CHARACTERIZATIONS OF SUCCESSFUL LEADERS: A Comparison of Leadership and Non-Leadership Students

This study compared characterizations of successful leaders held by students enrolled in a college level leadership education program to those of students who did not participate in the program. Participants consisted of students from the following groups: graduating seniors who completed the leadership program, students enrolled in the first course of the program, and students who never enrolled in leadership courses. Each participant rated a “successful leader” on descriptors from Duehr & Bono’s (2006) Revised Descriptive Index. Scoring of these descriptors resulted in five leadership dimensions: agentic, communal, task-oriented, relationship-oriented, and transformational. Analyses compared these dimension ratings across the three groups of participants. Results revealed that non-leadership students ascribed significantly higher levels of agentic and task-oriented characteristics to successful leaders than both beginning and graduating leadership students. Non-leadership students also ascribed significantly lower levels of communal characteristics to successful leaders than graduating leadership students. Results showed no significant differences between the three groups of students in relationship-oriented or transformational characteristics ascribed to successful leaders. These finding have implications for leadership education.