Perspectives on Societal Leaders and Leadership: Who are they and what is it?

• Main Author: Institute for Societal Leadership
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2017
• Subjects: Leadership; society; leader attributes; Leadership Studies
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/isl_research/15; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=isl_research
• Institution: Singapore Management University

In this research paper, we examine 183 undergraduates’ perspectives of societal leaders and societal leadership. Participants were asked to respond to the following prompts: name an individual whom you think is a societal leader and explain why do you think he/she is worthy of the title of a societal leader. Responses to these prompts allowed us to compile the attributes that these applicants perceived societal leaders to possess. The six categories of key leader attributes that have been introduced by Bass and Stogdill were used to inform the coding categories. Besides these six categories, one other category, namely moral values, was substantially coded from this data. A total of 910 codes across seven categories (i.e. cognitive capacities, problem solving skills, tacit knowledge, social capacities, personality, motives and needs and moral values) were derived from the responses of the applicants. Attributes in the social capacities category were coded the most, followed by attributes that fall into the personality category. Tacit knowledge is third in place in terms of counts of codes, with moral values in fourth, problem solving skills in fifth, motives and needs in sixth and lastly cognitive capabilities. These results suggest that attributes that posits on human relationships are valuable in our times and complements traditional leadership traits.