Honesty Four Times

Linked 2 Leadership

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, researchers Jim Kouses and Barry Posner asked people a simple, open-ended question: “What values, personal traits, or characteristics do you look for and admire in a leader?”

Eighty-three percent of the people surveyed listed honesty as a desired attribute in a leader.

No other quality received as many mentions.

Since that 1987 study, Kouses and Posner have repeated their assessment three times. In 1995 and 2002, 88 percent of respondents listed honesty, again the leading trait cited. Honesty also topped the list in 2007, when 89 percent of survey takers specified it as a sought-after leadership characteristic. For more than twenty years, people have consistently responded to Kouses and Posner’s question by specifying honesty more often than any other leadership quality.

Kouses and Posner reported their early findings in their 1995 book, The Leadership Challenge. In the fourth and most recent edition of

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