| Community college leadership is facing a crisis fueled by leaders retiring and student enrollments that outpace budgeted growth. This problem is significant because community colleges provide a key path to higher education for many students, such as at-risk, minority, or low-income students. Based on leader-member exchange (LMX) theory and Keirsey personality temperament theory, the purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between LMX and similarity of supervisors' and subordinates' personality temperament. Survey research was used to gather temperament data from the Keirsey Temperament Sorter II (KTS-II) survey and LMX data from the Supervisor Leader-Member Exchange Multidimensional Model survey. These surveys were completed by 50 dyads of community college supervisors and direct subordinates, selected through proportionate stratified sampling. Participants' temperaments were classified as: sensing-judging (SJ), sensing-perceiving (SP), intuitive-thinking (NT), or intuitive-feeling (NF). Dyads were grouped by temperament similarity: (a) identical temperament (e.g., both supervisor and subordinate are SJ), (b) one letter (e.g., SP and SJ), or (c) no letters in common (e.g., NF and SP). The data were analyzed by a series of one-way ANOVAs. Results showed significant differences among groups with respect to LMX, and two of the four LMX subscales: contribution and professional respect. This study was the first to provide empirical support for a relationship between temperament similarity and LMX. This study contributes to social change by providing a novel approach to understanding community college leadership and yields suggestions, such as temperament pairings, that may help community colleges better serve constituents. |
