Psychological Counselor Candidates Leadership Self-Efficacy: Personality Traits, Cognitive Flexibility, and Emotional Intelligence

The existing studies show that there are relationships among personality traits, cognitive flexibility, emotional intelligence and self-efficacy. The leadership self-efficacy, which is considered as a dimension of overall self-efficacy, is yet to be studied with these dimensions. Also, there are not any studies that analyze the relationship among these four variables. To fill in this gap in the literature, the aim of this study is to understand the relationship among the personality traits, cognitive flexibility, emotional intelligence and leadership self-efficacy of the psychological counselor candidates. The participants are 359 students who study psychological counseling and guidance at a state university in Turkey. The results of path analysis show that there are significant direct and mediator relations among the variables personality traits, cognitive flexibility, emotional intelligence and leadership self-efficacy.