IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/sagope/v15y2025i1p21582440251327533.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Hidden Key Personality Traits of Effective Leadership in China

Author

Listed:
  • Xin Xiang
  • Hongzhi Wang

Abstract

Effective leadership is essential for organizational development; however, it has been insufficiently examined in China. Thus, we explore what constitutes effective leadership in China by identifying the personality traits necessary for practicing effective leadership behaviors and developing an empirically-based personality trait framework. In-depth interviews were conducted with 132 executives identifying the initial item pool. Data were collected from 432 respondents and exploratory factor analysis was conducted to explore a possible model structure. Further data were collected from 513 respondents and confirmatory factor analysis was performed to assess the convergent and discriminant validities of the proposed model. A personality trait framework to practice effective leadership comprising 12 factors and 40 sub-items was developed. The findings expand our understanding of effective leadership in China by discovering individual characteristics; they offer an efficient benchmarking for assessing the discerning personality traits for effective leadership behaviors, and significant implications for Chinese leadership development practices.

Suggested Citation

  • Xin Xiang & Hongzhi Wang, 2025. "The Hidden Key Personality Traits of Effective Leadership in China," SAGE Open, , vol. 15(1), pages 21582440251, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:15:y:2025:i:1:p:21582440251327533
    DOI: 10.1177/21582440251327533
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21582440251327533
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/21582440251327533?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:15:y:2025:i:1:p:21582440251327533. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.