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pear to contribute to leader performance, problem solving and spatial reasoning abilities do not.

These nonsignificant findings regarding problem solving and leader performance are at variance with the results of Connelly et al. (2000), who reported that problem solving ability predicts leader achievement in a sample of 373 Army officers (all ranks and branches). However, it is important to note that Connelly et al. did not assess actual leader performance but rather indicators of attained leadership status, such as early promotion and letters of commendation. Lord, DeVader, and Alliger (1986) called attention to some of the difficulties with using leadership status as an indicator of leader performance. This difference in leadership criterion indicators between our study and that of Connelly et al. could account for the discrepant findings on the importance of problem-solving abilities. In addition, this sample of West Point cadets consists of very junior leaders in the military organization. Jacobs and Jaques (1987) argued that problem solving and related strategic thinking abilities take on greater importance at the senior executive leadership levels but are not as important for junior level leaders.

In this study, social judgment emerges as a significant predictor of leader performance over time, although this finding was not confirmed in the cross-validation sample. However, in the final stepwise model with the total group, social judgment enters as a significant independent predictor of leader performance. It appears, then, that better insight into oneself and social relations in organizations is important to good leader performance for very young officers. Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, Jacobs, and Fleishman (2000) theorized that social judgment skills become even more important as leaders move up the organizational hierarchy and must manage increasingly complex and ambiguous problems that involve people. Such would seem to be the case in a large people-based organization like the U.S. Army. Mumford, Marks, Connelly, Zaccaro, and Reiter-Palmon (2000) also presented data showing that social judgment scores increase across Army officer ranks, from junior to senior officers. These increases are presumed to be in part a function of accumulated job experience. Unfortunately, the findings by Mumford, Marks, et al. (2000) were cross-sectional in nature and did not permit identification of developmental trends. An important task for future research is to evaluate potential increases in social judgment skills over time in military leaders, as well as the relations of social judgment to actual leader performance at different organizational levels.

College entrance exam scores and social judgment tend to be consistent predictors of leader performance across the different regression models evaluated here. These findings are suggestive of an emotional intelligence cluster, wherein highly effective leaders are those who are more attuned to themselves as well as their social worlds, and who are more adept and open in evaluating their own reactions as well as those of others. Self-awareness is thought to be a key component of emotional intelligence, which also includes self-control, social awareness, and the ability to understand and manage social relationships (Goleman, 1995).

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In addition to these cognitive variables, this study also found that personality dimensions contribute to leader performance for cadets. The Big Five dimensions of conscientiousness and agreeableness both predict leader performance, although conscientiousness appears as the stronger of the two. This finding is consistent with the results of McCormack and Mellor (2002), who identified conscientiousness as a predictor of leader success in the Australian military. Extraversion is not a significant predictor of leader performance in these regression analyses, despite a small but significant bivariate correlation between the two. This finding may be a function of substantial multicollinearity between extraversion and conscientiousness (r = .47, p < .001) in this sample. Conscientiousness also correlates significantly with agreeableness (r = .29, p < .001), posing another multicollinearity problem for the regression models. In addition, sex is positively correlated with both agreeableness (r = .19, p < .001) and conscientiousness (r = .09, p < .05; women higher). When sex is controlled for in the regression models, the contribution of agreeableness in predicting leader performance drops to nonsignificance. This can also be understood as a function of overlapping variance between sex and the agreeableness measure.

Of the Big Five factors examined here, neuroticism and openness did not correlate with leader performance. Although neuroticism might be expected to correlate negatively with a range of performance outcomes, including leader performance, the fact that no such association was found is not surprising in this highly selected and healthy sample. McCormack and Mellor (2002) predicted a negative influence of neuroticism on leader performance, but they too found no such association. The lack of any association between openness and leader performance in this study is more surprising, especially in light of the significant findings on social judgment. One possible explanation is that the openness measure used here, an analog scale to the NEO (Costa & McCrae, 1985), may (like the NEO) overemphasize facets such as fantasy, aesthetics, and liberal values, dimensions that may not reflect the kind of thoughtful self-awareness and social understanding presumed to be important for effective leadership. Connelly et al. (2000), in their study, used the actual openness scale of the NEO–PI (Costa & McCrae, 1985) and found only a weak association with leader achievement. In the study by McCormack and Mellor, results regarding openness were mixed, with openness predicting selection for an officer promotion course, but not performance according to supervisor ratings. Together with these findings, these results suggest that self-ratings of openness may be associated with success and achievement indicators (and possible self-presentation bias) but are unrelated to actual performance. This is an important issue that requires further investigation to clarify.

The significant association found in this study between sex and leader performance, with female cadets performing better, merits some comment. The U.S. Military Academy was an all-male institution from its inception in 1802 through 1976, when women were first admitted into the corps of cadets. Currently, women make up about 17% of the student body. Women who apply and are accepted into

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West Point are no doubt a highly select group with a history of excellent performance in high school academics, athletics, and extracurricular activities. They have all shown evidence in high school of high leadership potential. These are the same standards as applied to male applicants, but it appears that young women who self-select to apply to West Point on average surpass their male counterparts in many of these areas (U.S. Military Academy, 1992). Gender differences at entry could at least partly explain these findings that female cadets perform better as leaders than do males. What is especially striking, however, is that female cadets as a group continue to outperform male cadets in military leadership performance even as upperclass cadets. The weight of the evidence in the literature suggests that men would perform better than women as leaders in what are traditionally defined as male roles (Eagley, Karau, & Makhijani, 1995). In light of this, the finding that female cadets outperform males in leader performance in the strongly traditional male environment of the U.S. Military Academy is even more surprising and needs further investigation.

Both personality factors and changing organizational requirements might also help to explain the observed gender difference in leader performance. Bass (1998) summarized evidence showing that women tend to be higher in transformational leadership style than men; the evidence also suggests that more “feminine” (caring and concerned leadership) approaches may be more effective in modern organizational cultures that tend to emphasize cooperation and collaboration within relatively flat and flexible structures, as opposed to “male” task-oriented approaches characterized by instrumental strategies in more hierarchical and rigid structures (Druskat, 1994). Judge and Bono (2000), in a recent meta-analysis, showed that agreeableness (and also extraversion) predicts transformational leadership style. Although they do not address possible gender differences, Judge and Bono report that women made up 57% of their total sample. Costa and McCrae (1992), in turn, reported a general finding across many samples that women tend to score higher in agreeableness than men. Female cadets also fit this general pattern, being higher in agreeableness than their male counterparts (t = –5.0, p < .001). This increased agreeableness of female cadets may lead them to be more transformational in their leadership styles, a style that is, in turn, more effective and valued in modern organizations. The U.S. Army is indeed placing greater emphasis at all organizational levels on issues like concerned and caring leadership, self-awareness, adaptability, flexibility, and mentoring of subordinates; this shift is also reflected at the Army’s primary training institution for future leaders, the U.S. Military Academy (cf.

Army Training and Leader Development Panel Officer Study: Report to the Army,

2001). The possible direct and interacting effects of gender, agreeableness, transformational leadership style, and organizational factors on leader performance also require further exploration.

Although significant and meaningful associations were identified in this study between some Big Five personality dimensions and leader performance, the use of analog or indirect personality measures, however good they may be, represents a

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limitation. Any personality measure contains error and can only approximate a person’s true score. Using analog indicators for the Big Five dimensions in this study increased the error term in each measure to some unknown degree. A related problem is that the analog NEO–Big Five measures used here are slightly more highly intercorrelated than are the original NEO scales (Costa & McCrae, 1992), a situation that increased multicollinearity problems in the regression analyses.2 Considering these measurement limitations, the significant and meaningful pattern of findings regarding conscientiousness and agreeableness predicting leader performance is even more noteworthy. Future studies in this area would do well, however, to avoid analog personality measures if possible.

It is also the case that, despite the identification of statistically significant predictors of cadet leader performance in this study, the overall amount of variance in leader performance accounted for is modest, leaving much unexplained. In part, this is likely a function of the long time interval (3 to 4 years) between assessment of predictors and performance criteria. However, it also suggests that other factors that can influence leader development and performance remain to be identified. Although this is no doubt true, it is a mistake to conclude that a modest R2 denotes an unimportant finding. For example, Sackett, Harris, and Orr (1986) showed that, in regression analyses, certain effects of real practical significance are likely to be judged as nonsignificant. Others have also argued that percentage of variance accounted for can underestimate important effects in regressions, particularly with respect to interaction effects (Cohen & Edwards, 1989). Similarly, Brown (1981) found that quite small percentages of variance may account for substantial increases or decreases in risk for physical and mental disorders.

Nevertheless, the search should continue for additional predictors of effective leader performance. In particular, more attention should be devoted to the potential influence of experiential factors, including experiences prior to entering institutions like the U.S. Military Academy, as well as experiences while a cadet. Furthermore, although the Big Five or Five Factor Model certainly represents an important scientific advance in the field of personality, support for this approach is far from universal (Block, 1995; Widiger & Trull, 1997). There may indeed be important personality dimensions that are not captured in the Big Five paradigm (Dawda, 1997), and some of these may be centrally important to leader development and performance. For example, transformational leadership style and its component elements, as described by Bass (1998) and Avolio (1999), may incorporate or be in-

2It should be noted that the original NEO–Personality Inventory–Revised (NEO–PI–R) scales are also intercorrelated to some degree. In some cases, these correlations are substantial, as for example between neuroticism and conscientiousness (r = –.53, p < .001), or extraversion and openness (r = .40, p <

.001; Costa & McCrae, 1992, pp. 100–101). The intercorrelations found in the present study among the analog scales, although slightly higher than those reported for the original scales, still mirror the pattern seen in the NEO–PI–R quite closely.

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fluenced by personal traits or tendencies that are not fully represented under the Big Five model.

Another promising personality dimension for predicting leader performance is hardiness. Conceptually rooted in existential psychology (Maddi, 1967), hardiness involves a high sense of commitment to life and work, a strong belief in one’s ability to control events and influence outcomes, and greater openness to change and challenges in life (Kobasa, 1979; Maddi, 1999; Maddi & Kobasa, 1984). Persons high in hardiness are more resilient when exposed to a range of environmental stressors, remaining healthy and performing well despite high stress levels. Recent studies with West Point cadets (Bartone & Priest, 2001) and with Norwegian Navy cadets (Bartone, Johnsen, Eid, Brun, & Laberg, 2002) point to positive effects of hardiness on leader performance and team cohesion. Additional studies with cadets and Army officers suggest that constructive–developmental stages, as articulated by Kegan (1982), have broad influence on leader performance (Forsythe, Snook, Lewis, & Bartone, 2002). At this point, studies of personality and leader performance should probably not be limited to the Big Five but should consider other dimensions as well, such as hardiness and constructive–developmental level.

Finally, although a strength of this study is its longitudinal design, it is thus far limited to leader performance in the West Point officer training context. Performance as a leader while a student at West Point may not be strongly related to leader performance after graduation. It is thus important to extend this research to evaluate the contribution of cognitive, personality, background, and experiential factors to effective leader performance as Army officers in the increasingly complex world of modern military operations.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was carried out as part of the Baseline Officer Leader Development Study (BOLDS) of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, NY, with the critical support of the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences. Portions of this article were presented at the 35th International Applied Military Psychology Symposium in Florence, Italy, May 1999. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their critical and helpful comments.

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