The incremental validity of communication styles over personality traits for leader outcomes

Personality traits and communication styles are interlinked, as evidenced by high convergent correlations. Nevertheless, communication styles may have a stronger conceptual link to leader outcomes than broad personality traits do, as they are represented by a subset of behavior that is specifically important for leaders. As expected, we found that expressive and precise communication styles have incremental validity over the personality dimensions extraversion and conscientiousness in the prediction of leader criteria. The results of this study underscore the relevance of communicative behavior for leaders, provide a new concept to use in future leadership research, and may help leader development practitioners in better focusing communication training efforts.