Pathways to Career and Leadership Success: Part 1—A Psychosocial Profile of $100k Professionals

Abstract

This study profiled the individual difference characteristics of extraordinarily successful business professionals. The goal was to identify which background factors, personality traits, work styles, leadership style, and early life experiences characterized high achievers. Self-report data was collected from a survey of 56 women and 50 men, mostly from the United States. Everyone in the sample had an annual income that exceeded $100,000, and 60% were millionaires or multimillionaires. Most of the sample were middle age, White, married with children living at home, in good health, had a graduate level education, worked in a senior-level position, owned their own business, and were highly satisfied with their lives. The sample was much higher than norms on several of the individual difference factors linked to career success in past research, including the personality trait of conscientiousness, transformational style of leadership, resilience/flexibility, political use of interpersonal communication skills, and being mentored earlier in their career. The developmental profile featured having college-educated parents, a middle-class upbringing, and normative levels of adverse childhood experiences. Implications are discussed for Employee Assistance Program services and for leadership and organizational development. See other article (Part 2) for examination of gender differences in all of the measures in this study and for qualitative data findings on major positive and negative events on career path, success factors unique to women, and the attributes of effective leadership in general.

KEYWORDS:

• career
• executive coaching
• leadership
• mentor
• personality
• resilience
• success

Notes

Note. N = 102 to 106.

Note. N = 102 to 106. All items rated on a 1–7 scale, with higher scores indicating more of the construct.

Note. N = 104. ^a Education norm data from U.S. Census report for year 1979.

Exploratory tests comparing the demographic characteristics of the participants from all of the available completed surveys from the print mail (n = 77) versus those from the Internet (n = 79) distribution methods yielded few significant differences. However, the print mailing group had more males and was more geographically concentrated in Arizona and Minnesota. In addition, a small portion of the sample (<3%) was obtained from a few study participants who also invited other colleagues to take the Internet version of the questionnaire. Also, the item for race was inadvertently left off from the Internet version of the questionnaire. The racial mix of the individuals invited to participate in the Internet sample could be ascertained, as these people were acquaintances of the study authors. Based on this personal knowledge, the Internet invitation sample was also predominately White (100 of 105 cases). Thus, it is likely that this same racial mix of 95% White is represented among the participants who then completed the Internet questionnaire for the study.