THE SELECTION AND TRAINING OF LEADERS 



483 



and the Marine Corps have evidently found 

 sociometric measures, based on nominations 

 for leadership positions by fellow-members of 

 a group, to be among the most effective 

 single predictors of leadership success of the 

 measures they have investigated. In the 

 Marine Corps study (95), nominations by 

 fellow officer candidates correlated as high 

 as 0.47 with ratings given later in combat 

 by superior officers. For West Point cadets, 

 a correlation of 0.51 was found between simi- 

 lar sociometric measures and Officer Effi- 

 ciency Report standings 18 months later (5). 

 Of interest also is an experiment by the 

 British Army in basing officer candidate se- 

 lection on nominations bj- enlisted men, 

 NCO's, and junior officers (89). This was 

 reported to yield many suitable candidates 

 who otherwise would have been neglected. 

 Just what sociometric indices mean in terms 

 of prevailing conceptions of personality is 

 by no means clear, but they apparently do 

 tap something fairly characteristic of indi- 

 viduals (,56). 



Other procedures which have received sys- 

 tematic attention are the interview and the 

 biographical information blank. The Army, 

 for example, found it possible to develop a 

 quantified interview procedure involving no 

 reference to other data, which had a reliabil- 

 ity of 0.87 and a validity of 0.37 (against a 

 nominating criterion), in contrast to a valid- 

 ity of about 0.12 for the usual Army board 

 procedure in which all records about the 

 candidate were available (84) . A Biograph- 

 ical Information Blank also developed by the 

 Adjutant General's Department had about 

 the same validity (82). Chappie and Don- 

 ald (20) have reported a method for record- 

 ing and analyzing various characteristics of 

 an individual's conversation in an interview, 

 and have claimed considerable success in 

 differentiating effective and ineffective lead- 

 ers. Some evidence of the selection value 

 of a stress interview procedure has been re- 

 ported by Freeman et al. (31). 



Finally we may note the studies of the 

 personalities of successful business executives 



by Henry, Gardner, and their associates, 

 using primarily the Thematic Apperception 

 Test and short, undirected interviews. Al- 

 though full data have not been published, 

 preliminary reports (44) appear very prom- 

 ising. 



These procedures seem to have in common 

 a comprehensive approach to the individual 

 personality, with an emphasis upon tenden- 

 cies relevant to social participation. The 

 evidence thus far available concerning their 

 validity is not highly impressive, but the 

 possibilities for development would seem to 

 be. Further work on group situation tests, 

 in particular, would be desirable. If these 

 various techniques can bs rationalized in 

 terms of personality theory,^" and evaluated 

 with due regard to the significant aspects of 

 particular leadership situations, the outlook 

 for leader selection may not be too dark. 



Leadership Training 



Everyday experience, together with the 

 results of a few small-scale experimental 

 studies (e.g., 9, 66), leave no doubt that in 

 general the performance of leaders can be 

 improved through training, but questions 

 remain as to the best procedures for doing 

 this and as to the hmits of their effectiveness. 



With respect to techniques, it appears 

 more than probable that the inspirational 

 lectures and readings sanctified by tradition, 

 no matter how "streamlined" they may be 

 m accordance with the latest public relations 

 manual, are largely futile. One suspects — • 

 and the question could easily be answered — 

 that the same holds true of the more recent 

 trend toward "scientific" courses about hu- 

 man relationships or leadership. With lead- 

 ership, as with technical training, it is prob- 

 ably practicing the job which counts. The 

 outstanding development in this connection 

 in recent studies of leadership training is the 

 role-playing technique, whereby in small, 

 informal groups individuals successively take 



1" It is not unlikely that personality theory 

 will have to be re-rationalized in light of such 

 studies. 



