The Impact of the Big Five Personality Traits on the Leadership Styles : An Empirical Study Applied on the Branch Managers of Banks Working at the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

The aim of this study is to examine the five big traits(extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientious, and neuroticism), and to investigate their impact on the prevailing leadership style of the branch managers of banks working at Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. To achieve this aim, the study utilized a questionnaire consists of two validated, well established, international instruments: the first one is the Big Five Inventory (BFI) developed by John and Srivastava (1999) and includes 44-item inventory that measures an individual on the big five factors (dimensions) of personality, the second instrument called Least Preferred Coworker Scale (LPC) scale developed by Fiedler to identify a person’s dominant leadership style. This questionnaire has been distributed to a simple random sample consist of 265 branch managers of those banks. A total of 105 complete questionnaires has been received back at a response rate of 40%. After analyzing data and testing hypotheses, the study revealed a lack of impact of the big five personality traits on the leadership styles of the branch managers of the banks working in Jordan, this lack of impact appeared in both cases: combined five traits, and individual one trait. The study revealed also that four of the five personality traits (extraversion, openness, conscientious, and neuroticism) are available at an unaccepted level in the traits and attributes of the branch managers of banks working in Jordan, meanwhile the trait agreeableness is the only trait available at an accepted level on the traits of those managers.


Introduction
Daft (2014) debated that a basic difference between management and leadership is that management focuses on stability, encourages following standard procedures and problem solving within organizational system.Leadership fosters visionary looking, innovative thinking, and exploring novel ideas and methods of doing job, in other words manager takes care of your current place, meanwhile leader holds you to a preferred place, you didn't imagine that you can reach it alone.Among all the ideas and writings about leadership, three issues stand out; people, impact, and objectives.Leadership occurs among people, involves the use of impact, and is used to achieve objectives.Leadership can be defined as the ability to regulate and direct people efforts towards the achievement of their goals by highly motivating the employees from an organization.Organizational performance can be affected by some factors, such as, satisfaction, commitment, and motivation (Kim, 2005).Effective leaders can offer their employee higher quality relationships, higher level of adhesiveness, and can provide them higher job satisfaction.
Although many theories exist to explain the different leadership styles and behaviors, Daft also argued that no one of them neglected the impact of leader's personal characteristics on his leadership style, early efforts to explain leadership success focused on the leader's personality and traits.Habitually, leaders were perceived to have different characteristics than their followers.Personality traits representing the Five Factor Model (i.e., Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Emotional Stability) as well as narrow traits (i.e., other personality traits which are of narrower conceptual scope than the Big Five, such as Optimism, Sense of Identity, and Work Drive (Lounsbury et al., 2009).
In his article The art of better retail banking Croxford (2005) argued that bank's employees are important in the process of selling bank products to the customers.According to him, bank managers can affect opinions.Bank employees are able to improve the customer value and enhance customer relationship with the bank.He illustrated that to be able to do that, bank employees need leaders to manage them, because leaders in the bank play a crucial role.
In this study, five big traits of branch managers are examined to investigate their impact on the dominant leadership style in the banking industry at Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Problem Statement and Questions
Goetch and Davis (2006) illustrated that Perhaps the oldest debate about leadership revolves around this question: Are the leader born or made?Can leadership skills be learned or must they be inherent?This debate has never been settled and probably never will be.There are proponents on both sides of the debate, and this polarity is not likely to change because, as often the case in such controversies, both sides partially right.Because this debate will never be settled, this research tries to contribute by offering information that can be of value to this debate, and providing practical results that can be beneficiary to one or both sides of the debate.In this study, we are concerned with the factors that articulate leaders attributes from non-traditional point of view, so the research utilizes behavioral factors known as the five big personality traits, to examine if these traits have an impact on different leadership styles, as well as to answer the following questions: 1).To which level are the big five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness neuroticism and, openness) are available in the attributes and characteristics of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan?
2).What is the dominant leadership style(task-oriented, or relational-oriented leadership) of the branch managers the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan?
3).Are there an impact of the big five personality traits on the leadership styles of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan? 4).Are there any significant differences of the big five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness neuroticism and, openness) availability in the attributes and characteristics of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, refers to the type of bank (commercial versus Islamic)?5).Are there any significant difference of the leadership styles of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, refers to the type of bank (commercial versus Islamic)?

First Main Hypothesis
H 1 : There is a significant impact (at α ≤ 0.05) of the big five personality traits on the leadership styles of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
The following sub hypotheses have been derived from the first main hypothesis : H 11 : There is a significant impact (at α ≤ 0.05) of extraversion trait on the leadership styles of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
H 12 : There is a significant impact (at α ≤ 0.05) of agreeableness trait on the leadership styles of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
H 13 : There is a significant impact (at α ≤ 0.05) of neuroticism trait on the leadership styles of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
H 14 : There is a significant impact (at α ≤ 0.05) of conscientiousness trait on the leadership styles of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
H 15 : There is a significant impact (at α ≤ 0.05) of openness trait on the leadership styles of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Second Main Hypothesis
H 2 : There are significant differences(at α ≤ 0.05)of the big five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness neuroticism and, openness) availability in the attributes and characteristics of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, refers to the type of bank (commercial versus Islamic) Third Main Hypothesis H 3 : There are significant differences (at α ≤ 0.05) of the leadership styles of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, refers to the type of bank (commercial versus Islamic).Denisi and Griffin (2011) argued that skills and abilities are important attributes for employee selection beside education and experience.Skills and abilities relate more precisely to specific qualification of an individual and his ability to succeed in performing specific job, they also argued that as many organizations are changing their classicstructures and traditional methods of doing jobs and moving towards team-based operating systems, those organizations must pay more efforts on the employment of individuals who have the necessary skills to work effectively in teams.In the contemporary changing environment, it is important to an organization to assess personal characteristics because they are believed to reflect the individual personality and may be an important factor to his performance.In recent years a great amount of attention has been paid to instruments that measure the big five personality traits.According to Dessler (2012) the big five personality are: extraversion (the desire to be social, firm, and experience others in positive influence such as power and enthusiasm), openness to experiences (the tendency to be imaginative, non-conforming, non-traditional and independent), agreeableness (the desire to be trustful, agree with others, take care of others, be polite and kind with them), conscientiousness(consist of two dependent aspects, achievement and dependability), neuroticism (the desire to behave neutrally and don't show others exact emotions, specially negative effects, such as tension, insecurity, controversy, and hate ).These big five personality traits, which tend to be more behavioural than cognitive or emotional, are of high importance for job achievement than are the classical individuals characteristics.Lanunsbuty et al. ( 2009) see that those traditional personality are of narrower conceptual scope than the big five traits, such as: optimism(inclination to be optimistic, and have positive view to what is coming in future), sense of identity(knowing himself well, aware where he is standing now and where is he going), tough mindedness(objective and use data and logic as a base of making his decisions instead of relying on his feeling ,values, and intuition), and work drive( tendency to be hard working, industrious, and inclined to put in much time and effort to reach goals and achievement at high level).

Literature Review
The Study of Tok (2011) revealed that people who participate in dangerous sports are characterized with higher levels of extraversion and openness to experience and characterized with lower levels of conscientiousness and neuroticism in their traits.The study revealed also that estimation of Big Five personality traits can be valuable to check individuals' inclination to enter adventures or share risky sports.The study of Joshanloo and Samaneh, (2009) entitled: Big Five Personality Traits and Self-Esteem as Predictors of Life Satisfaction in Iranian Muslim University Students examined the relation between the Big Five personality traits, self-esteem, and life satisfaction of students at the University of Tehran/ Iran.Findings revealed that the Big Five personality traits explained about 25% of the variance in life satisfaction scores Among the Big Five traits, extraversion and neuroticism were found to be the strongest predictors of life satisfaction.In addition, it was found that self-esteem significantly predicted life satisfaction over and above the Big Five personality traits.Findings also showed that self-esteem completely mediated the influence of conscientiousness and agreeableness on life satisfaction, while the influence of extraversion and neuroticism on life satisfaction was partially mediated by self-esteem.Furthermore, findings revealed that female students scored significantly higher than male students on life satisfaction.Sex also could moderate the relation between conscientiousness and life satisfaction.This relation was found to be significantly stronger for female students.Implications of the results are discussed with reference to prior studies on the relation between personality traits and different aspects of well-being in Iran.Schin and Racovita (2013) defined Leadership as the ability of a person to organize and focus the human efforts on the accomplishment of a goal by generating a high level of motivation to all the employees from an organization, organizational performance may be influenced by a number of factors, such as, the employees' high satisfaction, high commitment, and high motivation, thus effective leadership provides higher quality relationships among managers and employees, a sense of cohesiveness, personal development and higher levels of satisfaction among those conducting the work.The study of Hui (2012) entitled: A Study on the Effects of Leadership Style on Organizational Commitment in Catering Industry concluded that in such a fiercely competitive environment in catering industry, human resource plays a critical role in maintaining the stability and growth of the industry, the success of an organization depends on leadership behaviours, about 45%-60%, while leadership behaviours rely on leadership styles.The importance of leadership style for an organization is apparent.human resource management mainly tends to enhance the efficacy of employment from the aspects of managers that organizational commitment of employees toward supervisors is not taken into account.The study of Othman et al. (2013) entitled: Does a Transformational and Transactional Leadership Style Predict Organizational Commitment among Public University Lecturers in Nigeria? was conducted to seek the relationship between leadership styles and organizational commitment among Nigerian public university lecturers, the survey of this study was employed to collect data from 151 Nigerian public university lecturers currently undergoing their post-graduate studies in selected Malaysian universities, the results showed indicated that transformational and transactional leadership styles are positively related to employee organizational commitment among Nigerian public University lecturers.Jaroslav (2013) conducted study to prove a relationship between applied leadership style of branch managers and productiveness of bank sales clerks and room for their productiveness improvement applicable in the banking sector in Slovakia.The sample of study conducted on Opinions of branch managers about the applicable leadership style and room for sales clerks' productiveness improvement, the results confirmed that the directive style of leadership is the mandatory style in the banking sector in Slovakia whereas the intensity of its implementation during the analysis period was increased.The research has also shown that there is a direct connection between the dominant style of leadership and room for improvement of sales clerks' productiveness, because the growth of the intensity of directive style in this case led to lower productiveness of the average bank sales clerks.Winkler (2010) demonstrated that although many theories exist to explain the different leadership styles and behaviours, no one of them neglected the impact of leader's personal characteristics on his leadership styles, early efforts to understand leadership success focused on the leader's characteristics or traits, traditionally, leaders were seen as having different personality traits from those of followers.The study of Monzan et al. (2014)aimed to explored the moderating role of followers' agreeableness and extraversion in the relationship between authentic leadership (using transactional leadership as reference group) and followers' loyalty.The experimental sample consisted of 224 students of the University of Valencia (Spain).Participants were enrolled in a university Organizational Psychology course, their participation was a way to meet a course requirement, their age ranged from 18 to 47 years, from the total sample, 67.9% were female and 32.1% were male; 66.1% were full-time students, and the remaining 33.9% combined their studies with full or part-time jobs.The study used the Big Five Questionnaire (BFQ; Caprara, Barbaranelli, Borgogni, & Perugini, 1993), in its Spanish version (Bermúdez, 1995).The results revealed that participants with low levels of agreeableness reported higher levels of loyalty toward the leader in the authentic leadership condition than in the transactional leadership condition.However, participants with high levels of agreeableness did not show significant differences between the authentic leadership and transactional leadership conditions.The opposite occurred for extraversion.Participants with high levels of extraversion displayed higher levels of loyalty in the authentic leadership condition than in the transactional leadership condition, whereas this did not occur for participants with low scores on this trait.Our results show that these traits (agreeableness and extraversion) moderate the relationship between leadership style and followers' loyalty, providing support for a contingency approach.The study of Hoogh et al. (2005) that was conducted to investigate the relationships between the big five personality traits and both charismatic and transactional leadership behaviour, and whether dynamism (the degree that the work environment is deemed dynamic) moderates these relationships, showed that perceived dynamic work environment moderated the relationships of four of the big five-factors with both charismatic and transactional leadership, also charismatic leadership was positively related to perceived effectiveness, but only in dynamic contexts.

Population and Sample
The population of this research consist of all the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.According to the Annual Report of Central Bank of Jordan (2012), The total number of Banks working in Jordan are 27 (including Central Bank of Jordan), with total number of branch managers equal to 627 branch managers, the total number of banks comprises of 17 local and 10 foreign banks, they are also consist of one Federal, 22 commercial and 4 Islamic banks(The details are illustrated in Appendix 1).
The research utilized a simple random sample of a size of 265 branch managers selected randomly, the sample size was defined according to Sekaran (2007) "the sample size for a given population size".A questionnaire has been developed and distributed to the sample members, a total of 105 complete has been received back at a response rate of 40%.

Research Instrument
For the purpose of gathering the necessary data from its primary resources, the research used a questionnaire consists of two validated , well established, international instruments: the first one is the Big Five Inventory (BFI) developed by John and Srivastava (1999) and includes 44-item inventory that measures an individual on the Big Five Factors (dimensions) of personality (see appendix 2), the second instrument called Least Preferred Co-worker Scale (LPC) scale developed by Fiedler to identify a person's dominant leadership style (see appendix 3).

Data Analysis and Interpretation
To answer research questions, and to test research hypotheses, the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used and the following statistical analysis were applied: 1).Availability of the big five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and, openness) in the attributes and characteristics of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan : The study applied the 44 item inventory that measures an individual on the big five dimensions of personality that was recreated from the big five inventory (BFI) developed by John and Strivastava (1999).The results of the tests are illustrated in table-1, the sample statistics (at test value of µ ≥ 3.5) show that Agreeableness trait (µ = 3.6138) is available at an accepted level in the attributes and characteristics of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.On the other hand openness (µ = 3.224), conscientiousness(µ = 3.1143) are available at an un accepted level,, meanwhile the trait neuroticism has poor level of availability (µ = 2.7548) in the attributes of those managers.But the fifth trait extraversion has a conflicting result (µ = 3.4169), so to check this result we applied one sample t-test on this trait, the result revealed an unaccepted level of extraversion on the traits of the branch managers of Jordanian banks (calculated t-value = -1.116,less than tabulated t-value = 2.2,& sig = .267more than α ≤ 0.05).3).Testing the first main hypotheses (H 1 ): The Impact of the big five personality traits on the leadership styles of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
This first main hypotheses was tested using simple linear regression.From table 3 & table 4 we observe the following results:  Calculated value of (R) reveal a very weak correlation between the big five personality traits and leadership style (R=.169). Calculated value of coefficient of determination (R 2 ), shows that the change in the big five personality traits is not responsible for a reasonable amount of the change that occurred in the leadership style( R 2 = 0.029)  At a level of significant, α ≤ 0.05, and degree of freedom df= 104, the tabulated value of F = 4 Now from table -4, the calculated values of F = .586This means that calculated value of F is less than tabulated value. The calculated level of significance (p-value =.711) is much higher than the test level of significance (p-value≤ 0.05).
For the above reasons we accept the null hypotheses which states a lack of impact of the big five personality traits(combined)on the leadership styles of the branch managers of the studied banks.These first sub hypotheses were tested using multiple linear regression.From Table 5, we observe that calculated t-value for each trait are respectively: .441,-.828, -.494, -1.144, .367.All of them are lower than the tabulated t-value = 2.01.Testing the same five hypotheses using P-value test, shows that the P-value of the five traits are respectively: .66,.41,.622,.255,.714.All of these value are higher than the test significance level (α ≤ 0.05).
For the above reasons we accept the null hypotheses which states a lack of Impact of each individual trait of the big five personality (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness neuroticism and, openness) on the leadership styles of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.This hypotheses was tested using one way analysis of variance (ANOVA), From Table 6, we observe that calculated F-value for extraversion, openness, conscientious traits are respectively: 0.346, 2.096, 0.024.They are all lower than the tabulated F-value = 4.Using P-value test also reveals that the P-value of these three traits are respectively: 0.558, 0.151, and 0.878, the value of each of them is higher than the test significance level (α ≤ 0.05), which mean that there are no differences in those three traits between the Commercial and Islamic banks managers.On the other hand, the calculated F-value of agreeableness, neuroticism are 6.408, and 4.368, and the p-value of them are 0.013.And 0.039 which means that there are differences in these tow traits between the Commercial and Islamic banks managers.This hypotheses was tested using one way analysis of variance (ANOVA), From Table 7, we observe that calculated F-value for leadership = 6.808 (higher than tabulated F-value = 4), and the calculated p-value = 0.010 (higher than tabulated p-value α ≤ .05),thus we reject the null hypotheses, and accept that there are differences in the leadership styles between the Commercial and Islamic banks manager.

Conclusion
After analyzing data and testing hypotheses, the study arrived the following conclusions:  Four of the five personality traits (extraversion, openness, conscientious, and neuroticism) are available at an unaccepted level in the traits and attributes of the branch managers of banks working in Jordan, meanwhile the trait agreeableness is the only trait available at an accepted level on the traits of those managers. The dominant leadership style of the branch managers of banks working in Jordan is relational-oriented leadership. A lack of impact of the big five personality traits on the leadership styles of the branch managers of the of banks working in Jordan, this lack of impact occur for both cases: combined five traits, or individual one trait. There are no differences in the level of availability of three of the big five traits between the Commercial and Islamic banks managers, those traits are: extraversion, openness, and conscientious. There are differences in the level of availability of tow of the big five traits between the Commercial and Islamic banks managers, those traits are: agreeableness, and neuroticism. There are differences in the leadership styles between the Commercial and Islamic banks manager.

Discussion
1).Although Jordan economy is historically open, Jordan has an accepted level of political and media liberty, and Jordan society is characterized by religious and social pluralism which may explain the diversity in Jordanian society, but Jordan still a part of an area in which conservative culture is dominant.People in this culture (in which collectivism and ascription are dominant values),are looking for people who care about them, look after them, and satisfy their needs, and in return offer them their loyalty and trust.This issue explain why an accepted level of agreeableness is available in the attributes of banks branch managers.In this culture people are emotional and express their feelings, this explain why neuroticism is available at un accepted level in the attributes of studied managers.In the same manner we can explain the lack of extraversion, openness, and conscientious in their attributes.
2).Branch managers of banks working in Jordan are supposed to have the ability to deal with people in different circumstance: ordinary citizens, business people, urban and rural residents, and different ages.Therefore they must be able to satisfy these various categories, this may explain why the relational-oriented leadership style is the dominant among the branch managers of banks working at the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Table 1 .
One-Sample Statistics of five personality traits If the score is 65 to 72, the style is a mixture of both, and it is up to you to determine which leadership style is most like the person is.The results of this test are illustrated in table 2, and reveals that the dominant leadership style of the bank branch managers is relational-oriented (frequency = 60 from 105 at a percent = 57.1%).
The study applied an instrument called Least Preferred Co-worker Scale (LPC) scale developed by Fiedler to identify a person's dominant leadership style.(see appendix 2).Fiedler believes that this style is a relatively fixed part of one's personality, and is therefore difficult to change.If the score is 73 or above, the person is considered a "relationship-oriented" leader.If the score is 64 or below, the person is considered a "task-oriented" leader.

Table 3 .
Testing first main hypotheses (H 1 )-model summary of regression test

Table 4 .
Testing first main hypotheses (H 1 )-regression test result Testing the first five sub hypotheses (H 11 , H 12 , H 13 , H 14 , H 15 ): The Impact of each individual trait of the big five personality (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness neuroticism and, openness) on the leadership styles of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Table 5 .
Testing first five sub hypothesis (H 11 , H 12 , H 13 , H 14 , H 15 )-multiple regression results Testing the second main hypotheses H 2 : Differences of the big five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness neuroticism and, openness) availability in the attributes and characteristics of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, refers to the type of bank (commercial versus Islamic).

Table 6 .
Testing second main hypotheses: ANOVA test results for big five personality traits Testing the third main hypotheses H 3 : Differences of the leadership styles of the branch managers of the banks working in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, refers to the type of bank(commercial versus Islamic)

Table 7 .
Testing third main hypotheses: ANOVA test results for leadership

Appendix 2. Big Five Inventory (BFI)
Source: CentralBank of Jordan, Forty Annual Report, 2012, p. 3.Here are a number of characteristics that may or may not apply to you.For example, doyou agree that you are someone who likes to spend time with others?Please write a number next to each statement to indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with that statement.