You Be the Judge
Here’s a simple exercise to get you thinking about personality traits and their function in successful leadership.
First, choose from the following list five attributes that you would look for in an ideal chief risk officer.
PERSONAL TRAITS
Achievement drive
Adaptability
Aggressiveness
Appearance
Charisma
Communication
skills
Compassion
Competence
Consistency
Decisiveness
Determination
Diplomatic skills
Energy
Enthusiasm
Extroversion
Fortitude
Humility
Idealism
Initiative
Insight
Integrity
Intelligence
Interpersonal skills
Inclusion of
subordinates
Judgment
Leadership
motivation
Moral purpose
Optimism
Passion
Persistence
Persuasiveness
Power
Prestige
Realism
Responsibility
Self-confidence
Sense of humor
Next, choose three military, three political, and three business leaders whose personal qualities you believe would make them effective
chief risk officers.
GREAT MILITARY LEADERS
King David
Alexander the Great
Hannibal
Julius Caesar
Constantine
King Arthur
Belisarius
Emperor Taizong
Charlemagne
Richard the
Lionhearted
Norman
Schwarzkopf
Donald Rumsfeld
GREAT POLITICAL FIGURES
King Solomon
Elizabeth I
Catherine the Great
Frederick the Great
William Pitt the
Younger
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
Alexander Hamilton
Benjamin Franklin
John MacDonald
Pierre Trudeau
Ronald Reagan
Margaret Thatcher
GREAT BUSINESS LEADERS
Sam Walton
Walt Disney
Bill Gates
Henry Ford
J.P. Morgan
Alfred Sloan
Jack Welch
Ray Kroc
William Hewlett
David Packard
Andrew Grove
Milton Hershey
John D. Rockefeller
Thomas Watson Jr.
Henry Luce
Will Kellogg
Warren Buffett
Col. Harland
Sanders
William Procter
Thomas Watson Sr.
Asa Candler
Estee Lauder
Henry Heinz
Daniel Gerber Jr.
James Kraft
Steve Jobs
Michael Dell
Take a moment to think about your choices. Why did you select some leaders and not others? Did you consider their attributes or their
accomplishments and the impact these had on industry or society? Did you take into account the means they took to achieve their goals?
Did they build for the future, or was their legacy dismantled once they departed the scene? What criteria did you use in making your
choice? Did you choose leaders who exhibited the five character traits that you’d selected first?
Tact
Tolerance for stress
Verbal fluency
Vision
Other___________
Saladin
Genghis Khan
Toyotomi Hideyoshi
Napoleon
George McClellan
Robert E. Lee
Ulysses S. Grant
Bernard
Chester Nimitz
Douglas MacArthur
Dwight Eisenhower
George Patton
George Zhukov
Henry Clay
Abraham Lincoln
Otto von Bismarck
William Gladstone
David Lloyd George
Herbert Asquith
Franklin D.
Bonaparte
Horatio Nelson
Montgomery
George Marshall
We performed this exercise in a
presentation at the 2011 ERM Symposium
in Chicago. Of the 45 personal character
traits we listed, 42 received at least one
vote. The choices for specific traits broke
down as follows:
Integrity—
48 percent;
Intelligence—
43 percent;
Judgment, competence, communication
skills—
36 percent to 38 percent;
Responsibility, insight, realism, vision,
tolerance for stress—
20 percent to 23 percent;
Persuasiveness, decisiveness, diplomatic
skills, interpersonal skills, adaptability,
fortitude, leadership motivation, and
other—
10 percent to 15 percent.
Among the military leaders,
26 of 27 received votes.
The largest vote-getters were:
Eisenhower—
47 percent;
Patton—
23 percent;
Marshall—
21 percent;
Lee, Grant, Alexander the Great,
Charlemagne, King Arthur, and
King David—
13 percent to 16 percent.
Among the political leaders, 20 of the 27
we listed received one or more votes.
Those receiving the most votes were:
Lincoln—
52 percent;
Churchill—
42 percent;
Franklin, Washington, King Solomon,
Reagan—
21 percent to 29 percent;
Roosevelt, Jefferson, Kennedy, and
Truman—
10 percent to 18 percent.
For business leaders, 20 of the 27 listed
received votes. Specifically:
Buffett—
64 percent;
Welch, Walton, Jobs, Gates—
24 percent to 29 percent;
Sloan, Rockefeller, Ford, Disney, Morgan,
Kroc—
11 percent to 19 percent.
