The effects of student personality on perceptions of two-source transformational leadership

Abstract

This paper examines the role of student personality traits on student perceptions of an instructor’s and community partner’s leader behaviours in a service-learning context. Extant literature does not examine the role of an educator’s leadership in service-learning projects in conjunction with that of a community partner and does not consider the importance of student perceptions of these two sources of leadership. The present study demonstrates that the emergence of transformational leadership is not only an outcome of leaders’ personality and behaviours, as most of the transformational leadership literature suggests, but also to a degree a function of followers’ attributes. Thus, the development of effective transformational leaders must factor in followers’ personality traits. Specifically, the effects on perceptions of leadership of three personality traits were examined. Findings suggest that both agreeableness and conscientiousness correlate with service-learning participants’ perceptions of an instructor’s transformational leadership behaviours, but extraversion did not. Results also suggest that service-learning participants’ perceptions of an instructor’s transformational leadership behaviours correlate with their perceptions of a community partner’s similar behaviours.