know yourself and take charge of your own destiny: the "fit model" of leadership

Know Yourself and Take Charge of Your Own Destiny: The "Fit Model" of LeadershipAuthor(s): George L. Hanbury, Alka Sapat and Charles W. WashingtonSource: Public Administration Review, Vol. 64, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 2004), pp. 566-576Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Society for Public AdministrationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3542538 .

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George L. Hanbury Nova Southeastern University

Alka Sapat Florida Atlantic University

Charles W. Washington Clark Atlanta University

Know Yourself and Take Charge of Your Own

Destiny: The "Fit Model" of Leadership

Leadership scholars have theorized that leaders of an organization must have an appropriate "fit" with those they lead and with their environment. Yet, there is no empirical research to date that has explored this belief. We develop a theoretical model to determine the factors influencing the fit of a city manager, indicated by his or her tenure. We argue that six sets of explanations may help determine the fit of the city manager: the manager's leadership style, his or her personality type, the city manager's perception about fit, the perceptions of city councils, the demographics of the city managers, and the demographics of the cities where they work. Based on a rigorous nationwide study of city managers, the study shows that the fit of city managers is significantly influenced by two of the six sets of explanations. Implications for scholars, city managers, and practitioners are drawn from the study's analysis and findings.

Many scholars and popular authors in leadership today lament that before one may lead others, one first must understand oneself-a psychology of leadership. However, there has not been much understanding of leadership provided at the local level by city managers. The chief executive officer of municipalities in the council-manager form of government-the city manager-has become, for the most part, an itinerant leader looking for the elusive city with the appropriate "fit." According to the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), the "mean length of service (for a city manager) is 6.4 years and the median length is five years, so the majority of city managers (responding to the ICMA survey) have served their cities for under six years (Wheeland 1995, 14). Five to six years is a short time frame, even in times of term limits for elected officials, for any chief executive to stabilize an organization and carry out an agenda established by the city council. Simply put, the problem is the short-term employment relationship between professional city managers and the city councils the managers work for, thus preventing sustained and effective managerial leadership. Yet, no study to date has analyzed this problem.

To investigate this important but neglected issue, this study develops a unique theoretical model to analyze the factors affecting the fit of city managers with the council

George L. Hanbury (PhD, Florida Atlantic University) is the executive vice president for administration at Nova Southeastern University (NSU) and former city manager of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Portsmouth and Virginia Beach, Virginia. Dr. Hanbury also teaches courses in policy analysis, leadership, economics, and finance at NSU. He serves as a volunteer "Range Rider" for the International City/County Management Association, promoting the council-manager form of government and professionalism in local governments. E-mail: [email protected]. Alka Sapat (PhD, SUNY-Stony Brook) is an associate professor of public administration at Florida Atlantic University and coordinator of the doctoral program. She teaches courses in public policy, public governance and privatization, methodology, and disaster management. Her research focuses on disaster management, environmental policy, deregulation, and environmental justice. Recently, Dr. Sapat received funding from the National Sci- ence Foundation to research best practices in state homeland security and the adoption of disaster-mitigation policies. E-mail: [email protected]. Charles W. Washington (PhD, Syracuse University) is the dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Clark Atlanta University and former professor and coordinator of graduate programs of public administration at Florida At- lantic University. Dr. Washington also served as chair of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University, where his main in- terests were (and continue to be) public administration, metropolitan studies, intergovernmental relations, organizational theory, public policy for- mulation and implementation, and public budgeting and finance. E-mail: cwashington @cau.edu.

566 Public Administration Review * September/October 2004, Vol. 64, No. 5



members for whom they work. "Fit," for the purposes of this study, is the dependent variable, and it is measured by years of service or tenure. We argue that fit is affected by six sets of factors: the city manager's leadership style, his or her personality, the perceptions of the city manager, the perceptions of the city council, the demographics of the managers, and the demographics of the cities where they work.

The theoretical model developed in this study has con- siderable support in the literature. For instance, Waller, Huber, and Glick (1995) chronicle the effect of "executive perception" on organizational effectiveness, which also ap- plies to the success of the leader. Chattopadhyay et al. report that executive beliefs or perceptions affect their "social influences processes," and not necessarily the "straightforward model of the relationship between functional conditioning and executive beliefs" (1999, 784).

Past research on leadership has also emphasized the importance of fit. Several scholars have theorized whether leaders of organizations must have an appropriate fit with those they lead and with their environment (Chemers 1997; Bennis and Townsend 1995; Badaracco and Ellsworth 1989; Fiedler 1964, 1966, 1967; Aldrich and Pfeiffer 1976; Hannan and Freeman 1977; Aldrich 1979; Carroll 1988; McKelvey and Aldrich 1983). Organizational scholars have also surmised for years that personality is an important dimension of leadership and can play an important role in determining the fit of the leader/manager within an organization (Chemers 1997, 131).

Leadership, Personality, and Fit The basis of the conceptual framework for this study is

leadership. The study is rooted in theories that explain the

emergence of effective leadership, and specifically, theories that consider a dimension of leadership that has a dominant presence-personality type.

To demonstrate this point, a model of city manager leadership that is unique to the council-manager form of government is developed. It is labeled the "fit model." The model, shown in figure 1, graphically depicts the delicate balance or pivotal point, the city manager. Functioning as the chief executive officer, the city manager occupies a spot between the demand for responsiveness from a democratically elected legislative body that has the ability to hire or fire at will, and the expectations of a complex professional organization awaiting leadership and vision. "Fit," the dependent variable in this study, is measured by years of service or tenure.'

Viewed from this pivotal point, the city manager is the essence of Terry's (1995) "administrative conservator." Exercising the appropriate fit, the city manager sustains institutional integrity and exercises strong leadership in order to continue serving in this vital capacity. Terry rightly points out that such administrative conservators do not pose a threat to their elected leaders or to democracy. "When guided by constitutional principles, they help maintain sta- bility of the American regime by preserving the integrity of public bureaucracies and, in turn, constitutional processes, values, and beliefs" (171).

To understand the factors affecting the manager's fit to his or her position, we investigate six factors posited to determine the manager's fit: the city manager's leadership style, the manager's personality traits, the manager's perceptions, the perceptions of the city council, the demographics of the managers, and the demographics of the cities where they work.

Figure 1 "Fit Model"

Corporate Council-Manager Organization Organization

Leader (president) or chief executive officer in a private or not-for-profit organization exhibits certain traits (attention to the needs of other people, or production and output, sensitivity to diversity, etc.). In addition, the leader is in the center of the organization, thereby leading and creating the vision for the organization as the essential ingredient to move the organization forward.

Leader (city manager), in the council manager form of government, exhibits the same traits as a chief executive officer, working inside the organization with professional administrators. However, the leader serves at the pleasure of an elected city council. Therefore, the city manager shares leadership and vision with the city council as the "administrative conservator." The compatibility of this vision, or fit, determines tenure of the manager and may allow the city to move forward.

Know Yourself and Take Charge of Your Own Destiny 567



Leadership Styles Decades of academic analysis have given us hundreds

of definitions of leadership, and thousands of empirical investigations of leaders have been conducted. Yet no clear and unequivocal understanding exists to distinguish effective leaders from ineffective leaders (Bennis and Nanus 1985, 4). Several scholars have also explored the differ- ence between leadership and management. As Bennis points out, "leaders are people who do the right things; managers are people who do things right. Both roles are crucial, but they differ profoundly" (1989, 18).

The leadership styles investigated in this study relate to those of city managers and how they affect the fit of the city manager to the city he or she serves. To date, however, there has been no study of the leadership styles and personality types of city managers and their effect on tenure.

There is an exhaustive list of instruments to measure leadership style (Stogdill and Coons 1957; Wilson 1980; Hersey and Blanchard 1973, 1974, 1977, 1996; Blanchard, Hambleton, Zigarmi, and Forsyth, 1982, 1985). To measure leadership qualities such as flexibility and effectiveness, the instrument chosen for this study is the well-known leadership instrument developed by Blanchard et al. in 1982 and revised in 1985, known as the Leader Behavior Analy- sis II-Self (LBAII-Self). In our opinion, the LBAII-Self is the most suitable instrument that meets instrument, content, and constructs validity and identifies leadership styles from the leader's perception and behavioral dimensions of influence. Terms used to identify such dimensions in the LBAII-Self are "effectiveness" and "flexibility," each rep- resented by a continuous score (Anderson 1984; Blanchard, Zigarmi, and Nelson 1993; Zigarmi, Edeburn, and Blanchard 1997).2

For the purposes of this study, the most important fea- tures of city manager leadership are the manager's ability to be effective and flexible. Such leadership qualities are highly desirable because the emphasis in this study is on the city manager's perceived behavior and fit with the city council (Waller, Huber, and Glick, 1995). Because the ef- fort was to create a predictive model, continuous scores were necessary to develop a regression analysis. Here, too, Zigarmi et al. (1997) report that the continuous data scores generated by the LBAII-Self instrument may be used suc- cessfully in parametric statistical analysis.

The flexibility score is a numerical indicator of how often the respondent used a particular leadership style to solve 20 different situations; the more the respondent chose a single style, the less the respondent showed flexibility. The flexibility score is a scale ranging from 0 to 30. The effectiveness score is a numerical representation of the respondent's appropriate use of the chosen style in light of the situation described. "Appropriate" here is relative to the situational leadership model, which advocates that a

certain leadership style is more effective in certain situations. Thus, on the LBAII-Self instrument, the effectiveness score indicates the respondent's diagnostic skill in choosing the appropriate style (advocated by the situational leadership model). The score ranges from 20 to 80 (Zigarmi et al., 1997, 7-8).3 To test the influence of leadership on the city manager's tenure, two hypotheses were developed:

HI: If the city manager is high in his or her leadership-style flexibility score, the manager is likely to have a longer tenure.

H2: If the city manager is high in his or her leadership-style effectiveness score, the manager is likely to have a longer tenure.

Personality Dimensions For years, individuals have been able to learn more about

themselves and, in turn, about others by exploring a "stable set of characteristics and tendencies that determine com- monalities and differences in people's behavior" (Gibson, Ivancevich, and Donnelly 1994, 124). This set of characteristics, better known as "personality," is so interrelated with attitudes, motivation, and learning that "any attempt to understand behavior [by leaders] is grossly incomplete unless personality is considered" (124). Consequently, leadership and personality are coterminous.

To measure this dimension of personality and to help leaders understand "the habits of the mind that make up our interpretation of our day-to-day experiences and influence our choices," Pearman (1999) recommends the use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.4 This indicator is one of the oldest personality assessment tools, and it has been validated and accepted by the Educational Testing Service (Wiggins 1989, 147). In addition, it has been employed as a credible tool by managers and accepted by employees to improve interpersonal processes and relationships (Leonard and Strauss 1997, 113).

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator contains four sepa- rate indices based on Jung's "temperament sorter" or "type indicator," which are designed to determine the respondent's status on four dichotomies: extroversion versus introversion (E/I); sensation versus intuition (S/N); thinking versus feeling (T/F); and judging versus perceiving (J/P) (Keirsey and Bates 1984, 13-23). Each di- chotomy, according to the Myers-Briggs theory, produces two categories of people, and the four sets of dichotomies produce 16 possible combinations. An individual belongs to one or the other category based on his or her makeup and inclination. These combinations of personality dimensions may play a significant role in determining the fit of a city manager. Supporters of the New Public Manage- ment movement and liberation management (Peters 1992; Light 1997) argue that outgoing, entrepreneurial, and ex-




troverted public managers who are perceptive to changes in their environment are likely to be better managers. Based on this literature and using the Myers-Briggs Form G,5 a hypothesis is developed to relate personality dimensions to tenure:

H3: The more extroverted (E), intuitive (N), feeling (F), and perceptive (P) the personality type of the city manager, the more likely the manager will have a longer tenure.

Perceptions of the City Manager Past research has shown that managers' perceptions,

whether they are "broad or narrow" (Beyer et al. 1997, 717), and the effect of "executive perception" on organizational effectiveness (Walter, Huber, and Glick 1995) are extremely important to the success of leaders. Thus, the expectation about the relationship between the city manager's perceptions and his or her tenure is as follows:

H4: If the city manager perceives that his or her personality type is positively correlated with the personality type of the city council, the manager is likely to have a longer tenure.

To tap this factor, a survey question was included that asked the city manager, "Do you feel that your personality type is appropriately 'fitted' with the expectation of your city council?" The result was coded as a dummy variable to reflect a dichotomous yes/no response.6 Similarly, we expect the following to be true:

H5: If the city manager perceives that the city council values the city manager's leadership style, the manager is likely to have a longer tenure.

Perceptions of the City Council Because the subject of this study is the fit of the city

manager with the city council the manager serves, it is vital to include a measure that taps the city council's perceptions of the city manager's role and performance. This measure was included in the form of a survey question that asked city managers to report the results of their performance evaluations conducted by their city council for the last five years. Thus, we expect the following:

H6: The better the performance evaluation of the city manager conducted by the city council, the more likely it is that the manager will have a longer tenure.7

Demographics of the City Manager Other contextual factors such as the demographics of

the city managers (age, race, gender, education, experience) and the number of cities the city manager has served

as chief executive are expected to influence the manager's tenure. Several indicators were created for these variables and measured by survey responses. Dummy variables were created for race (white/black) and gender (male/female). Experience levels were coded by subtracting the number of years the city manager had served in his present city from the total number of years the manager had served as a city manager. The result yielded the variable "experience," which represents the city manager's years of experience before coming to the city he presently serves.

Demographics of the City In addition to demographic factors related to the city

manager, we expect the demographics of the community or city the manager serves, such as population, income, and racial and ethnic percentage of foreign-born population, to play a vital role in affecting the city manager's fit as indicated by tenure. Indicators for these variables tapping city demographics include population level (1998 values), median household income, the percentage of the population that is white, and the percentage of the population born outside the United States.

Research Methodology A self-administered mail survey taking approximately

one and a half hours to complete was developed and sent to a proportionate, stratified random sample of 600 city managers. The names were drawn from an alphabetical list (provided by the International City/County Managers Association) of all municipalities with a city manager and stratified by population- small (3,000-10,000), medium (10,001-25,000), and large (greater than 25,001)-and published in The Municipal Year Book 2000. Randomiza- tion was achieved through the computerized random- sample program generated by the Statistical Program for Social Sciences, version 10 (SPSS-10).

The mail survey included a city manager data sheet, a

general demographic questionnaire about the city manager, and questions about key population characteristics of the city the manager serves. These items were pretested on 20 city managers in Broward County, Florida, and on ICMA staff members. In addition, the survey included two other self-administered instruments: the Myers-Briggs Type In- dicator, Form G and its accompanying scoring sheet, and the Leader Behavior Analysis II-Self instrument and its accompanying scoring sheet. To ensure maximum response, a letter of endorsement from the executive director of the ICMA, Bill Hansell, was included with the letter of transmittal for this nationwide survey. After three re- quests for responses, a 52 percent response rate was at- tained, with more than 50 percent responding in each population stratum.




The descriptive statistics about the variables in the categories discussed previously are summarized in table 1.8 In order to test the fit model, ordinary least squares regression (without a constant) was used as the statistical technique.9 The model with all of its variables and the hypothesized direction of the variables is presented in figure 2. The results of the regression analysis are presented in table 2.

Table 1 Descriptive Statistics of All Variables in the Fit Model Variables

Dependent variable Years served in present city as city manager-tenure Leadership dimensions of city manager Leadership-style flexibility Leadership-style effectiveness

Personality dimensions of city manager E/I total preference score S/N total preference score T/F total preference score J/P total preference score

Perceptions of city manager Personality type positively correlated? Values lead (dummy) Perceptions of city council Performance evaluation-total

Demographics of city manager Experience Total number of cities served City manager's age Gender (dummy) Race: white (dummy) Race: black (dummy) Education

Demographics of city 1998 Population (transformed) Percent of population-white (transformed) Percent of population not born in the United States (transformed) Note: *Age adjusted due to extreme outliers

Mean Median Mode Std. dev.

7.77 6.00 3 6.13

17.66 18.00 18.00 4.69 52.23 52.00 51.00 7.09

102.10 98.84 77.88 24.11

103.00 101.00 75.00 21.00

91 77 69

7

25.53 31.85 19.81 15.26

tive and open-minded P (perceiving) personality dimension would be more likely add to a manager's tenure than the judgmental decision-making capability of a J (judging) personality. This model supported our expectation. The independent variable "J/P total preference" score is statistically significant with an unstandardized coefficient of 0.044, indicating a leaning toward the perceiving personality dimension.

Other personality dimensions were also related to tenure. However, the direction of these effects was contrary to what had been hypothesized. For instance, we expected the extroverted personality trait would be positively associated with years of service (or tenure), our reasoning being that such personality traits would endow the manager with the communication skills necessary for public management. However, the positive beta coefficient of the E/I personality type indicates a leaning toward the introverted personality type as having a statistically significant relationship with tenure.10 These results indicate that, contrary to the New Public Management model, a city manager who is inwardly oriented, reflective, and considers deeply before acting is more likely to have a longer tenure.

With regard to the perceptions of the city manager, the results show that performance evaluations are statistically significant and positively related to tenure; the size of the coefficient indicates that as a manager im- proves on rankings in performance evaluations conducted by the city council, it is more likely the city manager will extend his or her tenure

7.92 8.00 8 1.34 1.00 1 .23

16.68 16.00 15 2.84

4.90 2.15

35*

1.90

4.15 3.97

1.61

3.00 2.00

50.00 1.00 1.00

.00 1.95

4.10 4.00

1.00

Discussion of the Results As table 2 indicates, the fit model is a good fit. The R2 is

0.832 (adjusted R2 = 0.810), indicating that 83 percent of the variation in the tenure of city managers surveyed can be explained by all of the independent variables taken to- gether. The results also reveal that several variables are statistically significant.

With respect to the leadership dimensions, the results reveal that effective leadership is statistically related to tenure; however, the direction is contrary to what had been hypothesized. It had been assumed that an effective city manager would have longer tenure; however, high leadership effectiveness has a negative rather than a positive statistically significant relationship with years of service (tenure), indicating rather surprisingly that effective leaders are likely to be a poorer fit than less effective leaders.

The results also show that personality traits affect tenure. As figure 2 shows, we had hypothesized that the adap-

-1 1

55 1 1 0 2

6.72 1.36 8.26

.28

.16

.09

.33

4 .47 4 .28

1 1.26

by approximately one year. Several contextual variables were also statistically significant in the model. Table 2 shows that, with respect to the demographics of the manager, age is statistically significant and positively correlated to tenure. This finding indicates that, as expected, older city managers are more likely to have a longer tenure. Of the race variables, both the dummies for white and black city managers are significant and positively related to tenure. These findings support the theoretical notion that the city manager will be hired and will be a good fit regardless of race.

The relationship between tenure and the experience of the manager was found to be statistically significant; however, the direction of the relationship is contrary to what had been expected. This finding supports the concept that as a city manager moves from city to city, he or she gains knowledge through exposure to creative and effective ideas that may be beneficial to him or her and to other cities.




Figure 2 Regressed Fit Model

City Manager's Perceptions * City Manager's Personality Type is Positively Correlated with

Personality of City Council? * City Council Values Manager's Leadership Style? Leadership Styles as Measured by Blanchard's LBAII? * Style Flexibility Scores * Style Effectiveness Scores (-) (.001)*** Personality Type of City Manager as Measured by Myers-Briggs MBPTI? * Extroverted (E) - Introverted (I) Scores (+) (.000)*** * Sensing (S) - iNtuitive (N) Scores * Thinking (T) - Feeling (F) Scores * Judging (J) - Perceptive (P) Scores (+) (.054)* Demographics of the City Manager * Age (+) (.000)*** * Race

White (+) (.0301)*** Black (+) (.002)***

* Experience (-) (.000)*** * Gender * Education * Total Number of Cities Served (+) (.001)***

I3 City Council Perceptions * Performance Evaluations of City Manager by City Council.

Average Evaluations for Last Five Years (+) (.000)*** Demographics of the City that the City Manager Is Presently Serving or Wants to Serve * 1998 Population Size * Median Household Income (+) (.001)*** * Percentage of Population

Not Born in USA (-) (.009)*** Racial Mix - White (-) (.000)***

Legend *p <.10 **p < .05

***p< .01 (+) = Positively Influences Tenure (-) = Negatively Influences Tenure

However, like leadership effectiveness, experience may not positively affect years of service or tenure.

Of the variables tapping the demographics of the community, the results show that median household income is statistically significant and positively related to tenure, indicating that managers in wealthier cites are likely to have longer tenures. However, the percentage of the population that is white is statistically significant but negatively related to the city manager's tenure. What does this finding indicate? It seems perplexing. The predominant race in all of the cities surveyed was white. Are racially homogenous cities more difficult for city managers to govern? Anec- dotally, there is some evidence that answers this question in the affirmative. One of the coauthors of this article was a city manager in one racially homogeneous and three racially diverse cities. Of the four cities he managed, he re- ports that the "racially homogenous city" with a supermajority white population was the most difficult to manage. Likewise, it was the only city from which he was fired. This finding obviously requires further investigation. Re- calling the one of the authors' personal experience as a

city manager, one of the most difficult cities to manage- and the only city from which he was fired-was a city with a supermajority white population. This finding requires further investigation.

The variable for ethnic diversity, the percentage of the

population born outside the United States, is statistically significant but negatively related to tenure. Judging by the size of the coefficient, this finding indicates that, all else being equal, for each unit increase in the percentage of the population born outside the United States, there is likely to be a decrease in the city manager's years of service (or tenure) of approximately eight months. This seems to indicate that ethnically heterogeneous commu- nities are fairly difficult to govern, possibly because the diverse cultures produce conflicting norms and customs difficult for an appointed city manager to comprehend or understand.

Applying the Fit Model Because this study is predicated on a belief in the im-




Table 2 Regression Analysis of the Fit Model by Function (Dependent Variable: Years Served in Present City-Tenure)

Independent variables Unstandardized Std. coefficients error

B Leadership dimensions Style flexibility score .088 Style effectiveness score -. 167 Personality dimensions E/I total preference score .056 S/N total preference score -.001 T/F total preference score .006 J/P total preference score .044

Perceptions of city manager Personality type positively correlated -.1 14 Values lead (dummy) .632

Perceptions of city council Performance evaluation-total 1.019

Demographics of city manager Experience -.445 Total number of cities served 1.409 City manager's age .288 Gender (dummy) -. 188 Race: white (dummy) 9.450 Race: black (dummy) 15.722 Education .217

Demographics of city 1998 population .277 Median household income .695 Percent of population: white -9.173 Percent of population: not born in the United States -.786 Notes: Multiple R: R2= .832; Adjusted R2 = .810 *p < .10; **p < .05; ***p < .01

Standardized coefficients

Beta

t Sig.

.076 .164 1.160 .248

.052 -.891 -3.237 .001***

.014 .604 4.169

.011 -.012 -.102

.018 .051 .354

.023 .129 1.941

.000***

.919

.724

.054*

.306 -.093 -.372 .711 1.804 .062 .350 .727

.147 1.743 6.949 .000***

.079

.399

.045 1.340 2.791 5.019 1.037

.779

.197 1.058

.296

-.374 .362

1.453 -.018

.943

.145

.042

.117

.318 -3.687

-.162

-5.631 3.535 6.401 -.140 3.386 3.132

.209

.356 3.526

-8.673

-2.652

.000***

.001***

.000***

.889

.001***

.002***

.835

.722

.001***

.000***

.009***

value for the E/I score was kept at its maximum and all other variables were held constant at the mean (table 3).

Notice that in table 3, the predicted values for years of service (tenure) fluctuate based on the minimum or maximum of each variable in the first two iterations. In an ef- fort to see how the negative relationship of the leadership-style effectiveness variable affects tenure, the maximum leadership effectiveness value was inserted into the for- mula on the third iteration, while all other variables were set at a constant (mean) value, and the result was a predicted value of 7.31 years of service (tenure). Finally, on the fourth iteration, a variable with a positive influence on tenure, the E/I score personality- type dimension was set at its maximum value while all other variables were held at a constant level. The resulting predicted value is 14.33 years of service (tenure). This positive influence of the E/I score personality- type dimension is supported when compared to the predicted value of 7.31 years for the negative effectiveness score.

portance of leadership styles, personality types, and managerial perceptions, the values of six key variables (table 3) derived from the regression analysis in table 2 are varied to gauge their predictive effect on tenure. The variables whose values are varied are leadership-style effectiveness, the E/I and J/P scores, the perceptions of the city council indicated by performance evaluations, and the age and experience of city managers.

In the first iteration, values for all six variables were kept at their minimum. In the second iteration, values for all the variables were kept at their maximum, while the value of the other variables in the model were held constant at the mean. The third iteration kept style effectiveness at its maximum while all other variables were held constant at their mean. Finally, in the fourth iteration, the

Table 3 Table of Predicted Values

Values Council's Leadership Personality City manager Pre perceptions dimensions dimensions demographics ve Performance Style E/I J/P Age Experience evaluations effectiveness score score

Min. 7 20 49.0 1 25 -4 Max 20 77 153.0 57 58* 28 1: Style effectiveness max. 16.68 77 102.1 24.11 35* 4.90 E/I max 16.68 52.23 153.0 24.11 35* 4.90 1,

*Age adjusted due to extreme outliers.

Conclusion and Implications The fit model confirmed that introverted and perceptive

personality types can have a positive impact on tenure, while higher leadership effectiveness scores are related to shorter tenures. In addition, age, race, experience, and the number of cities the city manager has served had a positive influence on tenure. The greater the percentage of the population that is white and the larger the percentage of citizens bor outside the United States, the greater the negative influence on the manager's tenure."I

A conclusion drawn from these findings is that, although it is perceived that a goal-oriented, high-achieving, action- oriented, vision-driven chief executive may be described as the preferred "transformational" leader in the literature (Bums 1978; Bass 1985, 1998; Conger 1989; Conger and

Kanungo 1987, 1988), it is the introverted personality type-the inwardly driven, perceptive leader

dicted or city manager who is adaptable to change and olues chaos and who does not receive high effectiveness

ratings-who experiences the longer tenure.'2 In

4.00 short, the old adage comes to mind, "If you want to 3.99 succeed in this organization, don't bring attention

to yourself and don't make waves." This finding 7.31 supports the arguments made by critics of New 4.33 Public Management, who warn against the dangers

posed to democratic governance and accountabil-




ity by risk-taking and radical entrepreneurial managers (Moe 1994; Terry 1998).

One city manager involved in the study, who supported the finding that personality positively affects tenure, stated, "I have long believed that personality, communication and interaction skills were the key components to success as a city manager. I have noticed that more managers lose their jobs because of personality differences, ... [not] because of technical incompetence. In fact, because of personal differences, councils will search for errors, whereas, if you are liked, everyone understands that mistakes can happen" (confidential personal communication, August 23, 2000).

What are the implications of this research? We believe this research provides contributions to scholarly research, the city management profession, public policy makers, and practitioners in general.

For scholars, this research adds a quantitative dimension to the study of leadership and personality type on one of the most itinerant professions in local government and city management. Chemers (1997), Bennis and Townsend (1995), Badaracco and Ellsworth (1989), Fiedler (1967), Aldrich and Pfeffer (1976), Hannan and Freeman (1977), Aldrich (1979), Carroll (1988), and McKelvey and Aldrich (1983) have been asking for years whether leaders and organizations must have an appropriate fit with those they lead and with their environment. This research has focused on the confluence of personality and leadership, that is, the concept of the psychology of leadership. It affirms the need to emphasize personality traits as well as leadership- style effectiveness as a component of and complement to the literature. It emphasizes the importance of blending theory and practice to improve relationships and understanding between individuals and diverse groups. Knowl- edge of this model by the academician will prompt more research and enable its precepts to be taught in the class- room in order to improve the literature and to assist poten- tial or existing chief executives.

From the perspective of the city management profession, the ICMA will profit from this research if it promotes its findings and uses its format, or a similar format, for future studies. Revisiting this subject, possibly every three to five years, would enable the ICMA to establish valuable historical data that will benefit its members and establish trends or changes over time among personality types, leadership styles, and the tenure of city managers. In addition, further empirical investigation would improve the predict- ability of the fit model. During its annual conference, the ICMA could offer sessions on personality type and leadership styles, their relationship to performance evaluations, and how tenure can be improved by reviewing the fit model.

For public policy makers, this research indicates it would be advantageous for city councils to familiarize themselves with this model and its related variables when they are seek-

ing a new manager or exploring ways to improve commu- nications with their existing city manager. In order for the council-manager plan to function as designed, it requires unencumbered communication, trust, and confidence on the part of the city council and its manager. The model is multidimensional and examines fit. To be adequately fitted, one dimension of the model must work coterminously with the others. City councils that are hiring a new city manager or evaluating an existing manager would be in a better position to understand the type of personality to complement their own. If the city council requires appli- cants for the chief executive position to take the personality inventory, so should they. The hiring process is always a difficult and to some degree risky process; however, hiring a city manager is one of the most important decisions a policy body will make. Having all of the tools available will reduce risk and improve the knowledge of the city council in order to make a truly informed choice.

For practitioners in general, the research indicates that city managers do not have to rely on intuition to determine when it may be time to leave a community or to entertain applying for a city manager position in a new city. The fit model provides a meaningful tool for present and future city managers to become purposefully conscious of their respective personality type and dominant leadership style in relationship to the culturally heterogeneous cities they lead and manage. Armed with such consciousness, current and prospective city managers will be empowered with the knowledge that will help them to determine whether they are appropriately fitted with the city council and the citizens they are expected to serve. Current and prospective managers will also have an awareness of whether they should stay in their existing community, pursue another community as its chief executive, or should withdraw from an applicant pool in which they are a candidate. As a word of caution, however, the fit model is a representation of

reality. Although it is an important dimension of tenure, it is not the only dimension of long-term employment and a successful career.

The fit model also shows that city managers can develop and improve their interpretative skills related to the personalities of others and, most of all, to themselves. It will facilitate communication that fosters an understanding of different opinions and beliefs to establish workable agreements and mutual accommodations between different groups and individuals. In order to develop such interpretative skills, the city manager must engage in open dia- logue and critical analysis and must understand the complex relationships between personality types and the leadership styles of others and themselves. The person that occupies the position of city manager must maintain a delicate balance or fit between the demand for responsiveness from a democratically elected body-the city council-and the




expectations of a complex professional organization await-

ing administrative leadership and vision.

Finally, even though this study has focused on city man-

agers, given the importance of personality and leadership styles in determining the fit of city managers, we feel that similar analyses of personality and leadership may be useful in analyzing the tenure of other appointed chief executives in public, private, and not-for-profit organizations. If the lessons learned from this study are put into practice, opposite personality types may help each other if they understand how they are different and appreciate the strength possible in their diversity. When two or more people see

things jointly that are not visible to either separately, they are approaching the problem from different perspectives. Effective leadership means seeing and understanding each other's point of view and perceptions and having the knowl-

edge of timing to know just when, or when not, to give one's

expressions. Longer tenure can be possible with skillful ap- preciation of others' strengths, knowledge, and experience. Therefore, leaders in the new millennium must have a new awareness of leadership psychology and discover that to enhance their own ability to lead, they must encourage de-

velopment of leadership skills in their followers.

Notes

1. The concept of tenure has two dimensions, voluntary and

involuntary separation. According to Bill Hansell, executive director of the International City/County Management Association, "there is still a strong ethic in this profession that to move up you must move out" (personal communication, June 20, 2000). This study does not distinguish between these two forms of separation and their influence on tenure.

2. If the focus of the study were attitudinal dimensions of lead-

ership, then other instruments such the Leader Behavior

Description Questionnaire-IX (LBDQ-IX) would be pref- erable (Gibson, Ivancevich, and Donnelly 1994,409). How- ever, the emphasis of this study is the leader's or city manager's perceived behavioral dimensions of effectiveness and flexibility, the various leadership styles of city managers, and the effect of one or more of these dimensions on the city manager's tenure. For this reason, the LBAII-Self is the most appropriate instrument.

3. Although the same response bias is associated with other self-assessment instruments, the LBAII-Self is not used in isolation in this study. Others have confirmed this instrument as a reliable instrument for juxtaposing, correlating, and examining leadership dimensions such as flexibility and effectiveness with the Myers-Briggs indicators (Anastasi and Urbina 1997; Brownsword 1987; Bunda 1998; Choca 1998; Eysenck and Eysenck 1969; Hirsh and Kummerow 1990; Keirsey and Bates 1984; Kummerow, Barger, and Kirby 1997).

4. Personality analysis is not the purpose of this study. The use of personality types as determined by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is merely a helpful tool for understanding the re-

lationship among council preferences, managerial type, and

managerial tenure; it has limitations. The diagnostic instruments used measure only one aspect of personality: preferences in thinking and communication. They do not measure ability, intelligence, or experience (Leonard and Straus 1997, 121). They do, however, represent the most widely used

personality-assessment instruments in the world. Although the Myers-Briggs typology has a long and well-documented record of identifying personality traits, Anastasi and Urbina caution that "the dangers of reifying types and using them

simplistically or over inclusively as explanatory concepts always need to be kept in mind" (1997, 450). They remind us that, "regardless of how useful or popular such constructs

may be, they will undoubtedly coexist with-not replace- approaches that emphasize the unique aspects of individuals and of their behavior" (450).

5. There are numerous personality tests and profiles available in the literature. After a review of several works that cri-

tique personality tests (Anastasi and Urbina 1997; Brownsword 1987; Bunda 1998; Choca 1998; Eysenck and

Eysenck 1969; Hirsh and Kummerow 1990; Keirsey and Bates 1984; Kummerow, Barger, and Kirby 1997), we con- cluded that the well-known Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Form G is the most suitable instrument for identifying personalities and determining how personality types can be correlated for the dimensions of flexibility and effectiveness of various leadership styles exhibited by city managers. Of the three forms published by Myers-Briggs, Form G is the standard form and provides continuous scores, which are imperative for meaningful statistical research and correlations with other instruments (Myers and McCaulley 1985, 7).

6. The dummy variable "Val. lead." was created so that if the

city manager perceived the city council as valuing the

manager's leadership by a majority or unanimous vote of its members, a code of 1 was assigned to the response. If the

city council was perceived as valuing the city manager's lead-

ership by less than a minority vote of its members or not at all, such a response was coded 0. The rationale for this manner of coding is that the city manager remains in a city as

long as a majority of the city council members have confidence in his or her ability to lead and to perform the duties

expected of a municipal chief executive. Therefore, even if a

minority of the city council valued the manager's leadership, in most cases the city manager would be terminated.

7. City managers were asked to report performance evaluation data for the past five years on the city manager data sheet. From these data an average performance-evaluation number was derived. This composite variable, which takes into consideration the performance evaluations of city managers over the last five years, represents the mean performance evaluations assigned by the city council of each manager over the five-year period, adjusted for the number of man-

agers evaluated each year.




8. Several pre-regression diagnostics were run to check for possible collinearity among the independent variables in the model. The results of the diagnostics, including bivariate correlations, indicated no correlations high enough to indicate a problem in model specification.

9. The regression was run without including a constant, for two reasons: (1) theoretically, there is no a priori reason to include a constant; and (2) the constant, when included in the regression, was statistically insignificant. As Gujarati points out, one can have a zero intercept, or pass through the regression origin, if the intercept included in the model has a statistically insignificant value; statistically the intercept is zero. "Consequently, when such an event occurs, for all practical purposes, we have a regression through its origin" (1988, 135-38).

10. The positive and negative directions of each paired personality type indicate a preference for either the right letter or left letter of the dichotomous Myers-Briggs personality dimension. In addition, the total score of each dichotomous personality was coded in such a manner that the number is continuous. In a rather ingenious method, the score of 100 is the pivot point. If, for instance, an individual's score for E (extroverted) was 10 and his or her score for the dichotomous letter I (introverted) was 5, then the total continuous score would be 95, with an emphasis on the left side of the dichotomous pair. If the score was reversed, say the E (extroverted) score was 5 and the I (introverted) score was 10, then the total continuous score would be 105, indicating a leaning toward introverted, the dimension on the right.

11. A word of caution, however, is in order. Although the statistical examinations provide empirical support for some of the hypotheses and the model, one must remember these results are based on a finite sample population, regardless of its randomness. We can profit from what the results tell us only if we realize the model is not a substitute for practical applications of good judgment, and it should not be reified.

12. A qualifying word, however, comes from the literature on managers with an "adaptable personality" who have a positive experience with tenure. Myers and McCaulley (1985) warn, "If not balanced by judgment, P (perceiving) may be correlated with undependability" (208). Moreover, although the I (introvert) and P (perceiving) personality-type dimensions had a positive correlation to performance evaluation, that does not mean city managers whose personality type does not include an I or a P cannot benefit from this model. On the contrary, any manager with any of the other personality-type dimensions would be able to benefit from this model by surrounding themselves with individuals of personality types that would complement their own.

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know yourself and take charge of your own destiny: the "fit model" of leadership

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