Samenvatting

Many students graduating in higher education will achieve a managerial or professional position, with leadership qualities being highly important. The need to reflect on leadership as an important developmental goal in higher education is highlighted by pointing out that many curricula, especially in the managerial, organisational and economic domain, include specific courses on leadership. It seems that some of our thinking on leadership needs revision. According to Kellerman, leaders’ ability to connect to followers is paramount to gain and remain in power. Dutch management scholar Manfred Kets de Vries (2004) underlines that the main responsibility of a leader is to envision and inspire. In this chapter we will examine the role of personality and personal values in the ability of informal leaders to inspire other team members. In the first section we will elaborate on transformational leadership and shared leadership. In the next, we will link these forms of leadership to personality and personal values. In the third section the findings of our empirical study will be discussed. We conclude with the implications of our study for leadership practice and the scholarly field of leadership. From an educational point of view our findings are important. The results shed additional light on the importance of personality traits on leadership, and informal leadership in particular. As leadership is an important phenomenon in society and working life, (under)graduates can be assisted in understanding and developing it. But in the context of this book it should be highlighted that transformational leadership is highly relevant in knowledge innovation (García-Morales et al., 2012), which is a core issue in higher education. Consequently, inspiring others is relevant, because group work is commonly used in higher education. Understanding group dynamics within student teams, informal leadership specifically, can help lecturers to explain and discuss effective and ineffective group work. In our opinion, the results of this study offer interesting evidence-based insights to reflect on and develop those personal characteristics that can be important for informal leadership effectiveness.