Components of leadership giftedness and multiple intelligences among Chinese gifted students in Hong Kong

Abstract This study examined the relationships between components of leadership giftedness and multiple intelligences among 510 Chinese gifted students in Hong Kong. These students perceived their strengths in intrapersonal, interpersonal and verbal‐linguistic intelligences, and their weaknesses in bodily‐kinesthetic and naturalist intelligences. They also rated themselves higher on leadership flexibility and goal orientation than on leadership self‐efficacy. In predicting the three leadership components, intrapersonal and verbal‐linguistic intelligences emerged as common and significant predictors, suggesting that self‐reflection and self‐management skills as well as a good command of language use were important in leadership. Other significant predictors such as logical‐mathematical intelligence for leadership self‐efficacy as well as goal orientation and interpersonal intelligence for leadership flexibility suggested that critical thinking might be important for the sense of confidence or efficacy and the vision of goals, whereas relational or people skills might be important for the openness to different options. Students who were classified high on both verbal‐linguistic intelligence and personal intelligences, high on one and low on the other, and low on both were found to be generally high, medium and low on all three leadership components, respectively. Implications of the findings for inferring different levels of components of leadership giftedness from specific intelligences and for developing leadership training programs are discussed.