Positive and Negative Personality Traits; and Leadership Styles across Gender in the Indian Context

Leadership semantically invokes ideas of power and influence than empathy and mutual understanding. The role of leaders is pervasive and depicts how the internal state and obtrusive context contributes in creating valence and relationship with various other organizational factors. To manage the work dynamics, males and females in the lead positions might have different orientations, as there is an evidence of 34 percent executive positions comprises of females globally (Serafin, 2013, Grant Thornton International Business Review). The present study explored gender and culture perspective on a positive and negative personality traits and leadership styles and how it aggregates in managing self and work. There are number of studies which have focused their attention on personality, males and females Indian managers significantly differ on the both the personality traits (Core Self Evaluation and narcissism) with females being high on CSE (.001 level) and males being high on narcissism personality trait (.01 level). Leadership style orientation of male and females Indian managers significantly differ on six out of seven styles, the dominating leadership styles among male managers were authoritarian, bureaucratic and participative whereas female managers were higher on nurturant, nurturant-task, task-oriented and authentic. Hence, the present study contributes to essentialities of context and gender while studying these intra individual traits, patterns of behavior and how authentic leadership trait is a pervasive component and can be added to the popular literature on Indian leadership traits.