Situational and Personality Factors in Leadership Behavior

On large events, most people come in groups, and for appropriate handling of calamities knowledge of these groups is essential. Groups can have at least two kinds of leaders, formal and informal leaders. The type of leader was expected to have an influence on the interpersonal distance between group members and the success of leadership. Several possible other variables with a possible mediating and moderating role, or independent variables were introduced, namely overview (a state and a trait variable), openness to experience, extroversion, leadership quality, leader prototypicality, and unity of the group. An experiment was conducted with groups with informal and formal leaders, where the participants filled in a pre- and post-questionnaire; in between these measurements, they did two teambuilding activities and a scavenger hunt. Type of leader predicted leadership success and unity appeared as a mediator. The other effects, however, could not be found in this data. The knowledge and liking of others seemed to play an important role. This effect might have been stronger than in other research projects, due to the small number of participants (N=55) and the fact that many groups consisted at least partly of friends.