neither here nor there, but we do admire steadfastness in adversity or moral courage and compassion. What is the secret of this moral strength? Many writers on leadership have stressed the importance of integrity, which Viscount Slim defined as 'the quality which makes people trust you'. 

When there is this lack of trust in working relationships it is often a symptom of a failure in personal or corporate integrity. America forced President Nixon from office because he was judged not to be a man of integrity. 'I have often found,' said Harold Macmillan, 'that a man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man that nobody trusts'. 

The primary meaning of integrity is wholeness, but it also has a moral sense. It suggests the type of person who adheres to some code of moral, artistic or other values. Prominent among those values is the concept of truth. That is why most people virtually equate integrity with honesty or sincerity. Although it is impossible to prove it, I believe that holding firmly to sovereign values outside yourself grows a wholeness of personality and moral strength of character. The person of integrity will always be tested. The first real test comes when the demands of truth or good appear to conflict with your self-interest or prospects. Which do you choose? By going through such ordeals you are forging your personal integrity only as iron is plunged repeatedly into fire and then hammered on the anvil does it become steel.