Relationship Between Personality Traits and Leadership Styles Among Officers of Nigerian Air Force Kaduna State Nigeria

Abstract

Personality traits of individuals are evident in individuals having different perspectives, showing different attitudes and different behaviors, accepting a situation or event as a conflict and deciding the strategy for managing a conflict. It is on this note that this study
assessed the relationship between personality and leadership styles among Officers of Nigerian Air Force Kaduna. The big 5 personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism) were used to find their impact on leadership styles (autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire) of 150 Officers of Nigerian Air Force. Convenience sampling was employed to select 150, Officers of Nigerian Air Force. Male were 133 and Female 17, Rank: Fg Offr – Flt Lt were 105, Sqn Ldr – Gp Capt 31 and Air Rank 14 Two hypotheses were tested. Hypothesis one confirmed that there will be a significant relationship between personality trait and leadership style of Nigerian Air Force Officers, the result shows that there is a correlation between personality traits and leadership styles r(148) =0.300; p<0.001). Hypothesis two revealed that the dimension of personality trait jointly influence leadership style significantly (F(4,144)=21.80; P<0.001) with R=0.656 and R2= 0.431. Thus, the five predictors’ variables (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness and neuroticism) jointly accounted for 43.1% of the variance in leadership style. In other words, the hypothesis was confirmed. We concluded with recommendation that thus, Nigerian Air Force Leaders should pay more attention to personality and reduce aspects of depressive behaviour tendencies, which includes feelings of sadness...