Your company's HR director is a believer in trait theories of leadership. He believes that he can differentiate leaders from nonleaders by focusing on personal qualities and characteristics

The HR director plans to promote Lawrence, a highly extraverted manager with a great deal of ambition and energy to the position of VP, Manufacturing. He asks for your expertise in helping him to apply trait theory to leadership selection within your company. The director believes that because of his innate characteristics, Lawrence will be highly effective at helping the company achieve its production goals. You advise the director against basing his decision purely on traits because ________.
A) research has identified emotional stability as the strongest predictor of leadership effectiveness
B) studies have found that the Big Five traits are difficult to identify in leaders
C) studies have shown that traits are poor predictors of leadership effectiveness
D) research has found that conscientiousness is a better predictor of effectiveness than extraversion
E) research has shown that effective managers are often unlikely to become effective leaders

C
Explanation: C) Traits do a better job predicting the emergence of leaders and the appearance of leadership than actually distinguishing between effective and ineffective leaders. The fact that an individual exhibits the traits and others consider that person to be a leader does not necessarily mean the leader is successful at getting his or her group to achieve its goals. The context matters, too.