Studying Leadership in the Context of Existential Personality Psychology

The author suggests two new principles of addressing the phenomenon of leadership: 1) leadership is an integral trait of personality and represents a person’s willingness and ability to influence the environment with his values and ideas. Existential reflection is the necessary basis of leadership. 2) Leadership is a phenomenon of “psychic reality” and may differ from one culture to another. The article describes a series of experiments that examine the personality qualities most frequently associated with leadership in the Russian mass consciousness.