Personality, Depression and Anxiety in Leadership: On the Limits of Psychological Inference
By Chrysovalantis 'Chrys' Gerokonstantis.
Understanding individual differences without reducing people to labels.
Two leaders may face the same demanding situation yet respond very differently. One becomes more cautious, another more controlling, while a third appears relatively unaffected.
Personality can help us understand some of these differences, but it is only part of the picture. Depression and anxiety are also associated with how people experience and function at work.
The challenge is to understand these relationships without assuming that personality determines mental health, or that psychological difficulties necessarily imply poor leadership. A more useful question is how enduring tendencies, current wellbeing and the context in which someone works come together to shape behaviour.
Personality: Vulnerability, Not Inevitability
The APA Dictionary of Psychology describes personality as an enduring configuration of characteristics and behaviour shaped by multiple influences over time (American Psychological Association, n.d.). Psychometric measures capture aspects of this pattern, but not the whole person. Jeronimus and colleagues (2016) synthesised 59 longitudinal and prospective studies involving 443,313 participants, finding that neuroticism prospectively predicted anxiety, depression and psychological distress, although these associations weakened substantially after accounting for existing symptoms and psychiatric history.
The more defensible interpretation is therefore one of vulnerability, not inevitability.
Any single factor does not adequately explain depression and anxiety themselves. The World Health Organization describes both in terms of complex interactions between social, psychological and biological influences (World Health Organization, 2026a, 2026b). Individual vulnerabilities may form part of that picture, alongside life experiences, physical health, relationships and the wider environment. A personality characteristic associated with greater susceptibility to distress therefore cannot tell us whether someone will develop psychological difficulties, when they might emerge, or how that person will function if they do.
For practitioners, personality assessment is most useful when it generates hypotheses and better questions, rather than conclusions.
Symptoms Are Signals, Not Explanations
Depression and anxiety are associated with meaningful differences in workplace functioning.
Deady and colleagues (2022), studying 4,953 working adults, found that probable depression and anxiety were associated with poorer work performance and greater sickness absence, with particularly poor outcomes among participants experiencing symptoms of both. However, the study was cross-sectional and used screening thresholds rather than diagnostic interviews.
It demonstrates association, not the direction of causality. That distinction has practical consequences.
A leader who becomes more withdrawn, irritable or hesitant in decision-making may be experiencing psychological distress. But the behaviour itself does not tell us why it is occurring. The same observable behaviour can therefore carry a different meaning in different people. Understanding it requires careful interpretation – curiosity about what has changed, when it occurs, how the person understands their experience and what may be contributing to or maintaining the pattern.
Personality Matters in Leadership – But Context Matters Too
Contemporary leadership research provides reason to resist simple labels.
Baker and colleagues (2026) analysed 203 datasets and moved beyond personality domains to examine narrower personality facets. Their findings showed substantial variation in how facets related to leader emergence and leader effectiveness, with some relationships differing according to factors such as hierarchical level and setting.
This distinction matters. Characteristics associated with emerging, being selected or being perceived as a leader are not necessarily identical to those associated with effectiveness once someone is leading.
Context matters in other ways too. Javalagi and colleagues (2024) found that relationships between personality and leadership outcomes can vary across cultural settings. Personality is relevant, but its expression and significance cannot always be separated from the environment in which leadership occurs.
For assessment practitioners, a percentile score on a personality scale should therefore be treated as the starting point for a behavioural hypothesis, rather than a verdict on leadership effectiveness. This has much in common with psychological formulation: rather than simply classifying what is observed, the aim is to develop and test hypotheses about why a particular pattern may be occurring for this person, in this context, at this time
The same caution applies when mental health enters the picture. The available evidence does not establish a simple causal pathway in which a particular personality profile leads to depression or anxiety and consequently to reduced leadership effectiveness. These are related, but distinct, bodies of evidence. A more useful perspective considers the leader as a person in context: relatively enduring tendencies interacting with current psychological state, relationships, demands, resources and the wider environment.
From Assessment to Appropriate Support
This perspective changes the practical questions we ask:
- What has changed?
- Under what conditions does the behaviour occur?
- Is it characteristic of the person?
- What demands and resources surround them?
- Is the difficulty primarily one of development, working conditions, wellbeing, or some combination of these?
Intervention research reinforces the need for this precision. Dannheim and colleagues’ (2025) meta-analysis of 25 studies involving 2,466 leaders found evidence of improvements in mental health following leader-targeted stress-management interventions, while also highlighting variation between studies and limitations in the certainty of the evidence.
Similarly, Stratton and colleagues (2025) synthesised 81 randomised controlled trials of digital workplace mental-health interventions involving more than 25,000 participants. Average improvements in depression, anxiety and stress were small, and most trials were judged to have a high risk of bias.
Support can matter, but the existence of an intervention is not the same as understanding the problem it is intended to address. Leadership development, changes to working conditions and psychological support may all be appropriate in different circumstances. They answer different questions and should not be treated as interchangeable.
Conclusion
Personality can help us understand characteristic patterns of behaviour and vulnerability. Depression and anxiety are associated with meaningful differences in workplace functioning, while personality is also relevant to leadership.
None, however, provides a complete explanation of leadership effectiveness.
The more useful task is to understand the person in context: considering enduring tendencies without treating them as destiny, recognising changes in wellbeing without reducing behaviour to diagnosis, and examining the environment rather than locating every difficulty within the individual. Psychological insight is most valuable not when it gives us a quicker label, but when it helps us ask better questions.
About the Author
Chrysovalantis “Chrys” Gerokonstantis is a Psychologist and Executive Advisor who partners with global organisations, including Fortune 100 companies, to support hiring, leadership development and succession decisions through behavioural and psychometric insight. He is adept at translating complex psychological and business concepts into clear, practical insights – helping senior leaders enhance performance, deepen self-awareness and mitigate potential derailment. He is a member of the Association for Business Psychology (ABP), a BPS Registered Test User, and is qualified in leading psychometric and assessment methodologies, including Hogan, NEO-PI-3, and DDI.
References
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