About temperament

Leadership research once assumed that leadership was one set of qualities. More recently, attention has turned to variety of leadership styles. People are all a bit different, and so are leaders. It's good to know your temperament becuase it affects how you lead, and reflects your strengths and limitations.

The benefits of knowing about temperaments are many:

• To be the leader of the group, you need to appreciate the temperaments of everybody in it and get the best contribution from each one according to their area of strength.
• You usually need all (or most) temperaments to make an excellent team.
• You will be a better leader if you know which one you are, and can better appreciate where others can complement you.
• If people clash because they have different temperaments, perhaps they could also complement each other.
• You will be a better leader if you develop at least minimal skills in your areas of weakness.

We have two quite different views of temperament in leadership: the Disc model and the team. Both models include two basic orientations in temperament:

• People-oriented leaders tend to want to support and train their personnel, and tend to give lots of consideration to the personal needs of individuals.
• Task oriented leaders often focus narrowly on getting the job done at any cost. Some of them want to stick to a strict sequence, in which case, they sometimes aren't good at tasks needing flexibility.