Development and Validation of the Inspirational Leaders Survey (ILS)

Purpose The Inspirational Leaders Survey (ILS) was developed to identify the traits and characteristics of inspirational people. The main aim of the ILS is to help businesses identify and recruit inspirational people into their workforce.

Design/methodology/approach After a literature review 75 inspiring traits were identified. The items were examined through the exploratory factor analysis of responses from a sample of 212 adults employed in various organizations with management systems.

 Findings Two factors with nine items emerged as the best approximation of the population covariance matrix of the three models tested from the results. The factors were called Individual Traits (five items: desire to achieve success, determined to achieve goals, passionate about work, committed to achieve success, and hardworking) and Relationship Traits (four items: ability to instill confidence in people, inspire others, offer hope to others, and offer stability and direction to others).

Originality/value The characteristics of inspiring people have received only limited empirical assessment, and an instrument to measure these characteristics has not been widely available. Such an instrument could provide a useful tool to identify inspirational people in our social and work related groups. The present study describes the development of the ILS, which would help personnel divisions of organizations identify and recruit inspirational people into their workforce