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• 01 May 2024
• What Do You Think?

Have You Had Enough?

James Heskett has been asking readers, “What do you think?” for 24 years on a wide variety of management topics. In this farewell column, Heskett reflects on the changing leadership landscape and thanks his readers for consistently weighing in over the years. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 26 Apr 2024

Deion Sanders' Prime Lessons for Leading a Team to Victory

The former star athlete known for flash uses unglamorous command-and-control methods to get results as a college football coach. Business leaders can learn 10 key lessons from the way 'Coach Prime' builds a culture of respect and discipline without micromanaging, says Hise Gibson.

• 26 Mar 2024
• Cold Call Podcast

How Do Great Leaders Overcome Adversity?

In the spring of 2021, Raymond Jefferson (MBA 2000) applied for a job in President Joseph Biden’s administration. Ten years earlier, false allegations were used to force him to resign from his prior US government position as assistant secretary of labor for veterans’ employment and training in the Department of Labor. Two employees had accused him of ethical violations in hiring and procurement decisions, including pressuring subordinates into extending contracts to his alleged personal associates. The Deputy Secretary of Labor gave Jefferson four hours to resign or be terminated. Jefferson filed a federal lawsuit against the US government to clear his name, which he pursued for eight years at the expense of his entire life savings. Why, after such a traumatic and debilitating experience, would Jefferson want to pursue a career in government again? Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer Anthony Mayo explores Jefferson’s personal and professional journey from upstate New York to West Point to the Obama administration, how he faced adversity at several junctures in his life, and how resilience and vulnerability shaped his leadership style in the case, "Raymond Jefferson: Trial by Fire."

• 24 Jan 2024

Why Boeing’s Problems with the 737 MAX Began More Than 25 Years Ago

Aggressive cost cutting and rocky leadership changes have eroded the culture at Boeing, a company once admired for its engineering rigor, says Bill George. What will it take to repair the reputational damage wrought by years of crises involving its 737 MAX?

• 02 Jan 2024

Do Boomerang CEOs Get a Bad Rap?

Several companies have brought back formerly successful CEOs in hopes of breathing new life into their organizations—with mixed results. But are we even measuring the boomerang CEOs' performance properly? asks James Heskett. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• Research & Ideas

10 Trends to Watch in 2024

Employees may seek new approaches to balance, even as leaders consider whether to bring more teams back to offices or make hybrid work even more flexible. These are just a few trends that Harvard Business School faculty members will be following during a year when staffing, climate, and inclusion will likely remain top of mind.

• 12 Dec 2023

Can Sustainability Drive Innovation at Ferrari?

When Ferrari, the Italian luxury sports car manufacturer, committed to achieving carbon neutrality and to electrifying a large part of its car fleet, investors and employees applauded the new strategy. But among the company’s suppliers, the reaction was mixed. Many were nervous about how this shift would affect their bottom lines. Professor Raffaella Sadun and Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna discuss how Ferrari collaborated with suppliers to work toward achieving the company’s goal. They also explore how sustainability can be a catalyst for innovation in the case, “Ferrari: Shifting to Carbon Neutrality.” This episode was recorded live December 4, 2023 in front of a remote studio audience in the Live Online Classroom at Harvard Business School.

• 05 Dec 2023

Lessons in Decision-Making: Confident People Aren't Always Correct (Except When They Are)

A study of 70,000 decisions by Thomas Graeber and Benjamin Enke finds that self-assurance doesn't necessarily reflect skill. Shrewd decision-making often comes down to how well a person understands the limits of their knowledge. How can managers identify and elevate their best decision-makers?

• 21 Nov 2023

The Beauty Industry: Products for a Healthy Glow or a Compact for Harm?

Many cosmetics and skincare companies present an image of social consciousness and transformative potential, while profiting from insecurity and excluding broad swaths of people. Geoffrey Jones examines the unsightly reality of the beauty industry.

• 14 Nov 2023

Do We Underestimate the Importance of Generosity in Leadership?

Management experts applaud leaders who are, among other things, determined, humble, and frugal, but rarely consider whether they are generous. However, executives who share their time, talent, and ideas often give rise to legendary organizations. Does generosity merit further consideration? asks James Heskett. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 24 Oct 2023

From P.T. Barnum to Mary Kay: Lessons From 5 Leaders Who Changed the World

What do Steve Jobs and Sarah Breedlove have in common? Through a series of case studies, Robert Simons explores the unique qualities of visionary leaders and what today's managers can learn from their journeys.

• 06 Oct 2023

Yes, You Can Radically Change Your Organization in One Week

Skip the committees and the multi-year roadmap. With the right conditions, leaders can confront even complex organizational problems in one week. Frances Frei and Anne Morriss explain how in their book Move Fast and Fix Things.

• 26 Sep 2023

The PGA Tour and LIV Golf Merger: Competition vs. Cooperation

On June 9, 2022, the first LIV Golf event teed off outside of London. The new tour offered players larger prizes, more flexibility, and ambitions to attract new fans to the sport. Immediately following the official start of that tournament, the PGA Tour announced that all 17 PGA Tour players participating in the LIV Golf event were suspended and ineligible to compete in PGA Tour events. Tensions between the two golf entities continued to rise, as more players “defected” to LIV. Eventually LIV Golf filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing the PGA Tour of anticompetitive practices, and the Department of Justice launched an investigation. Then, in a dramatic turn of events, LIV Golf and the PGA Tour announced that they were merging. Harvard Business School assistant professor Alexander MacKay discusses the competitive, antitrust, and regulatory issues at stake and whether or not the PGA Tour took the right actions in response to LIV Golf’s entry in his case, “LIV Golf.”

• 01 Aug 2023

As Leaders, Why Do We Continue to Reward A, While Hoping for B?

Companies often encourage the bad behavior that executives publicly rebuke—usually in pursuit of short-term performance. What keeps leaders from truly aligning incentives and goals? asks James Heskett. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 05 Jul 2023

What Kind of Leader Are You? How Three Action Orientations Can Help You Meet the Moment

Executives who confront new challenges with old formulas often fail. The best leaders tailor their approach, recalibrating their "action orientation" to address the problem at hand, says Ryan Raffaelli. He details three action orientations and how leaders can harness them.

How Are Middle Managers Falling Down Most Often on Employee Inclusion?

Companies are struggling to retain employees from underrepresented groups, many of whom don't feel heard in the workplace. What do managers need to do to build truly inclusive teams? asks James Heskett. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 14 Jun 2023

Every Company Should Have These Leaders—or Develop Them if They Don't

Companies need T-shaped leaders, those who can share knowledge across the organization while focusing on their business units, but they should be a mix of visionaries and tacticians. Hise Gibson breaks down the nuances of each leader and how companies can cultivate this talent among their ranks.

Four Steps to Building the Psychological Safety That High-Performing Teams Need

Struggling to spark strategic risk-taking and creative thinking? In the post-pandemic workplace, teams need psychological safety more than ever, and a new analysis by Amy Edmondson highlights the best ways to nurture it.

• 31 May 2023

From Prison Cell to Nike’s C-Suite: The Journey of Larry Miller

VIDEO: Before leading one of the world’s largest brands, Nike executive Larry Miller served time in prison for murder. In this interview, Miller shares how education helped him escape a life of crime and why employers should give the formerly incarcerated a second chance. Inspired by a Harvard Business School case study.

• 23 May 2023

The Entrepreneurial Journey of China’s First Private Mental Health Hospital

The city of Wenzhou in southeastern China is home to the country’s largest privately owned mental health hospital group, the Wenzhou Kangning Hospital Co, Ltd. It’s an example of the extraordinary entrepreneurship happening in China’s healthcare space. But after its successful initial public offering (IPO), how will the hospital grow in the future? Harvard Professor of China Studies William C. Kirby highlights the challenges of China’s mental health sector and the means company founder Guan Weili employed to address them in his case, Wenzhou Kangning Hospital: Changing Mental Healthcare in China.

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37 Leadership Development: A Review and Agenda for Future Research

D. Scott DeRue, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Christopher G. Myers is a Ph.D. candidate in Management & Organizations at the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business.

• Published: 16 December 2013
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This chapter develops a conceptual framework that helps organize and synthesize key insights from the literature on leadership development. In this framework, called PREPARE, the authors call attention to the strategic purpose and desired results of leadership development in organizations. They emphasize how organizations can deliberately and systematically leverage a range of developmental experiences for enhancing the leadership capabilities of individuals, relationships, and collectives. Finally, they highlight how individuals and organizations vary in their approach to and support for leadership development, and how these differences explain variation in leadership development processes and outcomes. As an organizing mechanism for the existing literature, the PREPARE framework advances our understanding of what individuals and organizations can do to develop leadership talent, and highlights important questions for future research.

Introduction

Contemporary organizations operate in environments characterized by rapid change and increasing complexity. Indeed, some historians believe that our world is undergoing a transformation more profound and far-reaching than any experienced since the Industrial Revolution ( Daft, 2008 ). Advancements in technology are creating opportunities for new business models that can dramatically shift the competitive landscape of entire industries. Globalization and shifting geopolitical forces are permanently altering the boundaries of interorganizational collaboration and competition. In addition, a myriad of economic, environmental, and ethical crises are directly challenging the role of corporations in society, and highlighting the interdependence among business, government and social sectors. The result is organizations around the world and across a broad array of domains—industry, government, military, not-for-profit, health care, and education—are adapting their strategies, structures, and practices with the intent of becoming more agile and responsive to these dynamic environments.

Because of these ongoing organizational transformations, effective leadership is needed more than ever. Leadership is one of the most important predictors of whether groups and organizations are able to effectively adapt to and perform in dynamic environments ( Mintzberg & Waters, 1982 ; Peterson, Smith, Martorana, & Owens, 2003 ; Peterson, Walumbwa, Byron, & Myrowitz, 2009 ; Thomas, 1988 ; Waldman, Ramirez, House, & Puranam, 2001 ). As Bass and Bass (2008 , p. 11) concluded, “when an organization must be changed to reflect changes in technology, the environment, and the completion of programs, its leadership is critical in orchestrating that process.” Consequently, organizations are designating leadership as a top strategic priority and potential source of competitive advantage, and are investing in its development accordingly ( Day, Harrison, & Halpin, 2009 ). For example, in 2009, almost a quarter of the $50 billion that U.S. organizations spent on learning and development was targeted at leadership development ( O’Leonard, 2010 ).

Despite the fact that organizations are increasing their investments in leadership development, there is an emerging consensus that the supply of leadership talent is insufficient to meet the leadership needs of contemporary organizations. According to a survey of 1,100 U.S.-based organizations, 56 per cent of employers report a dearth of leadership talent, and 31 per cent of organizations expect to have a shortage of leaders that will impede performance in the next four years ( Adler & Mills, 2008 ). Likewise, a survey of 13,701 managers and HR professionals across 76 countries found that individuals’ confidence in their leaders declined by 25 per cent from 1999–2007, and that 37 per cent of respondents believe those who hold leadership positions fail to achieve their position’s objectives ( Howard & Wellins, 2009 ). These data allude to an emerging leadership talent crisis where the need and demand for leadership surpass our ability to develop effective leadership talent.

Ironically, this leadership talent crisis is emerging at the same time the pace of scholarly research on leadership development is reaching a historical peak. Conceptual and empirical research on leadership development has proliferated through the publication of a number of books, including the Center for Creative Leadership Handbook of Leadership Development ( Van Velsor, McCauley, & Ruderman, 2010 ), Day and colleagues’ (2009 ) Integrated Approach to Leader Development , and Avolio’s (2005 ) Leadership Development in Balance . Likewise, reviews of the leadership development literature point to rapid growth in the base of scholarly research on leadership development over the past 20 years ( Collins & Holton, 2004 ; Day, 2000 ; Hernez-Broome & Hughes, 2004 ; McCall, 2004 ), and numerous special issues in management and psychology journals have been dedicated to the topic ( DeRue, Sitkin, & Podolny, 2011 ; Pearce, 2007 ; Riggio, 2008 ). All of this scholarly literature is notwithstanding the thousands of popular press books and articles that have been written on the topic.

Indeed, the depth and richness of the existing literature has produced an array of important insights about leadership development in organizations. For example, drawing from experiential learning theories ( Dewey, 1938 ; Kolb, 1984 ), scholars have documented how lived experiences that are novel, of high significance to the organization, and require people to manage change with diverse groups of people and across organizational boundaries are important sources of leadership development ( DeRue & Wellman, 2009 ; McCall & Hollenbeck, 2002 ; McCall, Lombardo, & Morrison, 1988 ; McCauley, Ruderman, Ohlott, & Morrow, 1994 ). Indeed, it was this research that led McCall (2004 , p. 127) to conclude that “the primary source of learning to lead, to the extent that leadership can be learned, is experience.” In addition, scholars have identified an array of personal attributes (e.g., learning orientation, developmental readiness) and situational characteristics (e.g., feedback, coaching, reflection practices) that influence how much leadership development occurs via these lived experiences ( Avolio & Hannah, 2008 ; Alimo-Metcalfe, 1998 ; DeRue & Wellman, 2009 ; Dragoni, Tesluk, Russell, & Oh, 2009 ; Hirst, Mann, Bain, Pirola-Merlo, & Richver, 2004 ; Ting & Scisco, 2006 ). Moving beyond the sources and predictors of leadership development, researchers have also examined a multitude of outcomes associated with leadership development, including but not limited to the development of individuals’ leadership knowledge, skills, abilities, motivations, and identities ( Chan & Drasgow, 2001 ; Day & Harrison, 2007 ; DeRue & Ashford, 2010a ; Mumford, Campion, & Morgeson, 2007 ; Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, Jacobs, & Fleishman, 2000 ). Altogether, these conceptual articles and empirical studies provide substantial insight into a complex and multifaceted leadership development process, and point to various ways in which individuals and organizations can enhance (and impair) leadership development.

Despite notable progress in our understanding of leadership development, there are at least three reasons why this body of literature has not yielded the insights and breakthroughs that are needed to sufficiently inform and address the emerging leadership talent crisis. First, the existing literature is predominantly focused on individual leader development, at the expense of understanding the evolution of leading-following processes and the construction of leadership relationships and structures in groups and organizations ( DeRue, 2011 ; DeRue & Ashford, 2010a ). This focus on individuals as the target of development may stem from the broader leadership literature, which has traditionally endorsed an individualistic and hierarchical conception of leadership ( Bedeian & Hunt, 2006 ). However, there is an emerging shift toward thinking of leadership as a shared activity or process that anyone can participate in, regardless of their formal position or title ( Charan, 2007 ; Day, Gronn, & Salas, 2004 ; Morgeson, DeRue & Karam, 2010 ; Quinn, 1996 ; Pearce & Conger, 2003 ). In turn, the leadership development literature needs to explain how these collective leadership processes develop and evolve over time.

Second, consistent with the focus on individuals, the existing literature generally endorses a narrow focus on the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) required for effective leadership ( Mumford, Campion, & Morgeson, 2007 ; Mumford et al., 2000 ). One potential reason for the focus on KSAs is that much of the existing literature on leadership development is framed within the domain of human resource management, which often focuses on the training and transfer of KSAs ( Saks & Belcourt, 2006 ). Another potential reason is that scholars have developed coherent theories and taxonomies of leadership KSAs, and there is clear evidence linking these leadership KSAs to individual leader effectiveness ( Connelly et al., 2000 ; Mumford et al., 2007 ). Only recently have scholars begun to explore a wider range of leadership development outcomes, including individuals’ self-concept and identity ( Day & Harrison, 2007 ; DeRue & Ashford, 2010a ; Lord & Hall, 2005 ), motivations related to leadership ( Barbuto, 2005 ; Chan & Drasgow, 2001 ), and mental models of leadership ( Lord, Brown, Harvey & Hall, 2001 ; Epitropaki & Martin, 2004 ; Lord, Foti, & De Vader, 1984 ). These alternative outcomes are important to understanding leadership development because it is possible that individuals are developing the KSAs necessary for effective leadership, but are choosing not to take on leadership roles because they do not see themselves as leaders, or they are not motivated to lead given the risks associated with it ( Heifetz & Linsky, 2002 ). Although these leadership identities, motivations, and mental models could be the target of leadership development interventions, it is not clear based on the current research how malleable these attributes are, or what types of experiences or interventions would develop them.

Finally, consistent with Avolio’s (2007 ) call for more integrative theory building in the leadership literature, our field lacks a coherent and integrative framework for organizing the existing literature on leadership development. With respect to the emerging leadership talent crisis, this lack of an integrative, organizing framework is limiting progress in two ways. First, without an integrative understanding of the inputs, processes, and outcomes associated with leadership development, organizations are forced to speculate or rely on intuition as to what to develop, how to develop it, where and when it should be developed, and who is ready (or not ready) for development. Second, it remains unclear what the critical knowledge gaps are related to leadership development, and where future research needs to focus in order to help organizations more effectively identify and develop future leadership talent.

Thus, the aim of this chapter is to develop an organizing framework for the inputs, processes, and outcomes associated with leadership development, synthesize key insights from the existing literature, and identify critical knowledge gaps that can serve as the impetus for future research on leadership development. We seek to accomplish these goals, as well as complement and extend prior reviews of this literature ( Brungardt, 1997 ; Day, 2000 ), by first defining leadership development and articulating some of the key assumptions associated with this definition. We then introduce an organizing framework called PREPARE, and use this framework to integrate key insights from the existing literature. We conclude by summarizing an agenda for future research based on the PREPARE framework, with the purpose of extending existing theories of leadership development and advancing our understanding of what individuals and organizations can do to identify and develop leadership talent.

Leadership Development: A Definition

Leadership is a social and mutual influence process where multiple actors engage in leading-following interactions in service of accomplishing a collective goal ( Bass & Bass, 2008 ; Yukl, 2010 ). In his oft-cited review of the leadership development literature, Day (2000 ) distinguishes between two forms of development. Individual leader development focuses on an individual’s capacity to participate in leading-following processes and generally presumes that developing an individual’s leadership KSAs will result in more effective leadership. A key limitation of this perspective is that it does not account for leadership as a complex and interactive process among multiple actors who are both leading and following, or that the relationships that are created and maintained within the social context can have a strong influence on how leadership processes emerge and evolve ( Day & Halpin, 2004 ; DeRue, 2011 ). The second form, leadership development, focuses on developing the capacity of collectives to engage in the leadership process. Whereas leader development focuses on individuals and the development of human capital, leadership development attends to the interpersonal dynamics of leadership and focuses on the development of social capital. Specifically, leadership development refers to building the mutual commitments and interpersonal relationships that are necessary for leading-following processes to unfold effectively within a given social context.

Historically, the existing literature has focused on individual leader development at the expense of understanding and explaining leadership development ( Day, 2000 ; Drath et al., 2008 ; Van Velsor, McCauley, & Ruderman, 2010 ). In fact, because of the dearth of research on leadership development, prior reviews of the existing literature have been forced to acknowledge the importance of leadership development but then go on to narrowly focus on individual leader development (e.g., Day, 2000 ; McCauley, 2008 ). This narrow focus on leader development is unfortunate because both leader and leadership development are necessary but insufficient for understanding and explaining how leadership capacity is developed, especially as organizations embrace more collective and shared models of leadership ( Pearce & Conger, 2003 ).

In the present article, we broaden the definition of leadership development to include both individual and collective forms of development. Specifically, we define leadership development as the process of preparing individuals and collectives to effectively engage in leading-following interactions. Several assumptions are embedded in this definition. First, we assume that both leader and leadership development are essential for enabling more effective leadership processes in organizations. Individuals need the leadership KSAs, motivations, and beliefs necessary to effectively participate in the leading-following process, but effective leading-following interactions also involve the emergence of leader-follower relationships and collective leadership structures. In addition, we assume that leader and leadership development are interdependent. Developmental experiences or interventions designed to promote more effective leadership relationships will also affect individuals’ KSAs, beliefs, and motivations. Likewise, actions taken to enhance individual leadership capabilities will indirectly alter the landscape of leading-following relationships among actors. Therefore, the conceptual model we use to structure our literature review will incorporate both individual leader development and the development of leadership relationships and collective structures.

Our expectation is that the framework developed herein will be used by researchers in several ways. First, as noted above, the framework is purposefully integrative across a range of levels of analysis and developmental approaches, with the intent of motivating scholars to adopt a more integrative approach to studying leadership development. For example, scholars might use the framework to emphasize the intersection of individual leader development with more relational or collective forms of development, or ways in which formal training might complement informal, on-the-job development. Second, researchers can use the framework to conceptualize a broader range of outcomes associated with leadership development. Historically, leadership development research has focused narrowly on the development of individual skills or competencies, but this framework emphasizes a range of individual, relational, and collective outputs of leadership development. Finally, we expect scholars can use the framework to situate their individual studies within a broader nomological network of research on leadership development, which in turn will identify key gaps in the literature and advance the accumulation of knowledge related to leadership development.

PREPARE: An Organizing Framework

As illustrated in Figure 37.1 , PREPARE is an acronym that refers to the individual components of our organizing framework. The PREPARE framework consists of seven key components: (1) Purpose, (2) Result, (3) Experience, (4) Point of Intervention, (5) Architecture, (6) Reinforcement, and (7) Engagement.

Purpose refers to why an organization is engaging in leadership development: in particular the role that leadership development plays in enabling an organization to achieve its strategic objectives and performance goals. The Result component refers to the desired outcome, what is actually trying to be developed, such as individuals’ cognitive schemas related to leadership (e.g., implicit leadership theory), the affective or relational ties among group members (e.g., trust), or the organizational climate for shared leadership. Experience refers to the mechanism through which leadership development occurs, specifically what experiences (e.g., formal training, on-the-job assignments) will serve as the basis for challenging individuals and/or collectives to improve their leadership capacity. These experiences vary in their formality (e.g., on-the-job assignments, classroom experiences), mode (e.g., direct or vicarious) and content (e.g., the degree of developmental challenge). The Point of Intervention component represents the intended target of leadership development (i.e., who is being developed), and the attributes associated with that target. The target can be at the individual level (e.g., developing an individual’s skills), the relational level (e.g., developing the leading-following relationship among actors), or the collective level (e.g., shared team leadership). Architecture refers to features of the organizational context (e.g., practices, processes, climate) that are designed to facilitate and support leadership development. The Reinforcement components refer to the temporal sequencing of developmental experiences, and the timing of those experiences. Finally, the Engagement component refers to the ways in which individuals and collectives enter, go through, and reflect on the leadership development process.

PREPARE Framework for Leadership Development.

Each of these seven dimensions receives a different level of attention in the existing literature. For example, scholars frequently examine how the organizational architecture (e.g., 360º feedback, mentoring, and coaching programs) supports individual leader development (e.g., Alimo-Metcalfe, 1998 ; Brungardt, 1997 ), but few scholars consider the purpose of leadership development or how leadership development is aligned (or not aligned) with organizational strategy. Likewise, scholars rarely theorize or empirically examine how developmental experiences should be sequenced so that they are reinforcing over time. Our contention is that each of these dimensions is an essential ingredient to successful leadership development, and that the design of effective leadership development systems must address each of these components. Our hope is that the PREPARE framework helps organize key insights from the existing literature in a way that synthesizes what is known about leadership development, highlights questions that need to be addressed in future research, and provides guidance to individuals and organizations looking to improve their leadership talent. In the sections that follow, we review the base of scholarly research for each of the PREPARE dimensions, and identify key knowledge gaps that can serve as the impetus for future research.

Purpose: Aligning Leadership Development and Organizational Strategy

Theories of strategic human resource management explain how different patterns of human resource management (HRM) practices and activities enable organizations to achieve their strategic objectives and goals ( Wright & McMahan, 1992 ; Wright & Snell, 1998 ). Drawing from theories of fit and congruence ( Nadler & Tushman, 1980 ; Venkatraman, 1989 ), these strategic HRM theories emphasize that organizational performance is in part a function of the alignment between HRM practices and the organization’s strategy ( Schuler & Jackson, 1987 ). Indeed, empirical research has established that a key predictor of organizational productivity and performance is the alignment between firm strategy and the configuration of HRM practices ( Delery & Doty, 1996 ; Youndt, Snell, Dean & Lepak, 1996 ).

With respect to leadership development practices, organizations often speculate that alignment between organizational strategy and leadership development practices is important for maximizing the return on investment in leadership development ( Zenger, Ulrich, & Smallwood, 2000 ). For example, in their report on the Top Companies for Leaders , Hewitt & Associates (2009 ) concluded that “...HR leaders and senior management are finding they must rethink leadership selection and development strategies—to better align with organizational goals, cost pressures, and competing resources.” Similarly, in a review of best-practices research on leadership development, McCauley (2008 ) underscored how, in best-practice organizations, leadership development practices are closely tied to the vision, values, and goals of the business, and that leadership development is a core part of the organization’s strategic planning processes. These conclusions are consistent with McCall and Hollenbeck’s (2002 ) contention that global leaders are best developed through challenging experiences and assignments that are tied to the strategic imperatives of the business.

Despite the fact that organizations are emphasizing strategic alignment with leadership development practices, there is currently a lack of scholarly research on the mechanisms through which leadership development can support organizational goals and strategies, or the implications of alignment in terms of return on investments in leadership development. The research on strategic HRM suggests that alignment with organizational strategy will be essential for developing leadership development systems that promote and enhance organizational effectiveness, but research is needed to connect these insights about general HRM practices to leadership development specifically. Currently, the field of leadership development studies lacks a theoretical or empirical basis for explaining how organizations can achieve strategic alignment with leadership development practices, or why strategic alignment enhances the value of leadership development to the organization.

In fact, there are some trends in the leadership development literature that suggest a sort of duality with respect to aligning leadership development with organizational strategy. On the one hand, scholars suggest that an important source of leadership development is having individuals and groups engage in challenging assignments that are directly linked to firm strategy and the future directions of the business ( McCall et al., 1988 ; McCall & Hollenbeck, 2002 ). On the other hand, organizations are increasing outsourcing leadership development by placing employees in challenging, developmental experiences that are outside of the organization and have very little to do with the organization’s strategy (e.g., IBM’s Peace Corps; Colvin, 2009 ). There are likely benefits to both approaches. Strategic alignment should not only enhance employees’ leadership development but also directly contribute to the business needs of the organization. Yet, enabling employees to explore developmental opportunities outside of the core business may also broaden the employee’s perspective and introduce motivational benefits that might not be possible within the context of the core business. Future research that examines the value of strategic alignment in leadership development, and how best to balance developmental experiences that are inside the organization’s core business with experiences outside of the core business, would be particularly noteworthy. This research would go a long way toward helping organizations explain and understand the business returns associated with leadership development.

Result: Identifying the Desired Outcome of Leadership Development

Organizations invest considerable resources into identifying the “holy grail” of leadership competencies that are needed for success in their organization ( Alldredge & Nilan, 2000 ; Intagliata, Ulrich, & Smallwood, 2000 ). As described by Intagliata et al. (2000 , p. 12), “This holy grail, when found, would identify a small set of attributes that successful leaders possess, articulate them in ways that could be transferred across all leaders, and create leadership development experiences to ensure that future leaders possess these attributes.” Indeed, organizations routinely use their leadership competency models not only for leadership development but also for performance management, recruiting and staffing, and succession planning ( Gentry & Leslie, 2007 ; McCauley, 2008 ). The challenge, however, is that it is unclear whether there is such a “holy grail,” or even a coherent set of attributes or competencies that are needed for effective leadership.

Scholarly research on leadership development has considered a range of development outcomes, including leadership KSAs ( Hulin, Henry & Noon, 1990 ; Mumford et al., 2007 ), forms of cognition such as leadership schemas and identities ( Day & Harrison, 2007 ; DeRue, Ashford, & Cotton, 2009 ; Shamir & Eilam, 2005 ), and the motivations associated with taking on leadership roles and responsibilities ( Chan & Drasgow, 2001 ; Kark & Van Dijk, 2007 ). In addition, scholars have looked beyond individual attributes and examined the development and evolution of leader-follower relationships ( DeRue & Ashford, 2010a ; Nahrgang, Morgeson, & Ilies, 2009 ). Although we do not intend to discover the “holy grail” of leadership competencies in this chapter, we can identify three broad themes of development outcomes in the existing literature: behavioral, affective/motivational, and cognitive. Further, each of these themes can be conceptualized at the individual, relational, or collective level of analysis, although most existing research is at the individual level.

Behavioral . We conceptualize behavioral outcomes in leadership development as the acquisition of leadership KSAs that are necessary for the performance of specific leadership behaviors, or positive changes in the performance of actual leadership behaviors. In the current literature, leadership development scholars have considered a wide range of these behavioral outcomes. One influential article in this domain is Mumford et al.’s (2007 ) leadership skills strataplex. In this article, the authors identify four distinct categories of leadership skill requirements: cognitive skills, interpersonal skills, business skills, and strategic skills. Then, in a sample of 1023 professional employees in an international agency of the U.S. government, the authors find empirical support for the four distinct categories of leadership skill requirements, and show that different categories of leadership skill requirements emerge at different hierarchical levels of organizations. For example, basic cognitive skills are required across all hierarchical levels, but strategic skills become important only once employees reach senior-level positions.

Moving beyond the acquisition of leadership skills, leadership scholars have also examined changes in the performance of actual leadership behaviors. For example, Barling, Weber, and Kelloway (1996 ) conducted a field experiment of 20 managers randomly assigned to either a control condition or a leadership training condition. In the training group, managers received a one-day training seminar on transformational leadership, followed by four booster training sessions on a monthly basis. The control group received no such training. Drawing upon subordinates’ perceptions of transformational leadership behaviors, results showed that participants in the training group improved their performance of transformational leadership behaviors more so than participants in the control group. In a similar study design, Dvir and colleagues (2002 ) examined the impact of transformational leadership training on follower development and performance. In a sample of 54 military leaders, their results establish that transformational leadership training can increase leaders’ display of transformational leadership behaviors, which in turn have a positive effect on follower motivation, morality, empowerment, and performance.

Affect/Motivational . Most of the existing research has conceptualized and empirically studied leadership development in terms of behavioral outcomes, but scholars have recently begun to examine how individuals’ affective states and their motivations related to leadership influence how they engage in, go through, and process leadership experiences. For example, individuals’ positive and negative affective states explain not only their leadership effectiveness, but also how leaders influence followers’ affect and behavior ( Bono & Ilies, 2006 ; Damen, Van Knippenberg, & Van Knippenberg, 2008 ; Ilies, Judge, & Wagner, 2006 ). Similarly, emotional intelligence, or the ability to understand and manage moods and emotions in the self and others ( Mayer, Salovey, Caruso, & Sitarenios, 2001 ), can contribute to effective leadership in organizations ( George, 2000 ; Prati, Douglas, Ferris, Ammeter, & Buckley, 2003 ). In terms of motivation, scholars have suggested and found some empirical support for the notion that individuals have different levels of motivation for leadership, and that these motivations can impact participation in leadership roles and leadership potential ( Chan & Drasgow, 2001 ; Kark & van Dijk, 2007 ).

However, in contrast to behavioral outcomes, there is very little empirical research on how individuals or collectives develop the affective or motivational attributes that promote effective leadership. Rather, most of the existing research focuses on how these affective and motivational attributes influence the leadership process or the individual’s effectiveness as a leader (e.g., Atwater, Dionne, Avolio, Camobreco, & Lau, 1999 ; Chemers, Watson, & May, 2000 ). The antecedents to these attributes or the processes through which these attributes are developed generally remain a mystery. Notable exceptions include Chan and Drasgow’s (2001 ) study of Singaporean military cadets, where they find that personality, cultural values such as collectivism and individualism, and prior leadership experience predict whether individuals are motivated to take on leadership roles and responsibilities. Likewise, Boyce, Zaccaro, and Wisecarver (2010 ), in their study of junior-military cadets, find that individuals who have a mastery and learning orientation are more motivated than people without this orientation to engage in leadership development activities, and in addition, are more skilled at self-regulatory, learning processes. Yet, the developmental implications of these studies are unclear given that attributes such as personality and values can be fixed properties of a person ( Costa & McCrae, 1994 ; Schwartz, 1994 ). Another exception is Shefy and Sadler-Smith’s (2006 ) case study of a management development program implemented in a technology company, whereby focusing on non-Western principles of human development (e.g., harmony and balance), the program enhanced individuals’ emotional awareness and interpersonal sensitivity.

Notwithstanding these few exceptions, there is a considerable need for research on the development of the affective and motivational attributes that enable individuals to effectively participate in the leadership process. For example, affective events theory ( Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996 ) explains how work events interact with dispositional characteristics and situational factors to influence individuals’ affective states. This focus on event-level phenomena is consistent with the notion that discrete work events and experiences are the primary source of leadership development ( McCall, 2004 ), yet these two literatures have yet to be integrated. Future research that explains how work events and experiences influence the development of particular affective states, and how these affective states enable more effective leadership and leadership development processes, would help integrate and extend theories of affect and leadership development. Likewise, a fundamentally important question that needs to be explored further is why some people are more motivated than others to take on leadership roles and responsibilities, even when they are not designated as a formal leader. This research needs to move beyond a focus on stable individuals’ differences, and consider how the social and organizational context enables (or constrains) individual motivation for leadership. In particular, this research could build on prior theories of the rewards and risks associated with leadership ( Heifetz & Linsky, 2002 ) to understand how people process, cognitively and emotionally, the rewards and risks of assuming leadership roles and responsibilities in different group and organizational contexts.

Cognitive . Cognitive outcomes refer to the mental models and structures that individuals and collectives rely on to participate in and carry out leadership processes. In this sense, individuals and collectives develop their capacity for effective leadership by expanding or changing their conceptual models and mental structures of what it means to lead, the way in which leading-following processes unfold, and/or their conception of themselves as leaders and followers. Indeed, a commonly espoused purpose of using multi-rater feedback for leadership development is to create self-awareness and stimulate reflection related to what leadership means in a given setting and to expand people’s conceptions of their roles as leaders ( Yammarino & Atwater, 1993 ). Developing these cognitive models and mental structures are important because they impact how people engage in leadership processes ( Shamir & Eilam, 2005 ).

In the existing literature, there are at least three cognitive outcomes that seem particularly important for leadership development, especially as organizations embrace collective and shared forms of leadership. First, an individual’s self-concept or identity as a leader is important for determining how that person will engage in the leadership process ( Day & Harrison, 2007 ; DeRue & Ashford, 2010a ; DeRue, Ashford & Cotton, 2009 ; Hall, 2004 ; Shamir & Eilam, 2005 ). Developmental experiences allow individuals to create, modify, and adapt their identities as leaders by “trying on” different possible self-concepts ( Ibarra, 1999 ) and engaging in the identity work that is necessary to clarify one’s self-concept ( Kreiner, Hollensbe, & Sheep, 2006 ). Importantly, this identity development is not limited to the individual level, as leadership development can help individuals construct leadership identities at the relational and collective levels of analysis, which then become the basis for the formation of effective leading-following relationships ( DeRue & Ashford, 2010a ). In addition, with the increasing interest in ethical leadership and moral psychology ( Aquino & Reed, 2002 ; Mayer, Kuenzi, Greenbaum, Bardes, & Salvador, 2009 ), research on the development of individual and collective levels of moral identity may prove to be particularly important as leadership development outcomes.

Another potentially important cognitive outcome for leadership development is individuals’ implicit theories of leadership. Implicit leadership theories (ILTs) refer to people’s cognitive schemas for what personal attributes and behavioral tendencies make for an effective leader, and these ILTs can have a significant impact on individuals’ perceptions of who is (and is not) a leader in a given context ( Epitropaki & Martin, 2004 ; Lord, Foti, & De Vader, 1984 ; Rush, Thomas, & Lord, 1977 ). There is some research evidence supporting the idea that these ILTs emerge as a result of cultural background ( House, Javidan, Hanges, & Dorfman, 2002 ), media influence ( Holmberg & Akerblom, 2001 ), and life experience ( Keller, 2003 ). However, much more research is needed to clarify the origin of these beliefs about prototypical leaders, as well as what organizations can do to modify these beliefs. It is quite possible that many people choose not to take on leadership roles because they perceive a misfit between their own self-concept and what they believe to be prototypical of an effective leader. However, it is also possible that organizations can change these perceptions and create a fit between people’s self-concept and their ILT, thereby engendering a greater propensity to step up and take on leadership.

Finally, scholars are beginning to suggest that individuals not only have implicit theories about who is prototypical of an effective leader, but that individuals also have implicit theories about how leadership is structured in groups. For example, DeRue and Ashford (2010a ) proposed the concept of a leadership-structure schema, which refers to whether individuals conceptualize leadership as zero-sum and reserved for a single individual within a group (often the designated leader), or whether leadership can be shared among multiple group members. Following up on this proposition, there is emerging empirical evidence suggesting that not only do individuals possess different leadership-structure schemas, but also that these schemas are malleable and can be developed ( Hinrichs, Carson, Li, & Porter, 2011 ; Wellman, Ashford, DeRue, & Sanchez-Burks, 2011 ). Future research that examines the developmental interventions that alter the leadership-structure schemas of individuals and collectives, and the implications for group process and performance, would be particularly important for promoting more shared leadership in organizations.

In addition to behavioral, affective/motivational, and cognitive development outcomes, leadership development scholars have also examined changes in overall leadership performance or leadership emergence (e.g., Atwater, Dionne, Avolio, Camobreco, & Lau, 1999 ). Given that it is rare for empirical studies to model changes in leadership behavior or performance, these studies offer valuable insight into the predictors of leadership development. However, because they focus on overall performance changes and rarely experimentally manipulate the developmental intervention, these studies offer less insight into what is actually being developed or causing the observed change in leadership performance. On the one hand, it might be that individuals are developing new leadership skills or motivations. On the other hand, it is also possible that the context is changing in ways that enable individuals’ to engage in more effective leadership behavior, but that no meaningful development is occurring. For future research, we recommend scholars assess change over time in specific behavioral, affective/motivational, and/or cognitive outcomes, which will provide more insight into the underlying mechanisms explaining improvements in leadership performance or emergence.

Experience: Developing Leadership through Lived Experience

Drawing on experiential learning theories ( Dewey, 1938 ; Knowles, 1970 ; Kolb, 1984 ), scholars at the Center for Creative Leadership conducted the early research on the role of experience in leadership development ( McCall et al., 1988 ). This research then spawned a multitude of follow-up studies exploring a range of leadership development experiences, and there is now considerable consensus in the existing literature that the primary source of leadership development is experience ( McCall, 2004 ; Ohlott, 2004 ; Van Velsor & Drath, 2004 ). As Mumford and colleagues (2000 ) note, without appropriate developmental experience, even the most intelligent and motivated individuals are unlikely to be effective leaders.

The existing research on experience-based leadership development spans across a wide range of different types of experiences, including informal on-the-job assignments ( McCall et al., 1988 ), coaching and mentoring programs ( Ting & Sciscio, 2006 ), and formal training programs ( Burke & Day, 1986 ). A common assumption in the existing literature is that 70 per cent of leadership development occurs via on-the-job assignments, 20 per cent through working with and learning from other people (e.g., learning from bosses or coworkers), and 10 per cent through formal programs such as training, mentoring, or coaching programs ( McCall et al., 1988 ; Robinson & Wick, 1992 ). Despite the popularity of this assumption, there are four fundamental problems with framing developmental experiences in this way. First and foremost, there is actually no empirical evidence supporting this assumption, yet scholars and practitioners frequently quote it as if it is fact. Second, as McCall (2010 ) appropriately points out, this assumption is misleading because it suggests informal, on-the-job experiences, learning from other people, and formal programs are independent. Yet, these different forms of experience can occur in parallel, and it is possible (and likely optimal) that learning in one form of experience can complement and build on learning in another form of experience. Third, it is inconsistent with the fact that a large portion of organizational investments are directed at formal leadership development programs ( O’Leonard, 2010 ). It is certainly possible that organizations are misguided in their focus on and deployment of these programs ( Conger & Toegel, 2003 ), but we are not ready to condemn formal programs given the lack of empirical evidence. Finally, it is possible that the “70:20:10” assumption leads organizations to prioritize informal, on-the-job experience over all other forms of developmental experiences, which some scholars argue allows leadership development to become a “haphazard process” ( Conger, 1993 , p. 46) without sufficient notice to intentionality, accountability, and formal evaluation ( Day, 2000 ).

We offer an integrative framework for conceptualizing the different forms of developmental experience, including both formal and informal developmental experiences. Specifically, we propose that developmental experiences are best described and understood in terms of three dimensions: formality, mode, and content.

Formality . The formality dimension ranges from formal to informal. Formal developmental experiences are activities designed with the intended purpose of leadership development, which would include leadership training programs and interventions. In contrast, informal developmental experiences occur within the normal context of everyday life and are often not designed for the specific purpose of leadership development. Another way the formal versus informal distinction appears in the literature is when Avolio and colleagues discuss planned and unplanned events that serve as “developmental triggers” ( Avolio, 2004 ; Avolio & Hannah, 2008 ). These trigger events are experiences that prompt a person to focus attention on the need to learn and develop, but as Avolio and his colleagues propose, formal training that is planned and informal experiences that are unplanned can both serve as developmental triggers.

One assumed benefit of formal developmental experiences is that they allow individuals to spend time away from the workplace, where they are free to challenge existing ways of thinking and reflect more deeply on the lessons of experience ( Fulmer, 1997 ). Indeed, meta-analyses by Burke and Day (1986 ) and Collins and Holton (2004 ) suggest that formal leadership programs have a positive impact on employees’ acquisition of new knowledge, behavior change, and performance. However, as noted by Collins and Holton (2004 ), formal development programs have a stronger, positive effect on knowledge outcomes in comparison to behavior or performance outcomes. One reason for this differential effect could be that program participants acquire new knowledge and skills, but then encounter barriers to transferring those lessons to their actual jobs ( Belling, James, & Ladkin, 2004 ).

For example, in a study of 95 managers engaged in a formal development program in the United Kingdom, Belling and her colleagues (2004 ) found that participants perceived significant barriers to their ability to transfer lessons from the program back to the workplace. These barriers included individuals’ lack of motivation, as well as organizational factors such as time constraints, lack of managerial support, and a lack of opportunity to apply new skills. Similar barriers appear in McAlearney’s (2006 ) interviews with 160 health care managers, where program participants report that variability in organizational commitment to leadership development has a strong influence on whether they will be able to transfer new knowledge to their actual work. Similarly, Gilpin-Jackson and Bushe’s (2007 ) case study of 18 participants in a Canadian leadership development program reinforces these findings. In this study, participants reported fears about violating organizational norms by applying new techniques learned in the program. To address these barriers, a common suggestion in recent research on formal leadership development programs is to have intact teams from the same organization participate in the program together, which might help develop a common understanding of the lessons learned and increase the likelihood that behavior changes would be welcomed upon returning to the workplace ( Conger & Benjamin, 1999 ; Umble et al., 2005 ).

In part to address the barriers associated with formal leadership development programs, and in part realizing the potential learning value of on-the-job experience, scholars have also investigated the developmental value of informal, on-the-job experiences ( Davies & Easterby-Smith, 1984 ; DeRue & Wellman, 2009 ; Dragoni et al., 2009 ; McCall et al., 1988 ; McCauley et al., 1994 ; Morrison & Hock, 1986 ; Ohlott, 2004 ; Wick, 1989 ). According to Murphy and Young (1995 ), informal learning refers to learning that takes place outside of organized, structured learning processes such as institutionally based degree or training programs. These informal developmental experiences occur within the normal course of work and life, and it is this contextual groundedness that scholars believe provides greater developmental “punch” relative to formal programs ( Day, 2000 ; Dotlich & Noel, 1998 ).

For example, DeRue and Wellman (2009 ) examined how challenging, on-the-job experiences promote the acquisition of cognitive, interpersonal, business, and strategic leadership skills. Based on a sample of 225 on-the-job experiences across 60 managers from a range of organizations, the results of this study demonstrate that the relationship between developmentally challenging experiences and leadership skill development exhibits a pattern of diminishing returns, such that on-the-job experiences are developmental but can become too challenging and actually impair an employee’s development. This research refines the common assumption that challenging employees beyond their current skill set promotes leadership development—there is such thing as “too much” challenge. Consistent with these findings, research suggests that many of the same organizational factors that enhance the efficacy of formal programs are necessary for enabling informal learning through experience, including organizational commitment, feedback, managerial support, and a climate promoting learning and experimentation ( Mumford, 1980 ; Robinson & Wick, 1992 ).

Mode . Learning can occur as individuals directly engage and participate in developmental experiences, but learning can also occur vicariously through observing others and learning from their experiences. Indeed, scholars have long argued that one of humankind’s differentiating cognitive capabilities is the ability to learn vicariously ( Anderson & Cole, 1990 ; Bandura, 1986 ). The mode dimension reflects whether the developmental experience is characterized by direct or vicarious learning. Both direct and vicarious learning are possible in either formal or informal developmental experiences. For example, in a formal development program, vicarious learning can occur through observing other participants engage in various elements of the program. Likewise, in informal experiences, individuals can be directly involved, but it is also possible that significant learning can occur by observing and modeling others.

Most of the existing literature on leadership development focuses on a direct learning mode, specifically on how individuals develop leadership capabilities as they engage in and solve real-life organizational problems ( Revans, 1980 ). As Smith (2001 , p. 36) advocates, “we can only learn about [something] by doing it, and then thinking over carefully what happened, making sense of the lessons, and working through how the learning can be built on and used next time around.” Examples of direct learning approaches to the study of leadership development not only include recent research on the role of experience in leadership development (e.g., DeRue & Wellman, 2009 ; Dragoni et al., 2009 ), but also studies investigating how individuals and groups develop leadership capacity through direct involvement in formal training programs.

Although most of the existing literature focuses on a direct mode of experience, there are several noteworthy exceptions that emphasize the developmental value of observational learning. For example, McCall and colleagues (1988 ) emphasized that “notable people” can be an important source of learning about leadership and management; in most cases, these notable people included bosses who were deviant from the norm, either as exceptional performers or shockingly poor performers. Likewise, in interviews with six directors of a European, multinational company, Kempster (2006 ) found that observational learning was an important source of leadership development, although interviewees had a difficult time immediately recognizing the value of these indirect or vicarious forms of learning. Based on this research, it is possible that indirect forms of experience are more valuable than what is actually recognized in practice, and future research needs to further investigate how vicarious and observational learning can augment and/or complement direct forms of developmental experience.

Content . The final dimension along which developmental experiences vary is with respect to their content. The interest in experience as a vehicle for learning dates back to ancient philosophy—for example, Aristotle’s claim that “...for the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” However, it is not until recently that scholars have begun to develop a theory explaining how the content of lived experiences influences the developmental value of those experiences. In particular, experiences that present individuals with novel and ambiguous challenges force individuals to extend and refine their existing knowledge structures and skills ( McCall et al., 1988 ). These different forms of challenge represent the content of experience.

For example, in a study of 692 managers from 5 large corporations and 1 governmental agency, McCauley and colleagues (1994 ) demonstrated that most development occurred in experiences consisting of significant job transitions (e.g., unfamiliar responsibilities), or task-related challenges such as creating change, managing large amounts of scope and scale, and/or influencing people without authority. Likewise, other studies exploring similar forms of experience content have linked these content dimensions to enhanced individual motivation and more creative decision making ( Thompson, Hochwarter, & Mathys, 1997 ), as well as greater individual flexibility and adaptability ( Campion, Cheraskin, & Stevens, 1994 ). Indeed, one reason scholars advocate the developmental value of international assignments is that the content of international assignments includes unfamiliar responsibilities, numerous task-related challenges, and a variety of challenges related to cultural diversity and assimilation ( Caligiuri, 2006 ; McCall & Hollenbeck, 2002 ).

Beyond these positive content dimensions, scholars have also identified ways in which the content of experiences can detract from or impair leadership development outcomes. For example, in the same McCauley et al. (1994 ) study, experiences that were comprised of obstacles such as a difficult boss or a lack of top-management support detracted from individual learning. In addition, it is possible that the same content dimensions that promote learning and development can become overwhelming and impair learning. In their study, DeRue and Wellman (2009 ) showed that, when the content of an experience presents individuals with demands that far exceed their current capabilities, individuals get cognitively and emotionally overwhelmed, and as a result, leadership development suffers. From these studies, a number of interesting research questions emerge. For example, it is not clear when and why these particular types of challenges overwhelm individuals and detract from learning, as opposed to stretching employees in positive, developmental ways. One possible explanation is that people vary as to whether they see challenging experiences as having potential for growth and mastery, or the potential for personal harm or loss ( Folkman & Lazarus, 1985 ), and these different orientations influence how people go through their experiences and ultimately what they gain from those experiences. Future research that investigates the personal and situational factors that explain these differences in orientation across different content dimensions would help organizations construct experiences and allocate people to experiences in ways that reduce perceptions of threat and enhance the perceived developmental value of experience. This research could also help address concerns over high rates of voluntary turnover after employees engage in challenging, on-the-job experiences such as expatriate assignments ( Black, Gregersen, & Mendenhall, 1992 ).

Point of Intervention: Determining the Level of Analysis in Leadership Development

The current literature on leadership development spans across three levels of analysis. In particular, the point of intervention for leadership development initiatives can be at the individual level, the relational level, or the collective level. By a large margin, most of the existing research on leadership development is conducted at the individual level. In these studies, development is generally conceptualized as a positive change in the leadership capabilities of individuals, and there is a predominant focus on how individual attributes (e.g., KSAs, personality, prior experience) impact individual-level learning and development. For example, Mumford et al. (2000 ) examined how the ability, personality, and motivation of junior Army officers explain their leadership development, which in this case was operationalized as individual career success (i.e., reaching senior-level management positions). More recently, scholars have begun to examine how individuals vary in their readiness for leadership development ( Avolio & Hannah, 2008 ), and these different levels of readiness are based on individual differences such as learning orientation, self-concept clarity, and efficacy beliefs. Indeed, several studies have empirically documented how different facets of developmental readiness can accelerate or accentuate learning in the context of developmental experiences. For instance, in a sample of 218 junior-level managers from a wide range of firms and industries, Dragoni et al. (2009 ) showed how learning orientation enhances the developmental value of individuals’ on-the-job experiences. All of these examples portray leadership development in terms of individual-level abilities and performance.

Despite the value of understanding leadership development at the individual level, there are several reasons why our field needs to further extend the research on leadership development to relational and collective levels of analysis. First, leadership theory and research have widely adopted more relational and collective forms of leadership (e.g., Carson et al., 2007 ; Pearce & Conger, 2003 ), but the leadership development literature has yet to develop the conceptual or empirical knowledge base necessary for understanding how relational or collective forms of leadership develop. Second, organizations are shifting toward more collective forms of leadership development—for example, developing cohorts of managers or intact teams altogether ( Conger & Benjamin, 1999 )—but these decisions about how best to develop leadership talent lack a theoretical or empirical basis. Third, most research on leadership development draws on human learning theories that were developed to explain how individuals learn (e.g., Dewey, 1938 ; Knowles, 1970 ; Kolb, 1984 ), but it is not clear that these individual-level learning theories will be able to fully account for the group dynamics involved in relational or collective leadership development.

More recently, however, there is an emerging trend toward the study of relational and collective forms of leadership development. At the relational level, leadership development can be conceptualized as the emergence and development of leadership (leader-follower) relationships ( DeRue & Ashford, 2010a ). The origin of this perspective can be traced back to the initial work on leader-member exchange (LMX), where scholars explained how leader-follower relationships and structures are a function of interactional processes ( Dienesch & Liden, 1986 ; Graen & Scandura, 1987 ). Although most of the subsequent LMX research focused on the effects of LMX rather than the development of these relationships, there are a few exceptions ( Bauer & Green, 1996 ). For example, Nahrgang et al. (2009 ) examined the development of 330 leader-follower dyads over 8 weeks in the context of MBA-student teams. Their findings suggest that leaders and followers form initial perceptions of relationship quality based on different personality characteristics, but over time, both leaders and followers refine their perceptions of the leader-follower relationship based on the performance of their dyadic partner.

Beyond the relational level, there is also an emerging shift in the literature toward understanding how collective leadership structures emerge and develop over time ( Mehra, Dixon, Brass & Robertson, 2006 ; Mehra, Smith, Dixon, & Robertson, 2006 ; Pearce & Conger, 2003 ; Sivasubramaniam et al., 2002 ). For example, Day, Gronn, and Salas (2004 ) theorize that collective or shared leadership in teams is a function of group dynamics and interactional processes, as opposed to the characteristics of individual team members. Providing empirical support for this idea, Carson et al. (2007 ) investigated the antecedents to shared leadership in 59 MBA-student consulting teams. The consulting teams were comprised of five to seven team members and worked with their corporate clients for five months. The results of the study emphasized three distinct antecedents to shared leadership in teams. Specifically, teams with a shared purpose, social support, and opportunities for participation and voice from all group members were much more likely to develop shared leadership structures than teams without these characteristics. These data suggest that the development of collective leadership structures is not simply a function of the aggregation of individuals’ leadership attributes, but rather is a function of the social interactions among group members.

These studies of relational and collective leadership development mark an important change of direction in the study of leadership development—from a focus on individuals independent of any social context to the study of a contextualized and emergent leadership development process. Drawing from this perspective, new and interesting research questions emerge about the development of leadership in organizations. For example, research is needed to explain how the pattern of interactions among group members—for example, in terms of communication, conflict, or trust—influences the structural pattern of leadership that develops in the group. For questions about how group dynamics influence the emergence and development of relational or collective leadership, we expect applying models of group development ( Kozlowski et al., 1996 ) to understand the evolution of leadership roles and networks of relationships will be especially constructive. This research will also need to parse out the influence of formal hierarchical structures from the informal relationships and patterns of interaction that emerge in the leadership development process. Furthermore, it is not yet clear what underlying mechanisms explain how different patterns of leadership relationships and structures emerge. On the one hand, leadership theories are often grounded in the concept of social exchange (e.g., Kellerl & Dansereaul, 1995), suggesting that leader-follower relationships develop as group members exchange resources (e.g., control, liking) for compliance or following direction. On the other hand, identity-based theories of leadership development ( Day, Harrison, & Halpin, 2009 ; DeRue, 2011 ; DeRue & Ashford, 2010a ) suggest that leadership relationships and structures develop as individuals, through interaction, socially negotiate meaning and reciprocal identities as leaders and followers. Research that empirically tests and documents these divergent explanatory mechanisms would significantly advance our field’s understanding of how relational and collective forms of leadership develop in groups and organizations.

Architecture: Developing a Social and Organizational Context That Enables Leadership Development

We define architecture as the organizational practices, structures, and cultural factors that influence the leadership development process. Examples include practices such as feedback or reflection interventions that are designed to enhance employee learning from experience ( Daudelin, 1996 ; Densten & Gray, 2001 ), structures such as on-boarding or job rotation policies that are intended to accelerate employee learning and development (Campion, Cheraskin, & Stevens, 1996; Conger & Fishel, 2007 ), and cultural factors such as an organizational climate for learning ( Lim & Morris, 2006 ; Rouiller & Goldstein, 1993 ). In practice, it is often posited that these architectural features enhance employees’ motivation for engaging in leadership development activities, their access to developmental opportunities, and their ability to learn from experience. Yet, though organizations increasingly invest in these architectures to support and enhance leadership development ( Hernez-Broome & Hughes, 2004 ), the conceptual and empirical basis for these investments has historically been dubious. Recent studies, however, offer important insights about how these architectures can promote leadership development within organizations.

For example, the positive effect of coaching and mentoring on employee career development is well established (e.g., Kram, 1983 ; Levinson, Darrow, Klein, Levinson, & McKee, 1978   Ragins & Cotton, 1999 ; Seibert, 1999 ), but scholars are only beginning to examine the value of coaching and mentoring in leadership development ( Hall, Otazo, & Hollenbeck, 1999 ; Ting & Hart, 2004 ). In their quasi-experimental study of 1361 senior managers in a global financial services company, Smither and colleagues (2003 ) provided all managers multisource feedback related to their performance. However, a subset of managers also worked with a coach to interpret the feedback results, link the feedback to the business plan, create a self-development plan, and use the feedback to solicit input from employees on how to improve their leadership performance. Managers who worked with a coach were more likely to set goals for their development, solicit ideas for improvement, and improve their performance based on ratings from their direct reports and supervisors.

Unfortunately, studies that examine coaching and/or mentoring in the context of management or leadership development are rare. In fact, in their meta-analysis of the management development literature, Collins and Holton (2004 ) could not identify enough studies on the role of mentoring or coaching to include these practices in their analysis. Relative to the frequency with which coaching and mentoring are used in practice for leadership development, there is a significant need for more theory development and empirical research on how personal, situational, and organizational factors explain how coaching and mentoring influence the leadership development process. For example, it is possible that coaching or mentoring can enable individuals or groups to more effectively learn from their experiences, but it is also possible that these practices can create a sense of dependency that detracts from employees engaging in self-development activities ( Bushardt, Fretwell, & Holdnak, 1991 ; Kram, 1983 ; North, Johnson, Knotts, & Whelan, 2006 ). The current literature has only begun to unpack the mechanisms through which coaching and mentoring influence leadership development, and future research is needed to inform how individuals and organizations can fully realize the value of practices such as mentoring and coaching.

Beyond coaching and mentoring, there is also an emerging literature on the role of reflection in employee learning and development, and scholars are beginning to extend this feature of the organizational architecture to the context of leadership development. In field experiments with members of the Israel Defense Forces and in laboratory experiments with undergraduate students, Ellis and colleagues ( Ellis & Davidi, 2005 ; Ellis, Ganzach, Castle, & Sekely, 2010 ; Ellis, Mendel, & Nir, 2006 ) have documented how structured reflection practices can enhance individuals’ mental models of their experiences, promote more internal attributions for performance, and produce greater performance improvements than if employees are to process and reflect on their experiences without any formal structure or guidance. Likewise, Anseel and colleagues (2009 ) showed in both field and laboratory settings that reflection combined with feedback results in greater performance improvements than feedback alone. DeRue and colleagues ( DeRue, Nahrgang, Hollenbeck, & Workman, 2012 ) have extended these findings to a leadership development context, where they show in a nine-month field experiment that structured reflection enhances leadership development for people who are conscientious, open to experience, emotionally stable, and have a rich base of prior developmental experiences.

Finally, after decades of research on how organizational climate and culture can influence learning at the individual, group, and organizational levels of analysis ( Argyris, 1993 ; Edmondson, 1999 ; Hofmann & Stetzer, 1996 ; Rouiller & Goldstein, 1993 ; Weick, 1993 ), scholars are beginning to explore how organizational climate and culture influence leadership development. For example, international assignments are often used for leadership development purposes ( Kohonen, 2005 ; Pucik & Saba, 1998 ), and in a study of 58 expatriates from 4 multinational firms, Lazarova and Caligiuri (2001 ) found that a climate of organizational support increases expatriate commitment to the organization and reduces turnover intentions. Similarly, in the context of a large, U.S.-based hospital, Tansky and Cohen (2001 ) found that a climate of organizational support enhanced the degree to which employees were satisfied with their opportunities for personal growth and career development. Altogether, these results suggest that building a culture that supports learning and development not only enhances employee learning, but also the likelihood that organizations’ best leadership talent will be retained and continue to invest in the organization.

Reinforcement: Creating Positive Feedback Loops in Leadership Development

Leadership development is a dynamic and cyclical process of human growth and development ( McCauley, Moxley, & Van Velsor, 1998 ; Van Velsor, Moxley, & Bunker, 2004 ). At individual, relational and group levels of analysis, the capacity for leadership develops in different ways, at different times, and at different rates—ultimately forming positive or negative feedback loops that, over time, emerge as different trajectories of development ( Day et al., 2009 ; Day & Lance, 2004 ; Halpern, 2004). Historically, scholarly research has offered limited insight into these longitudinal patterns and trajectories of leadership development, but a recent special issue in Leadership Quarterly focused entirely on the topic ( Riggio & Mumford, 2011 ). For example, in this issue, Day and Sin (2011 ) demonstrated in a sample of 1315 students from the Pacific Rim that an individual’s leader identity predicts the rate of change in leadership effectiveness over time. Likewise, several articles in this issue establish empirically how aspects of individuals’ childhood and adolescent experiences predict and explain their motivation to lead and leadership potential in adulthood ( Gottfried et al., 2011 ; Oliver et al., 2011 ). Our hope is that studies such as these into the rate of growth and patterns of development are only the beginning of a shift in the field toward more longitudinal investigations of leadership development.

To help motivate research on reinforcement and feedback loops in the trajectories of leadership development, we highlight two issues that, based on recent theory in developmental psychology ( Adolph, Robinson, Young, & Gill-Alvarez, 2008 ), should be important in explaining whether positive or negative developmental trajectories emerge in leadership development. The first issue is related to how developmental experiences are sequenced over time, while the second issue is concerned with the pace and timing of specific developmental experiences.

Theories of human development emphasize that the sequencing or temporal order of lived experiences is an important factor in explaining how much learning occurs from experience, what people learn, and whether those lessons are internalized or quickly forgotten ( Riegel, 1976 ). Likewise, experiential learning theories describe a learning process where lessons are learned within experiences, but then those lessons are refined and internalized through experimentation, repetition, and reinforcement across experiences ( Kolb, 1984 ). Drawing from these theoretical perspectives, we contend that the sequencing of developmental experiences will be an important consideration in leadership development.

Developmental experiences that reinforce and extend the lessons learned from prior experiences are the building blocks to a positive leadership development trajectory ( DeRue & Workman, 2011 ). When learning is reinforced across developmental experiences, people are able to refine and internalize the lessons of experience in ways that are not possible within a single experience. Moreover, developmental experiences that are disconnected or do not reinforce the lessons of past experience can interrupt the development process, and it is possible that individuals could even regress and retreat back to old, ineffective habits and behaviors. Consistent with this perspective, research in cognitive psychology has empirically documented how reinforcing experiences enable individuals to recognize patterns across experiences, and as a result, more effectively recall the lessons of experience ( Bechtel & Abrahamsen, 1991 ; Reed, 1972 ). Similarly, research on expertise suggests that people become experts in a particular domain through repetition over long periods of time and across many reinforcing developmental experiences ( Ericsson & Charness, 1994 ; Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996 ). Unfortunately, the leadership development literature has yet to develop a theoretical or empirical basis for understanding how the sequence of experiences impacts leadership development. Most research on experience-based leadership development examines the developmental value of a single experience or job (e.g., DeRue & Wellman, 2009 ; Dragoni et al., 2009 ), and thus the optimal sequence of experiences remains a mystery. Whereas Ericsson’s research ( Ericsson & Charness, 1994 ; Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996 ) on expertise suggests sequencing experiences so that individuals are able to practice a particular skill repeatedly until it is perfected, leadership requires a complex constellation of skills, and the skills required for effective performance will ebb and flow with variability in situations (e.g., Mumford et al., 2000 ; Mumford et al., 2007 ). Indeed, some scholars have expressed concerns about too much repetition and suggested that employees should be rotated regularly to avoid the narrowing of their leadership skills ( Hall, 2002 ). Thus, it is not clear that the principles of repetition and deliberate practice will generalize to leadership development where the skills requirements are more fluid, and future research that clarifies how developmental experiences should be sequenced will be particularly valuable.

In addition to the sequencing of developmental experiences, the timing of particular experiences will also be important for understanding the emergence of positive feedback loops and developmental trajectories. While sequencing refers to the order of potential developmental experience, issues of timing revolve around the pacing of developmental experiences, as well as the identification of particular moments in an individual’s career that are more or less suited for development. In addition to an appropriate sequence of developmental challenges, individuals need sufficient time in each experience in order to maximize the learning and development that can be gleaned from the challenge (Gabarro, 1987; McCall et al., 1988 ). For example, Eisenhardt and Martin (2000 ) asserted that experience that comes too fast can overwhelm the individual, creating a barrier to their ability to capture their experience and shape it into meaningful learning. However, on the other end of the spectrum, Argote (1999 ) argued that infrequent experience can lead individuals to forget what was learned in the prior experience, hindering the ability to accumulate knowledge. These two perspectives suggest that organizations must seek to find an optimal balance, providing developmentally challenging experiences often enough to accumulate learning and knowledge, but not so often as to run into the problem of diminishing returns from an overwhelming amount of experience (e.g., DeRue &Wellman, 2009 ).

In addition to these questions of pace, research has explored the specific moments in an individual’s career progression where developmental experiences are most suitable. Through interviews with representatives from 13 different organizations, Karaevli and Hall (2006 ) posit that variety of developmental experiences is particularly beneficial early in an individual’s career. Specifically, they contend that developmental challenges at this early stage enable managers to establish their competence and an identity as a professional ( Hall, 1976 ; Levinson et al., 1978 ). Likewise, research suggests that developmental challenge and variety in experience early in an individual’s career enhances adaptability and openness to change, and enables individuals to develop more effectively later in their careers ( Bunker & Webb, 1992 ; McCall, 1998 ). These insights highlight the long-term benefits that early-career challenges can have for leadership development.

Engagement: Learning to Learn Leadership

In his seminal article on organizational learning, de Geus (1988 , p. 71) claimed that the “...only enduring source of competitive advantage is an organization’s relative ability to learn faster than its competition.” The same may very well be true for leadership development. Given the importance of learning from experience in leadership development ( McCall, 2004 ; McCall et al., 1988 ; McCauley et al., 1994 ; Ohlott, 2004 ), both human resource professionals and scholars are turning their attention toward understanding what enables individuals and collectives to effectively learn from developmental experiences. In the current literature, concepts such as the ability to learn ( Ohlott, 2004 ), learning agility ( Lombardo & Eichinger, 2000 ), and mindful engagement ( DeRue & Ashford, 2010b ) all speak to the attributes, practices and strategies that enable individuals to effectively learn from their experiences. The common theme across these concepts is an assumption that learning from experience is, in part, a function of how individuals and collective engage in the experience.

For example, Lombardo and Eichinger (2000 , p. 323) define learning agility as “the willingness and ability to learn from experience, and subsequently apply that learning to perform successfully under new or first-time conditions.” The concept of learning agility is derived from insights about how individuals learn from and draw patterns across developmental experiences ( McCall et al., 1988 ), as well as the literature on learning orientation ( Dweck, 1986 ) and adaptive performance ( Pulakos, Arad, Donovan, & Plamondon, 2000 ). Although conceptual development and empirical research on learning agility are in their infancy, some interesting insights are emerging from the current research ( De Meuse, Dai, & Hallenbeck, 2010 ). In a series of studies using the CHOICES measure of learning agility, findings suggest that learning agility is empirically distinct from related concepts such as cognitive ability, goal orientation, and openness to experience, and that learning agility is associated with higher promotability and performance ( Connolly & Viswesvaran, 2002 ; Eichinger & Lombardo, 2004 ). Building on these findings, our hope is that scholars will heed recent calls for further theory development and research on learning agility ( DeRue, Ashford, & Myers, 2012 ), with the goal of understanding how the learning agility concept contributes to the field’s understanding of how people learn leadership via experience.

In addition, scholars are beginning to identify the behavioral practices and strategies that people can employ as they engage in key developmental experiences. For example, in interviews with 100 senior pastors, McKenna, Boyd and Yost (2007 ) found that pastors engaged in a series of personal strategies that helped them navigate through and learn from their experiences. These strategies included adopting a learning orientation, relying on personal character and values, establishing and managing relationships, relying on their faith and calling, and using their expertise and knowledge. Similarly, DeRue and Ashford (2010b ) outlined a set of practices that individuals can engage in to enhance the developmental value of experience, including approaching experiences with a learning orientation and specific goals for their development, engaging in active experimentation and feedback seeking during the experience, and systematically and critically reflecting on the successes and failures of any given experience.

These few studies on the ability to learn from experience are only the beginning. Indeed, much more research is needed on the antecedents to understanding the ability to learn from experience for both individuals and collectives. For example, there may be a range of cognitive abilities (e.g., practical intelligence, wisdom; Sternberg, 2007 ), or different sources of motivation for learning (e.g., extrinsic vs. intrinsic, self vs. other; DeRue & Myers, 2011 ), that explain why some people are more effective at learning from experience than others. In addition, research is needed to further develop, both conceptually and empirically, the behavioral practices and strategies that enable individuals and collectives to learn from experience. Thus far, the current literature has largely overlooked how the social context shapes the behaviors and practices that enable individuals and collectives to learn from experience, and research that develops a more contextually embedded model of ability to learn would be particularly helpful for advancing theories of experience-based leadership development. Indeed, this research could ultimately shift organizations’ leadership selection, staffing and succession planning processes away from a singular focus on who has performed well in prior leadership roles, and expand these processes to consider who is better equipped to learn from future experiences that might require fundamentally different modes of leadership. As John Ryan (2009 , p. 7), the president and CEO of The Center for Creative Leadership, stated: “To succeed in a world where our work is always changing, where challenges are unpredictable and competition abounds, we need to be agile learners.”

Concluding Remarks: Key Insights and Next Steps

The scientific study of leadership enjoys a rich tradition of theoretical development and empirical research ( Avolio, Walumbwa, & Weber, 2009 ; Bass & Bass, 2008 ), but most of this research has emphasized the effects of leadership rather than the development of leadership. However, in the past two decades, scholars have developed a wealth of ideas and theories about how leadership capacity develops in organizational settings. In addition, working across a variety of organizational and cultural contexts, scholars have employed a diverse set of research methods to empirically examine the antecedents and processes associated with leadership development. Based on this research, a range of key insights have emerged. For instance, leadership development occurs primarily through action-based learning and experience, but not all experiences are equally developmental; and challenging assignments can be formal or informal, direct or indirect, and vary greatly in terms of their content. In addition, it is clear that leadership development is not simply about developing leadership knowledge and skills, but also about developing people’s motivation to lead, their affect toward the rewards and risks associated with leadership, their identity as leaders, as well as their cognitive schemas about what it means to participate in a leadership process. Indeed, leadership development has become a topic of interest for scholars across a range of disciplines, and the diversity of theories and research emerging on leadership development is stimulating new and exciting ideas on the topic.

At the same time, however, a number of important knowledge gaps remain in the field’s understanding of leadership development. Indeed, based on the present literature review, there are aspects of the PREPARE framework that lack the necessary theoretical or empirical grounding, and thus represent opportunities for future research. Herein, we review several of these knowledge gaps and explain how they provide a foundation for new and interesting research on leadership development.

An Agenda for Future Research

• Considering Multiple Points of Intervention: Integrating Leader and Leadership Development

Most research has focused on individual leaders as the point of intervention for leadership development, but based on the current literature, the process by which organizations develop leadership relationships and collective leadership structures remains an open question. Leader and leadership development have historically been treated as distinct concepts, but as Day (2000 , p. 605) noted, the “preferred approach is to link leader development with leadership development such that the development of leadership transcends but does not replace the development of individual leaders.” Instead of treating these concepts as independent, future research should provide a more integrative account of how leader and leadership development can be complementary in building the capacity for more effective leadership processes. In particular, an important research question is how organizations can develop effective leader-follower relationships and collective leadership structures, while also cultivating individuals who effectively participate in these leadership processes. The two concepts are interdependent and likely complementary.

Aligning Strategy and Purpose : Syncing Leadership Development Efforts with Strategic Goals

Despite a wealth of theory and empirical research on the value of strategic alignment in HRM practices ( Delery & Doty, 1996 ; Wright & McMahan, 1992 ), there is very little research on how leadership development can be effectively aligned with the strategic priorities of organizations, or what the value of that strategic alignment might be for organizations. For instance, research is needed to determine the appropriate balance between developmental experiences that align directly with an organization’s goals or strategy and developmental experiences that are not aligned with strategy, but which may bring new insights and broaden an individual’s perspective on leadership. Understanding the various mechanisms by which leadership development efforts can be shaped to both support and broaden organizational strategies will contribute significantly to the field’s understanding of the organizational-level impact of leadership development.

Unpacking Developmental Engagement : Understanding what Motivates and Triggers Leaders to Develop From Experiences

Though research has begun to explore some of the antecedents to learning from experience, this research has largely focused on individuals’ cognitive abilities and behavioral approaches to learning, with much less attention paid to individuals’ motivations for learning or the process by which these individuals come to recognize an experience as an opportunity for development. Indeed, individuals may be equally able to learn from experience, but may differ substantially in why they would be motivated to develop (i.e., they may have different motives for learning; DeRue & Myers, 2011 ), and this difference in the source of their motivation may lead to differing levels of engagement in a developmental experience. Likewise, certain events or situations may serve as “developmental triggers” ( Avolio, 2004 ), focusing an individual’s attention on the need for development. The current literature offers little insight into why some people can see an experience as an opportunity for learning (and thus a trigger for development), whereas other people may see that same experience as a problem or risk that needs to be solved or minimized. Future research that explores the consequences of individuals’ motives for leadership development, and the anatomy of events that trigger a focus on learning, would be particularly helpful in advancing the field’s understanding of leadership development in organizational contexts.

Promoting Reinforcement : Considering Leadership Development as a Sequence of Developmental Experiences

In spite of considerable recognition that leadership development is a temporal and cyclical process, there is a dearth of research on how developmental experiences should be arranged over time, how these experiences can reinforce each other, how different trajectories of development emerge and evolve, or how the timing and pace of experiences affect development. Conceptualizing leaders’ development in terms of the trajectory of development over time (e.g., steep, flat, linear, exponential) opens up a new set of questions about the nature of time and cumulative experience in the developmental process, which are only beginning to be explored in empirical research, and require researchers to develop new theories that specify the duration of change, the predictors of change, the form or pattern of change, and the level of change expected ( Ployhart & Vandenberg, 2010 ). Drawing from exemplars such as Day and Sin’s (2011 ) study of developmental trajectories, future research needs to unpack the temporal cycles and processes involved in leadership development.

To address these questions, scholars will need to employ a diverse range of research methods and approaches. At its core, leadership development is about change (in knowledge, skills, motivation, identity, process, structure, etc.); thus studying a leadership development process requires modeling change processes over time, whether it be at the individual, relational, or group level of analysis. Accordingly, scholars will need to carefully craft research designs, determining the number of measurement occasions and observations necessary for testing the proposed theory of development (i.e., change). In addition, these future research designs will need to either use experimental methods with a control group, or introduce the appropriate time lags between intervals to address issues of causality. Indeed, as our theories of leadership development advance and become more refined, our methods for studying leadership development will also need to advance and become more sophisticated. Our hope is that by acknowledging these opportunities for future research, the current chapter not only provides a substantive review of the current literature, but also serves as a source of inspiration and guidance as scholars seek to build and test new theories of leadership development.

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Research Article

The impact of engaging leadership on employee engagement and team effectiveness: A longitudinal, multi-level study on the mediating role of personal- and team resources

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – original draft

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Department of Education Studies, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

Roles Conceptualization, Investigation, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Research Unit Occupational & Organizational Psychology and Professional Learning, KU Leuven, Belgium, Department of Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

• Greta Mazzetti, 
• Wilmar B. Schaufeli

• Published: June 29, 2022
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269433
• Reader Comments

Most research on the effect of leadership behavior on employees’ well-being and organizational outcomes is based on leadership frameworks that are not rooted in sound psychological theories of motivation and are limited to either an individual or organizational levels of analysis. The current paper investigates whether individual and team resources explain the impact of engaging leadership on work engagement and team effectiveness, respectively. Data were collected at two time points on N = 1,048 employees nested within 90 work teams. The Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling results revealed that personal resources (i.e., optimism, resiliency, self-efficacy, and flexibility) partially mediated the impact of T1 individual perceptions of engaging leadership on T2 work engagement. Furthermore, joint perceptions of engaging leadership among team members at T1 resulted in greater team effectiveness at T2. This association was fully mediated by team resources (i.e., performance feedback, trust in management, communication, and participation in decision-making). Moreover, team resources had a significant cross-level effect on individual levels of engagement. In practical terms, training and supporting leaders who inspire, strengthen, and connect their subordinates could significantly improve employees’ motivation and involvement and enable teams to pursue their common goals successfully.

Citation: Mazzetti G, Schaufeli WB (2022) The impact of engaging leadership on employee engagement and team effectiveness: A longitudinal, multi-level study on the mediating role of personal- and team resources. PLoS ONE 17(6): e0269433. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269433

Editor: Ender Senel, Mugla Sitki Kocman University: Mugla Sitki Kocman Universitesi, TURKEY

Received: December 29, 2021; Accepted: May 23, 2022; Published: June 29, 2022

Copyright: © 2022 Mazzetti, Schaufeli. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: The data that support the findings of this study are available on Open Science Framework (OSF) website at the following link: https://osf.io/yfwgt/?view_only=c838730fd7694a0ba32882c666e9f973 . DOI: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/YFWGT .

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Multiple studies suggest that work engagement, which is defined as a positive, work-related state of mind characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption [ 1 ], is related to extremely positive outcomes, particularly in terms of employees’ well-being and job performance (for a narrative overview see [ 2 ]; for a meta-analysis see [ 3 ]).

Therefore, when work engagement is arguably beneficial for employees and organizations alike, the million-dollar question (quite literally, by the way) is: how can work engagement be increased? Schaufeli [ 4 ] has argued that operational leadership is critical for enhancing follower’s work engagement. Based on the logic of the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model [ 5 ], he reasoned that team leaders may (or may not) monitor, manage, and allocate job demands and resources to increase their follower’s levels of work engagement. In doing so, team leaders boost the motivational process that is postulated in the JD-R model. This process assumes that job resources and challenging job demands are inherently motivating and will lead to a positive, affective-motivational state of fulfillment in employees known as work engagement.

The current study focuses on a specific leadership style, dubbed engaging leadership and rooted in Self-Determination Theory (SDT) [ 6 ]. Engaging leaders inspire, strengthen, and connect their followers, thereby satisfying their basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, respectively. In line with the motivational process of the JD-R model, cross-sectional evidence suggests that engaging leaders increase job resources [ 7 ] and personal resources [ 8 ], which, in their turn, are positively associated with work engagement. So far, the evidence for this mediation is exclusively based on cross-sectional studies. Hence, the first objective of our paper is to confirm the mediation effect of resources using a longitudinal design.

Scholars have emphasized that “the study of leadership is inherently multilevel in nature” (p. 4) [ 9 ]. This statement implies that, in addition to the individual level, the team level of analysis should also be included when investigating the impact of engaging leadership.

The current study makes two notable contributions to the literature. First, it investigates the impact, over time, of a novel, specific leadership style (i.e., engaging leadership) on team- and individual outcomes (i.e., team effectiveness and work engagement). Second, it investigates the mediating role of team resources and personal resources in an attempt to explain the impact of leadership on these outcomes. The research model, which is described in greater detail below, is displayed in Fig 1 .

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269433.g001

Leadership and work engagement

Leadership is defined as the way in which particular individuals–leaders–purposefully influence other individuals–their followers–to obtain defined outcomes [ 10 ].

A systematic narrative review identified twenty articles on leadership and work engagement [ 11 ] and showed that work engagement is positively associated with various person-centered leadership styles. The most pervasively used framework was transformational leadership, whereas authentic, ethical, and charismatic leadership was used much less. The authors conclude that "most of the reviewed studies were consistent in arguing that leadership is significantly correlated with and is affecting employee’s work engagement directly or via mediation” (p. 18) [ 11 ]. Moreover, they also conclude that research findings and inferences on leadership and engagement remain narrowly focused and inconclusive due to the lack of longitudinal designs addressing this issue. A recent meta-analysis [ 12 ] identified 69 studies and found substantial positive relationships of work engagement with ethical (k = 9; ρ = .58), transformational (k = 36; ρ = .46) and servant leadership (k = 3; ρ = .43), and somewhat less strong associations with authentic (k = 17; ρ = .38) and empowering leadership (k = 4; ρ = .35). Besides, job resources (e.g., job autonomy, social support), organizational resources (e.g., organizational identification, trust), and personal resources (self-efficacy, creativity) mediated the effect of leadership on work engagement. Although transformational leadership is arguably the most popular leadership concept of the last decades [ 13 ], the validity of its conceptual definition has been heavily criticized, even to the extent that some authors suggest getting “back to the drawing board” [ 14 ]. It should be noted that three main criticisms are voiced: (1) the theoretical definition of the transformational leadership dimensions is meager (i.e., how are the four dimensions selected and how do they combine?); (2) no causal model is specified (i.e., how is each dimension related to mediating processes and outcomes?); (3) the most frequently used measurement tools are invalid (i.e., they fail to reproduce the dimensional structure and do not show empirical distinctiveness from other leadership concepts). Hence, it could be argued that the transformational leadership framework is not very well suited for exploring the impact of leadership on work engagement.

Schaufeli [ 7 ] introduced the concept of engaging leadership , which is firmly rooted in Self-Determination Theory. According to Deci and Ryan [ 6 ], three innate psychological needs are essential ‘nutrients’ for individuals to function optimally, also at the workplace: the needs for autonomy (i.e., feeling in control), competence (i.e., feeling effective), and relatedness (i.e., feeling loved and cared for). Moreover, SDT posits that employees are likely to be engaged (i.e., internalize their tasks and show high degrees of energy, concentration, and persistence) to the degree that their needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are satisfied [ 15 ]. This is in line with Bormann and Rowold [ 16 ]. Based on a systematic review on construct proliferation in leadership research, these authors recommended that leadership concepts should use SDT because this motivational theory allows a more parsimonious description of the mechanisms underlying leadership behaviors. These authors posited that the core of "narrow" leadership constructs "bases on a single pillar" (p. 163), and therefore predict narrow outcomes. In contrast to broad leadership constructs, the concept of engaging leadership is narrow because it focuses on leadership behaviors to explicitly promote work engagement.

Schaufeli [ 7 ] reasoned that leaders, who are instrumental in satisfying their followers’ basic needs, are likely to increase their engagement levels. More specifically, engaging leaders are supposed to: (1) inspire (e.g., by enthusing their followers for their vision and plans, and by making them feel that they contribute to something important); (2) strengthen (e.g., by granting their followers freedom and responsibility, and by delegating tasks); and (3) connect (e.g., by encouraging collaboration and by promoting a high team spirit among their followers). Hence, by inspiring, strengthening, and connecting their followers, leaders stimulate the fulfillment of their follower’s basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, respectively, which, in turn, will foster work engagement.

The underlying mechanisms of the relationship between engaging leadership and work engagement are a major focus of research, as the construct of engaging leadership was built upon the identification of the leadership behaviors that are capable of stimulating positive outcomes by satisfying needs. The literature on engaging leadership provides empirical evidence for its indirect impact on followers’ engagement by fulfilling followers’ basic needs. This finding is consistent across occupational sectors and cultural contexts [ 17 – 19 ]. Further, the observation of a partial mediation effect for need satisfaction suggests the presence of a direct relationship between engaging leadership and engagement [ 20 , 21 ]. In their behaviors, engaging leaders are likely to improve their job characteristics to the point of stimulating greater engagement among their employees. This assumption has been corroborated by a recent longitudinal study that delved deeper into the association between engaging leadership and needs satisfaction [ 22 ]. That study found that the relationship between engaging leadership and basic needs satisfaction is mediated by enhanced levels of job resources (among them were improved feedback and skill use and better person-job fit). The fulfilment of those needs, in turn, resulted in higher levels of work engagement. Therefore, perceived job resources seem to play a crucial role in the causal relationship between engaging leadership and basic needs satisfaction. This evidence found support in a later two-wave full panel design with a 1-year time lag, where engaging leadership promoted employees’ perception of autonomy and social support from colleagues [ 23 ]. In addition, a recent study by Van Tuin and colleagues [ 24 ] revealed that engaging leadership is associated with increased perceptions of intrinsic organizational values (e.g., providing a contribution to organizational and personal development) and satisfaction of the need for autonomy which, in turn, may boost employees’ level of engagement.

A recent study investigated the ways in which engaging leadership could boost the effects of human resource (HR) practices for promoting employees’ psychological, physical, and social well-being over time [ 25 ]. Teams led by an engaging leader reported higher levels of happiness at work and trust in leadership, combined with lower levels of burnout than their colleagues who were led by poorly engaging leaders. Happiness and trust played a key role in improving team member performance. These findings indicate that engaged leaders provide a thoughtful implementation of HR practices focused on promoting employee well-being, being constantly driven by their employees’ flourishing.

Another line of studies may reveal the causality between engaging leadership and work-related outcomes. A multilevel longitudinal study provided cross-level and team-level effects of engaging leadership [ 26 ]. Engaging leadership at T1 explained team learning, innovation, and individual performance through increased teamwork engagement at T2. Interventions targeting engaging leadership created positive work outcomes for leaders (e.g., autonomy satisfaction and intrinsic motivation) and decreased employee absenteeism [ 27 ]. However, cross-lagged longitudinal analyses indicate that employees’ current level of work engagement predicts their leaders’ level of engaging leadership rather than the other way around [ 23 ]. These findings imply that the relationship between engaging leadership and work engagement cannot be narrowed to a simple unidirectional causal relationship but rather exhibits a dynamic nature, where engaging leadership and work engagement mutually influence each other. The dynamic nature of engaging leadership has also been investigated through a diary study. The results suggest that employees enacted job crafting strategies more frequently on days when leaders were more successful in satisfying their need for connectivity [ 28 ]. Hence, leaders who satisfy the need for connectedness among their followers will not only encourage higher levels of engagement among their followers but also an increased ability to proactively adapt tasks to their interests and preferences.

Since transformational leadership is currently the most frequently studied leadership style, a summary of the similarities and differences in the proposed new conceptualization of leadership proposed (i.e., engaging leadership) must be provided.

A key difference between transformational and engaging leadership originates from their foundation. Whereas transformational leadership is primarily a change-oriented style, engaging leadership encourages employees’ well-being through the promotion of supportive relationships and is defined as a relationship-oriented leadership style [ 29 ].

Further similarities entail the combination of behaviors meant to foster employees’ well-being and growth. Transformational leaders act as role models admired and emulated by followers (idealized influence), encourage a reconsideration of prevailing assumptions and work practices to promote stronger innovation (intellectual stimulation), identify and build on the unique characteristics and strengths of each follower (individualized consideration), and provides a stimulating view of the future and meaning of their work (inspirational motivation) [ 30 ]. A considerable resemblance involves the dimensions of inspirational motivation and inspiring, which are, respectively, included in transformational and engaging leadership. They both entail recognizing the leader as a guiding light to a specific mission and vision, where individual inputs are credited as essential ingredients in achieving the shared goal. Thus, they both fulfill the individual need for meaningfulness. In a similar vein, transformational and engaged leaders are both committed to promote followers’ growth in terms of innovation and creativity. In other words, the intellectual stimulation offered by transformational leadership and the strengthening component of engaging leadership are both aimed at meeting the need for competence among followers.

Alternatively, it is also possible to detect decisive differences between the dimensions underlying these leadership styles. Transformational leadership entails the provision of personal mentorship (i.e., individualized consideration), while engaging leadership is primarily focused on enhancing the interdependence and cohesion among team members (i.e., team consideration). Furthermore, engaging leadership disregards the notion of idealized influence covered by transformational leadership: an engaging leader is not merely identified as a model whose behavior is admired and mirrored, but rather proactively meets followers’ need for autonomy through the allocation of tasks and responsibilities.

Empirical results lent further support to the distinctiveness between transformational and engaging leadership. The analysis of the factor structure of both constructs revealed that measures of engaging and transformational leadership load on separate dimensions instead of being explained by a single latent factor [ 31 ]. More recently, additional research findings pointed out that engaging and transformational leadership independently account for comparable portions of variance in work engagement [ 32 ]. However, this does not alter the fact that a certain overlap exists between both leadership concepts; thus, it is not surprising that a consistent, positive relationship is found between transformational leadership and work engagement [ 11 ].

In sum: a positive link appears to exist between person-centered leadership styles and work engagement. Moreover, this relationship seems to be mediated by (job and personal) resources. However, virtually all studies used cross-sectional designs, and the causal direction remains unclear. We followed the call to go back to the drawing board by choosing an alternative, deductive approach by introducing the theory-grounded concept of engaging leadership and investigate its impact on individual and team outcomes (see Fig 1 ).

Engaging leadership, personal resources, and employee engagement (individual level)

Serrano and Reichard [ 33 ], who posit that leaders may pursue four pathways to increase their follower’s work engagement: (1) design meaningful and motivating work; (2) support and coach their employees; (3 ) facilitate rewarding and supportive coworker relations, and (4) enhancing personal resources. In the present study, we focus on the fourth pathway. Accordingly, a cross-sectional study using structural equation modeling [ 8 ] showed that psychological capital (i.e., self-efficacy, optimism, resiliency, and flexibility) fully mediated the relationship between perceived engaging leadership and follower’s work engagement. Consistent with findings on job resources, this study indicated that personal resources also mediate the relationship between engaging leadership and work engagement. In a nutshel, when employees feel autonomous, competent, and connected to their colleagues, their own personal resources benefit, and this fuels their level of engagement.

In the current study, we use the same conceptualization of psychological capital (PsyCap) as Schaufeli [ 7 , 8 ], which slightly differs from the original concept. Originally, PsyCap was defined as a higher-order construct that is based on the shared commonalities of four first-order personal resources: “(1) having confidence (self-efficacy) to take on and put in the necessary effort to succeed at challenging tasks; (2) making a positive attribution (optimism) about succeeding now and in the future; (3) persevering toward goals and, when necessary, redirecting paths to goals (hope) to succeed; and (4) when beset by problems and adversity, sustaining and bouncing back and even beyond (resiliency) to attain success” (p. 10) [ 34 ]. Instead of hope, flexibility is included; that is, the capability of employees to adapt to new, different, and changing requirements at work. Previous research showed a high correlation ( r > .70) between hope and optimism, thus increasing the risk of multicollinearity [ 35 ]. This strong relationship points at conceptual overlap: hope is defined as the perception that goals can be set and achieved, whereas optimism is the belief that one will experience good outcomes. Hence, trust in achieving goals (hope) implies optimism. Additionally, hope includes "when necessary, redirecting paths to goals", which refers to flexibility. Finally, in organizational practice, the flexibility of employees is considered an essential resource because organizations are continuously changing, which requires permanent adaption and hence employee flexibility. In short, there are psychometric, conceptual, and pragmatic arguments for replacing hope by flexibility.

According to Luthans and colleagues [ 36 ], PsyCap is a state-like resource representing an employee’s motivational propensity and perseverance towards goals. PsyCap is malleable and open to development, thus it can be enhanced through positive leadership [ 37 ]. Indeed, it was found that transformational leadership enhances PsyCap, which, in turn, increases in-role performance and organizational citizenship behavior [ 38 ]. In a similar vein, PsyCap mediates the relationships between authentic leadership and employee’s creative behavior [ 39 ].

We argue that engaging leadership may promote PsyCap as well. After all, by inspiring followers with a clear, powerful and compelling vision, engaging leaders: (1) create the belief in their ability to perform tasks that tie in with that vision successfully, thereby fostering follower’s self-efficacy ; (2) generate a positive appraisal of the future, thereby fostering follower’s optimism ; (3) trigger the ability to bounce back from adversity because a favorable future is within reach, thereby fostering follower’s resiliency ; (4) set goals and induce the belief that these can be achieved, if necessary by redirecting paths to those goals, thereby fostering follower’s flexibility [ 38 ].

Furthermore, engaging leaders strengthen their followers and unleash their potential by setting challenging goals. This helps to build followers’ confidence in task-specific skills, thereby increasing their self-efficacy levels, mainly via mastery experiences that occur after challenging goals have been achieved [ 40 ]. Setting high-performance expectations also elevates follower’s sense of self-worth, thereby leading to a positive appraisal of their current and future circumstances (i.e., optimism ). Moreover, a strengthening leader acts as a powerful contextual resource that augments followers’ self-confidence and, hence, increases their ability to bounce back from adversity (i.e., resiliency ) and adapt to changing requirements at work (i.e., flexibility ).

Finally, by connecting their followers, engaging leaders promote good interpersonal relationships and build a supportive team climate characterized by collaboration and psychological safety. Connecting leaders also foster commitment to team goals by inducing a sense of purpose, which energizes team members to contribute toward the same, shared goal. This means that in tightly knit, supportive and collaborative teams, followers: (1) experience positive emotions when team goals are met, which, in turn, fosters their level of self-efficacy [ 40 ]; (2) feel valued and acknowledged by others, which increases their self-worth and promotes a positive and optimistic outlook; (3) can draw upon their colleagues for help and support, which enables to face problems and adversities with resiliency ; (4) can use the abilities, skills, and knowledge of their teammates to adapt to changing job and team requirements (i.e., flexibility ).

In sum, when perceived as such by followers, engaging leadership acts as a sturdy contextual condition that enhances their PsyCap. We continue to argue that, in its turn, high levels of PsyCap are predictive for work engagement; or in other words, PsyCap mediates the relationship between engaging leadership and work engagement.

How to explain the relationship between PsyCap and work engagement? Sweetman and Luthans [ 41 ] presented a conceptual model, which relates PsyCap to work engagement through positive emotions. They argue that all four elements of PsyCap may have a direct and state-like relationship with each of the three dimensions of work engagement (vigor, dedication, and absorption). Furthermore, an upward spiral of PsyCap and work engagement may be a source of positive emotion and subsequently broaden an employee’s growth mindset, leading to higher energy and engagement [ 42 , 43 ]. In short, PsyCap prompts and maintains a motivational process that leads to higher work engagement and may ultimately result in positive outcomes, such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment [ 44 ].

Psychological capital is a valuable resource to individuals [ 45 ] that fosters work engagement, as demonstrated in past research [ 46 ]. Hence, following the reasoning above, we formulate the following hypothesis:

• Hypothesis 1: Psychological capital (self-efficacy , optimism , resiliency , and flexibility) mediates the relationship between T1 employee’s perceptions of engaging leadership and T2 work engagement .

Engaging leadership, team resources, and work team effectiveness (team level)

So far, we focused on individual-level mediation, but an equivalent mediation process is expected at the aggregated team level as well. We assume that leaders display a comparable leadership style toward the entire team, resulting in a similar relationship with each of the team members. This model of leader-follower interactions is known as the average leadership style (ALS) [ 47 ]. This means that homogeneous leader-follower interactions exist within teams, but relationships of leaders with followers may differ between teams. The relationships between leadership and team effectiveness might be based on an analogous, team-based ALS-approach as well [ 48 ]. Following this lead, we posit that team members share their perceptions of engaging leadership, while this shared perception differs across teams. Moreover, we assume that these shared perceptions are positively related to team effectiveness.

An essential role for leaders is to build team resources, which motivate team members and enable them to perform. Indeed, the influence of leader behaviors on team mediators and outcomes has been extensively documented [ 49 , 50 ].

Most studies use the heuristic input-process-output (IPO) framework [ 51 ] to explain the relationship between leadership (input) and team effectiveness (output), whereby the intermediate processes describe how team inputs are transformed into outputs. It is widely acknowledged that two types of team processes play a significant role: “taskwork” (i.e., functions that team members must perform to achieve the team’s task) and “teamwork” (i.e., the interaction between team members, necessary to achieve the team’s task). Taskwork is encouraged by task-oriented leadership behaviors that focus on task accomplishment. In contrast, teamwork is encouraged by person-oriented leadership behaviors that focus on developing team members and promoting interactions between them [ 49 ]. The current paper focuses on teamwork and person-oriented (i.e., engaging) leadership.

Collectively, team resources such as performance feedback, trust in management, communication between team members, and participation in decision-making constitute a supportive team climate that is conducive for employee growth and development, and hence fosters team effectiveness, as well as individual work engagement. This also meshes with Serrano and Reichard [ 33 ], who argue that for employees to flourish, leaders should design meaningful and motivating work (e.g., through feedback and participation in decision making) and facilitate rewarding and supportive coworker relations (e.g., through communication and trust in management).

To date, engaging leadership has not been studied at the team level and concerning team resources and team effectiveness. How should the association between engaging leadership and team resources be conceived? By strengthening, engaging leaders provide their team members with performance feedback; by inspiring, they grant their team members participate in decision making; and by connecting, they foster communication between team members and install trust. Please note that team resources refer to shared, individual perceptions of team members, which are indicated by within-team consensus. Therefore, taken as a whole, the team-level resources that are included in the present study constitute a supportive team climate that is characterized by receiving feedback, trust in management, communication amongst team members, and participating in decision-making. We have seen above that engaging leaders foster team resources, but how are these resources, in their turn, related to team effectiveness?

The multi-goal, multi-level model of feedback effects of DeShon and colleagues [ 52 ] posits that individual and team regulatory processes govern the allocation of effort invested in achieving individual and team goals, resulting in individual and team effectiveness. We posit that the shared experience of receiving the team leader’s feedback prompts team members to invest efforts in achieving team tasks, presumably through team regulatory processes, as postulated in the multi-goal, multi-level model.

Trust has been defined as: “the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other party will perform a particular action to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party” (p. 712) [ 53 ]. Using a multilevel mediation model, Braun and colleagues [ 54 ] showed that trust mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and performance at the team level. They reasoned that transformational leaders take into account a team member’s needs, goals, and interests, making them more willing to be vulnerable to their supervisor. This would apply even more for engaging leaders, which is defined in terms of satisfying basic follower’s needs. It is plausible that a team’s shared trust in its leader enhances the trust of team members in each other. That means that team members interact and communicate trustfully and rely on each other’s abilities, which, in turn, is conducive for team effectiveness [ 55 ].

Communication is a crucial element of effective teamwork [ 56 ]. Team members must exchange information to ascertain other members’ competence and intentions, and they must engage in communication to develop a strategy and plan their work. Several studies have shown that effectively gathering and exchanging information is essential for team effectiveness [ 57 , 58 ]. Furthermore, participation in decision-making is defined as joint decision-making [ 59 ] and involves sharing influence between team leaders and team members. By participating in decision-making, team members create work situations that are more favorable to their effectiveness. Team members utilize participating in decision-making for achieving what they desire for themselves and their team. Generally speaking, shared mental models are defined as organized knowledge structures that allow employees to interact successfully with their environment, and therefore lead to superior team performance [ 60 ]. That is, team members with a shared mental model about decision-making are ‘in sync’ and will easily coordinate their actions, whereas the absence of a shared mental model will result in process loss and ineffective team processes.

Taken together and based on the previous reasoning, we formulate the second hypothesis as follows:

• Hypothesis 2: Team resources (performance feedback , trust in management , team communication , and participation in decision-making) mediate the relationship between T1 team member’s shared perceptions of engaging leadership and T2 team effectiveness .

Engaging leadership, team resources, and work engagement (cross-level)

Engaging leaders build team resources (see above). Or put differently, the team member’s shared perceptions of engaging leadership are positively related to team resources. Besides, we also assume that these team resources positively impact work engagement at the individual level. A plethora of research has shown that various job resources are positively related to work engagement, including feedback, trust, communication, and participation in decision- making (for a narrative overview see [ 61 ]; for a meta-analysis see [ 62 , 63 ]). Most research that found this positive relationship between job resources and work engagement used the Job-Demands Resources model [ 5 ] that assumes that job resources are inherently motivating because they enhance personal growth and development and are instrumental in achieving work goals. Typically, these resources are assessed as perceived by the individual employee. Yet, as we have seen above, perceptions of resources might also be shared amongst team members. It is plausible that these shared resources, which collectively constitute a supportive, collaborative team climate, positively impact employee’s individual work engagement. Teams that receive feedback, have trust in management, whose members amply interact and communicate, and participate in decision-making are likely to produce work engagement. This reasoning agrees with Schaufeli [ 64 ], who showed that organizational growth climate is positively associated with work engagement, also after controlling for personality. When employee growth is deemed relevant by the organization this is likely to translate, via engaging leaders, into a supportive team environment, which provides feedback, trust, communication, and participative decision-making. Hence, we formulate:

• Hypothesis 3: Team resources (performance feedback , trust in management , team communication , and participation in decision-making) mediate the relationship between team shared perceptions of engaging leadership at T1 and individual team member’s work engagement at T2 .

Sample and procedure

In collaboration with the HR department, data were collected among all employees of a business unit of a large Dutch public service agency. This agency is responsible for the administration of unemployment benefits and work incapacitation claims, as well as for the rehabilitation and return to work of unemployed and incapacitated employees. A one-year time-lagged design was applied to minimize the likelihood of common method variance effects and to explore causal relationships among the study variables [ 65 ]. The questionnaire included a cover letter reporting the aims and contents of the study. The letter also stated that participation in the study was completely voluntary, and that one can withdraw from the study at any time without having to give explanations and without this involving any disadvantage or prejudice. Participants’ consent was concluded by conduct, through ticking the consent checkbox as a prerequisite to access the questionnaire. This research was conducted in 2015, thus before the publication of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and complied with the latest version of the Declaration of Helsinki. Thus, ethics approval was not compulsory, as per applicable institutional and national Dutch guidelines. Additionally, the current study did not involve any treatment, medical diagnostics, or procedures generating psychological or social discomfort among participants.

In the first survey at Time 1 ( N = 2,304; response rate 63%), employees were asked about their socio-demographic background, engaging leadership, team resources (i.e., performance feedback, trust in management, communication, and participation in decision-making), team effectiveness, personal resources (i.e., resiliency, optimism, and flexibility), and work engagement. At Time 2 ( N = 2,183; response rate 51%), participants filled out the same survey, which included an additional self-efficacy scale. At both measurement points, participants received an email from the HR department containing a link that allowed them to fill out the online survey. This introductory email provided background information about the study’s general aim and guaranteed that participants’ responses would be treated confidentiality. A sample of N = 1,048 employees filled out the questionnaire twice, with an interval of one year between T1 and T2.

The estimation of multilevel models with at least 50 teams of at least 5 members per group is strongly recommended to avoid underestimating standard errors and variances for random effects [ 66 , 67 ]. Therefore, participants being part of teams with less than 5 employees were excluded from the analyses. Accordingly, the data of 1,048 participants, who completed both questionnaires, could be linked and constitute the current study sample. Employees were nested within 90 work teams, with an average of 13.7 ( SD = 5.72) employees per team. Slightly more women (51.8%) as men were included (48.2%), the average age of the sample was 49.70 years ( SD = 7.46), and the mean organization tenure was 12.02 years ( SD = 9.56).

All measures described below were rated using five-point scales that either ranged from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5), or from never (1) to always (5). The internal consistencies (Cronbach’s α) of the measures are displayed on the diagonal of Table 2 .

Engaging Leadership was measured using a scale developed by Schaufeli [ 64 ] including nine items. This questionnaire contains three subscales of three items each: Inspiring, Strengthening, and Connecting. Sample items are: “My supervisor is able to enthuse others for his/her plans” (inspiring); “My supervisor delegates tasks and responsibilities” (strengthening); and “My supervisor encourages team members to cooperate” (connecting).

Individual-level measures.

Optimism was measured with three items from the Optimism scale of the PsyCap Questionnaire developed by Luthans and colleagues [ 36 ], which is aimed at assessing employees’ expectations about future success at work because of a positive view of their job. A sample item is: “I always look on the bright side of things regarding my job”.

Resiliency was assessed using three items from the Resiliency scale of the PsyCap Questionnaire [ 36 ]. These items refer to employees’ beliefs about their ability to recover from uncertainty and failure and to react successfully to setbacks that can occur at work. A sample item is: "I usually take stressful things at work in stride”.

Self-efficacy referred to the perceived capability to efficiently plan and implement courses of action required to attain a specific work goal and was measured using three items from Mazzetti, Schaufeli, and Guglielmi [ 68 ]. A sample item is: "At work, I reach my goal even when unexpected situations arise".

Flexibility refers to the individual ability to adapt to changes in the workplace and to modify one’s schedules and plans to meet job requirements. It was assessed by using three items: "If the job requires, I am willing to change my schedule”; “I do not have problems changing the way I work” and “I adapt easily to changes at work”.

Work engagement was assessed using a three-item scale developed by Schaufeli and colleagues [ 69 ]. This ultra-short version of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale has similar psychometric properties as the nine-item version. A sample item is: "At my work, I feel bursting with energy”.

Team-level measures.

Performance feedback was assessed by the three-item scale from the Questionnaire on the Experience and Evaluation of Work (QEEW) [ 70 ]. A sample item is: “Do you get enough information about the result of your work?”.

Trust in Management of team members was assessed using two items from Schaufeli [ 7 ]: “I trust the way my organization is managed”, and “I have confidence in my immediate supervisor”. Following the recommendations from Eisinga and colleagues [ 71 ] we computed the Spearman-Brown coefficient, since it represents the most appropriate reliability coefficient for a two-item scale ( r s = .43, p < .001).

Communication , meaning the perception of an efficient and prompt circulation of information at the team level was measured using the three-item Communication scale taken from the QEEW [ 70 ]. A sample item is: "I am sufficiently informed about the developments within my team”.

Participation in decision-making was measured by a single item (i.e., “Can you participate in decision making about work-related issues?”) from the QEEW [ 70 ].

Team effectiveness . The team-level criterion variable was assessed with a three-item scale [ 8 ]. A sample item is: “Do you cooperate effectively with others in your team?”.

In order to check for systematic dropout, the social-demographic background, as well as the scores on the study variables were compared of those employees in the panel who filled out the questionnaire twice at T1 and T2 ( N = 1,142) and those who dropped out and filled out the questionnaire only once at T1 ( N = 1,161). It appeared that compared to the group who dropped out, the panel group was slightly younger (t (2301) = -2.21; p < .05) and had less organizational tenure (t (2301) = -4.05; p < .001). No gender differences were observed between both groups (χ 2 = .88; n . s .). A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) that included all study variables revealed a significant between-groups effect: F (12,2291) = 3.54, p < .001. Subsequent univariate tests showed that compared to the dropouts, the panel group scored higher on inspiring (F (1,2302) = 14.90, p < .001), strengthening (F (1,2302) = 9.39, p < .01), and connecting leadership (F (1,2302) = 14.90, p < .05), as well as on optimism (F (1,2302) = 5.59, p < .05), flexibility (F (1,2302) = 12.56, p < .001), work engagement (F (1,2302) = 9.16, p < .05), performance feedback (F (1,2302) = 11.68, p < .01), and participation in decision making (F (1,2302) = 8.83, p < .05). No significant differences were found for resiliency, trust in management, communication, and team effectiveness.

It seems that, taken together, the panel group is slightly younger and less tenured, and scores more favorable than the dropouts on most study variables. However, the differences between both groups are relatively small and vary between 0 and .13 on a 5-point scale. Therefore, it is not likely that systematic dropout has influenced the results of the current study.

Control variables.

At the individual level, we controlled for the potential confounding effects of gender, age, and tenure by including these variables as covariates in our analyses. More specifically, the impact of age was controlled for because previous research suggested that older employees report higher levels of personal resources [ 72 ] and work engagement [ 73 ]. Gender was also included as a control variable because previous research suggested that compared to women, men score lower on work engagement [ 74 ] and higher on personal resources, such as optimism and self-efficacy [ 75 ]. Finally, previous investigations also revealed that job tenure may affect employees’ level and stability of work engagement, with tenured employees reporting higher and more stable levels of work engagement compared to newcomers [ 76 ]. Besides, Barbier and colleagues [ 77 ] suggested that job tenure might affect employees’ personal resources (i.e., self-esteem and optimism). Considering this empirical evidence, job tenure was also included as a covariate in our model.

Data aggregation.

Our research model includes the three dimensions of engaging leadership (i.e., inspiring, strengthening, and connecting) three team resources (i.e., performance feedback, trust in management, communication and participation in decision-making), and one outcome (i.e., team effectiveness) at the team level of analysis. To check the reliability and validity of aggregated scores at the team level, four indices were computed [ 78 ]: (1) ICC [1] , which indicates the proportion of variance in ratings due to team membership; (2) ICC [2] , representing the reliability of between-groups differences; (3) r wg(j) , that measures the level of agreement within work teams; (4) deff , that measures the effect of independence violations on the estimation of standard errors through the formula 1+(average cluster size-1)*ICC [ 79 ]. Generally speaking, values greater than .05 for ICC [1] [ 80 ] and .40 for ICC [2] [ 81 ] an r wg(j) higher than .70, and a deff- index exceeding 2 are considered a prerequisite for aggregating data [ 78 ]. Moreover, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to explore whether participants’ scores on the Level 2 constructs differed significantly among work teams. The results of the aggregation tests are displayed in Table 1 . Taken together, these results justify the aggregation of the team-level variables.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269433.t001

Strategy of analysis

To test our hypotheses, a multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM) was tested using the Mplus 7 statistical modeling software [ 82 ]. The application of this procedure allows the inclusion of latent variables that take measurement errors into account and permits the simultaneous estimation of mediation effects at the individual and team levels; therefore, it is superior to stepwise approaches [ 83 ]. As suggested by Zhang and colleagues [ 84 ], predictors at the individual level (i.e., engaging leadership dimensions and personal resources) were team-mean centered using a centering within context – CWC approach [ 85 ]. This procedure was aimed at preventing the confounding effect of mediation within and between work teams. In other words, predictors at the individual level for subject i were centered around the mean of the cluster j to which case i belongs (i.e., predictor ij —M predictor j ). Accordingly, the latent engaging leadership factor at within-level was indicated by the CWC means of the three dimensions of engaging leadership (i.e., inspiring cwc , strengthening cwc , and connecting cwc ) at T1. In a similar vein, personal resources were included as a latent variable indicated by the observed levels of optimism cwc , reisliency cwc , self-efficacy cwc , and flexibility cwc at T2. Finally, T2 work engagement was included as an observed variable equal to the mean score of the corresponding scale. As previously stated, gender, age, and organizational tenure were included as covariates at the individual level of the MSEM model.

At the team level, the latent measure of engaging leadership at T1 was assessed through the observed scores on the three dimensions of inspiring, strengthening, and connecting leadership. T2 team resources were modeled as a single latent factor indicated by the observed scores on performance feedback, trust in management, communication, and participation in decision-making. The observed mean score on T2 team effectiveness was modeled as the team level criterion variable.

At the individual level, the mediation was tested by considering path a , from T1 individual perceptions of engaging leadership (X) to T2 personal resources (M) and path b , from T2 personal resources to T2 work engagement (Y), controlling for X → Y. At the team level, the same procedure was applied considering path c , linking team perceptions of T1 engaging leadership (X) and T2 team resources (M) and path d , from T2 team resources to T2 team effectiveness (Y).

The individual and team-level perceptions of engaging leadership were assessed at T1. In contrast, the mediating variables (i.e., psychological capital and team resources), and the outcomes (i.e., work engagement and team effectiveness) were measured at T2.

Preliminary analysis

Before testing our hypotheses, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed using the maximum likelihood method of estimation using the software package AMOS 21.0 [ 86 ]. This preliminary analysis was aimed at assessing redundancy between the constructs under investigation. For the team level, engaging leadership was included as a latent factor indicated by the observed team levels of inspiring, strengthening, and connecting leadership dimensions. The measured performance feedback levels indicated the latent team resources factor, trust in management, communication, and participation in decision-making. Team effectiveness, assessed as a criterion variable at the team level, was indicated by a single corresponding item. At the individual level, the group-mean centered scores on inspiring, strengthening, and connecting dimensions were considered indicators of the latent engaging leadership factor. Besides, optimism, resiliency, self-efficacy, and flexibility were included as indicators for the single personal resources latent factor; the observed average score on work engagement was used for assessing the corresponding latent variable. The model fit was assessed by considering the comparative fit index (CFI) and Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) ≥ .95, Root-Mean-Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) ≤ .06, and Standardized Root-Mean-Square Residual (SRMR) ≤ .08 [ 87 , 88 ]. According to these criteria, the hypothesized measurement model showed a good fit to the data, with χ 2 (91) = 465.09, CFI = .96, TLI = .95, RMSEA = .06, and SRMR = .03. Moreover, all indicators showed significant factor loadings on their respective latent factors ( p < .001) with λ values ranging from .51 to .95, thus exceeding the commonly accepted criterion of .50 [ 89 ]. Hence, these results support the assumption that the study variables were non-redundant and adequately distinct from each other.

Model testing

The means, standard deviations, correlations, and internal consistencies for all study variables are displayed in Table 2 . As expected, the constructs under investigation showed significant relationships in the hypothesized direction.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269433.t002

The hypothesized MSEM showed a good fit to data: χ 2 (60) = 155.38, CFI = .97, TLI = .96, RMSEA = .04, SRMR = 0.03 (within teams) and .08 (between teams). As displayed in Fig 2 , at the individual level the three indicators of engaging leadership loaded significantly on their intended latent factor, with λ = .83 ( p = .000, 95% CI = [.79, .87]) for inspiring, λ = .77 ( p < .001, 95% CI = [.73, .81]) for strengthening, and λ = .81 ( p < .001, 95% CI = [.78, .85]) for connecting. Similarly, the standardized factor loadings for the indicators of personal resources were all significant as well: λ = .74 ( p < .001, 95% CI = [.68, .79]) for optimism, λ = .68 ( p < .001, 95% CI = [.63, .72]) for resiliency λ = .68 ( p < .001, 95% CI = [.62, .74]) for self-efficacy, and λ = .64 ( p < .001, 95% CI = [.59, .69]) for flexibility.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269433.g002

The direct relationship between T1 engaging leadership and T2 work engagement was significant β = .16 ( p < .001, 95% CI = [.10, .22]). Moreover, results indicated that engaging leadership at T1 had a positive impact on personal resources at T2: γ = .27 ( p < .001, 95% CI = [.18, .37]). T2 personal resources, in turn, were positively associated with T2 work engagement: β = .55 ( p < .001, 95% CI = [.49, .62]). The estimated indirect effect of T1 engaging leadership on T2 work engagement via personal resources (i.e., a*b) was statistically significant: B (SE) = .19 (.04), p < .001, 95% CI [.11, .27]. Hence, personal resources (i.e., optimism, resiliency, self-efficacy, and flexibility) at T2 partially mediated the impact of T1 engaging leadership on employees’ engagement within work teams at T2. These findings provide partial support for Hypothesis 1 . Among the covariates included at the individual level, only gender and age showed a significant association with work engagement, with γ = -.10 ( p < .001, 95% CI = [-.15, -.05]) and γ = .10 ( p < .001, 95% CI = [.04, .16]), respectively.

At the team level, all factor loadings for the three indicators of engaging leadership on their corresponding latent variable were significant: λ = .95 ( p < .001, 95% CI = [.93, .99]) for inspiring, λ = .86 ( p < .001, 95% CI = [.80, .91]) for strengthening, and λ = .94 ( p < .001, 95% CI = [.90, .97]) for connecting. Additionally, the observed measure of each team resource loaded significantly on its intended latent variable: λ = .69 ( p < .001, 95% CI = [.56, .82]) for performance feedback, λ = .86 ( p < .001, 95% CI = [.78, .94]) for trust in management, λ = .89 ( p < .001, 95% CI = [.81, .97]) for communication, and λ = .71 ( p = .000, 95% CI = [.60, .82]) for participation in decision-making. Moreover, engaging leadership at T1 had a nonsignificant direct impact on team effectiveness at T2, with β = -.06 ( p = .641, 95% CI = [-.30, .19]). In contrast, team perception of engaging leadership at T1 had a positive impact on team resources at T2: γ = .59 ( p < .001, 95% CI = [.42, .75]). Team resources at T2 were, in turn, positively related to T2 team effectiveness, β = .38 ( p = .003, 95% CI = [.13, .62]). These results suggest full mediation and were supported by the estimation of the indirect effect of T1 engaging leadership on T2 team effectiveness via team resources at T2 (i.e., c*d): B (SE) = .18 (.07), p = .013, 95% CI [.04, .32]. Thus, Hypothesis 2 was fully supported.

Hence, in the current study team resources at T2 (i.e., performance feedback, trust in management, communication, and participation in decision-making) fully mediated the effect of T1 engaging leadership on T2 team effectiveness across different work teams. Moreover, T2 team resources (i.e., performance feedback, trust in management, team communication, and participation in decision-making) showed a significant cross-level effect on T2 individual team member’s level of engagement: β = .57 (p < .001, 195% CI = [.27, .87]). This result provided evidence for Hypothesis 3 .

The current study aimed to explore the role of individual and collective perceptions of engaging leadership in predicting team effectivity and work engagement. To this purpose, we developed a two-level research model using a two time-point design.

Main results

At the individual level, the obtained results suggest that psychological capital (i.e., the combination of self-efficacy, optimism, resiliency, and flexibility) partly mediated the longitudinal relationship between employees’ perceptions of engaging leadership and their levels of work engagement. In other words, team leaders perceived as inspiring, strengthening, and connecting could enhance their followers’ engagement directly and indirectly through an increase in psychological capital. Thus, engaging leaders could make their followers feel more optimistic, resilient, self-efficacious, and flexible. At the team level, a shared perception of engaging leadership was associated with a greater pool of team resources (i.e., performance feedback, trust in management, communication, and participation in decision-making), which contribute to define an open and supportive team climate that is conducive for employee growth and development. In their turn, these collective resources were positively related to the perceived effectiveness of work teams.

Hence, team resources at the team level fully mediated the relationship between engaging leadership and team effectiveness. That means that teams in which the leader is considered to be inspiring, strengthening, and connecting can draw upon more team resources, and could feel, in turn, more effective. Simultaneously, a significant cross-level mediation effect was found for team resources, meaning that they mediate the relationship between engaging leadership at team level and individual level work engagement. In other words, teams with engaging leaders are not only more effective at the team level, but they also report higher levels of work engagement among their members. These leaders create a team climate that fosters employee growth and development by providing performance feedback, installing trust, and stimulating communication and participation in decision-making.

Three different contributions.

Thus, three major conclusions can be drawn for the current study, which signifies its contribution to the literature. First, engaging leadership can be considered an individual-level construct (i.e., the perception of particular leadership behaviors by individual followers) and a collective, team-level construct (i.e., the shared perception of specific leadership behaviors among team members). As far as the latter is concerned, our results support the notion of an average leadership style (ALS) [ 47 ]; namely, that homogeneous leader-follower interactions exist within teams, but relationships of leaders with followers differ between teams.

Secondly, Individual-level engaging leadership predicts individual work engagement through increasing follower’s PsyCap. Previous research suggested a positive relationship between person-focused leadership styles and follower’s work engagement, albeit that virtually all studies were cross-sectional in nature (for an overview see [ 11 , 33 ]). Our study added longitudinal evidence for that relationship and hinted at an underlying psychological process by suggesting that psychological capital might play a mediating role. As such, the current study corroborates and extends a previous cross-sectional study that obtained similar results [ 8 ]. However, it should be noted that the present study used a slightly different operationalization of PsyCap as is usually employed [ 36 ]. In addition to the three core elements of optimism, resiliency, and self-efficacy, flexibility instead of hope was used as a constituting fourth element of PsyCap. The reason was that hope and optimism overlap both theoretically as well as empirically [ 35 ] and that flexibility–defined as the ability to readapt, divert from unsuccessful paths, and tackle unpredictable conditions that hinder employees’ goal attainment [ 8 ]–was deemed particularly relevant for public service agencies that are plagued by red tape. Our results indicate that engaging leaders strengthen followers’ sense of proficiency when developing a task-specific skill to reach challenging objectives (i.e., self-efficacy). They also encourage a favorable appraisal of the prevailing conditions and future goal achievement (i.e., optimism).

Furthermore, they enhance subordinates’ abilities to recover from failures and move beyond setbacks effectively (i.e., resiliency) through supporting an increased aptitude for adaption to unfamiliar work circumstances (i.e., flexibility). These results corroborate the assumption that leaders who inspire, strengthen, and connect their followers provide a stimulating work environment that enhances employees’ personal resources. In their turn, elevated levels of PsyCap mobilize employees’ energy and intrinsic motivation to perform, expressed by a high level of work engagement. This result concurs with previous evidence that PsyCap can be framed as a critical component of the motivational process of the JD-R model, namely as a mediator of the relationship between contextual resources (i.e., engaging leadership) and work engagement [ 46 ]. However, this mediation was only partial because a direct effect of engaging leadership on follower’s work engagement was also observed in the current study. This evidence is not surprising since previous research showed that other mediating factors (which were not included in the present study) played a role in explaining the relationship between leadership and work engagement. Among them, innovative work behaviors, meaningful work, role clarity, positive emotions, identification with the organization, and psychological ownership [ 11 ]. Thus, increasing their follower’s PsyCap is not the whole story as far as the impact of engaging leadership is concerned. It is likely that engaging leaders also impact these alternative mediating factors. If this is the case, this might explain why the additional variance in follower’s work engagement is explained by engaging leadership, as indicated by the direct effect.

Thirdly, team-level engaging leadership predicts work engagement of individual team members and team effectiveness through increasing team resources. An earlier cross-sectional study found that engaging leadership, as perceived by their followers, showed an indirect, positive effect on their work engagement level through an increase in job resources [ 7 ]. However, in that study, engaging leadership and job resources, including performance feedback, trust in management, communication, and participation in decision-making, were assessed at the individual and not at the aggregated team level. This means that the current study corroborates previous findings at the aggregated team level, using a longitudinal design. It is important to note that employees’ level of work engagement not only depends on individual-level processes (through the increase in PsyCap) but also on collective processes (trough the rise in team resources). Finally, our findings concur with research on team climate, showing that leaders who endorse supportive relations between team members and create an open, empowering team climate enable employees to succeed [ 33 ]. Simultaneously, a team climate like that is also likely to foster personal growth and development, which, in turn, translates into greater work engagement [ 63 ].

Practical implications

Our study shows that engaging leadership matters, and therefore organizations are well-advised to stimulate their managers to lead by the principles of engaging leadership. To that end, organizations may implement leadership development programs [ 90 ], leadership coaching [ 91 ], or leadership workshops [ 92 ]. Previous research has shown that leadership behaviors are malleable and subject to change using professional training [ 93 – 95 ]. Furthermore, leaders may want to establish and promote an open and trusting team climate in which employees feel free to express their needs and preferences [ 96 , 97 ].

Accordingly, our study shows that this climate is conducive not only for work engagement but also for team effectiveness. Finally, our results also suggest that psychological capital is positively associated with work engagement, so that it would make sense to increase this personal resource, mainly because PsyCap is state-like and open to development through instructional programs [ 45 ]. For instance, a short PsyCap Intervention (PCI) has been developed by Luthans and colleagues, which is also available as a web-based version for employees [ 98 ]. PCI focuses on: (a) acquiring and modifying self–efficacy beliefs; (b) developing realistic, constructive, and accurate beliefs; (c) designing goals, pathway generation, and strategies for overcoming obstacles; and (d) identifying risk factors, and positively influencing processes.

Strengths, limitations, and directions for future research

A significant strength of the current study is its design that combines a multilevel investigation of engaging leadership with mediating processes at the individual and team levels. This is in line with the claim that leadership research suffers from a lack of theoretical and empirical differentiation between levels of analysis [ 99 ]. However, leadership is an inherently multilevel construct in nature [ 9 ]. Although the current findings shed light on the role of the emergent construct of engaging leadership, both regarding individuals and teams, an exciting venue for future research involves exploring its predictive validity in comparison with traditional leadership models. This concurrent validation would adhere to the recommendations accompanying the introduction of new leadership constructs in the face of the risk of construct proliferation [ 16 ].

A further strength of the current study is its large sample size, including 1,048 employees nested within 90 work teams. Moreover, data were collected at two time points with a one-year time lag that was considered long enough for the effects of engaging leadership to occur. In contrast with widespread cross-sectional studies that sometimes draw unjustified conclusions on the corollaries of leadership [ 100 ], the current research relied on a longitudinal design to better understand the consequences of engaging leadership at the individual and team level of analysis. According to our results, engaging leadership indeed shows a positive effect across time on outcomes at the individual (i.e., work engagement) and team level (i.e., team effectiveness).

Along with its strengths, the current study also has some limitations that should be acknowledged. The main weakness of the current study lies in the homogeneity of the sample, which consisted of employees working in a Dutch public service agency. This specific work setting prevents us from generalizing the findings of our research with other occupational groups. However, focusing on an organization where most activities are conducted in teams permits independent but simultaneous assessment of the impact of (engaging) leadership on the perceived pool of resources among teams and workers, as suggested by current trends in leadership literature [ 101 , 102 ].

Furthermore, the collection of data at different time points overcomes the inherent weakness of a cross-sectional design, yet a design including at least three data waves would have provided superior support for the hypothesized mediated relationships. Based on within-group diary studies [ 103 , 104 ], it can, on the one hand, be argued that leadership might impact the team and personal resources within a much shorter time frame. On the other hand, work engagement represents a persistent psychological state that is not susceptible to sudden changes in the short term [ 1 ]. Thus, the chosen one-year time lag can be considered reasonable for a between-group study to detect the impact of engaging leadership accurately. This impact needs some time to unfold. An additional limitation of this study entails measuring individual and team resources with only a few items. Nevertheless, all scales had an internal consistency value that met the threshold of .65 [ 105 ] with an average Cronbach’s alpha value equal to .81.

Concluding remark

Despite the novelty of the construct, the emerging research on engaging leadership suggests the potential value of a theoretically sound leadership model that could foster followers’ engagement. While earlier findings showed that engaging leadership is positively associated with the employee’s level of engagement [ 7 , 8 ], the current study suggested that engaging leadership could predict work engagement and team effectiveness. More specifically, being exposed to a leader who inspires, strengthens and connects team members may foster a shared perception of greater availability of team resources (i.e., performance feedback, trust in management, communication, and participation in decision-making), as well as greater psychological capital (i.e., self-efficacy, optimism, resilience, and flexibility). Hence, engaging leadership could play a significant role in the processes leading to work engagement at both the team and the individual levels.

Supporting information

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269433.s001

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Research: To Be a Good Leader, Start By Being a Good Follower

• Alex Haslam

A study of Royal Marines suggests “stand out from your peers” isn’t always good advice.

Leadership is a process that emerges from a relationship between leaders and followers. People will be more effective leaders when their behaviors indicate that they are one of us, that they share our values, concerns and experiences, and are working for us. Seen this way, perhaps the usual advice for aspiring leaders — “stand out from your peers” — is wrong. Perhaps aspiring leaders would be better served by ensuring that they are seen to be a good follower. A longitudinal study of 218 Royal Marines recruits completing an arduous 32 week training course suggests that may be the case: the Marines who saw themselves as followers, and were simply focused on getting the work done, were more likely to be recognized as leaders by both peers and commanders. But there’s a caveat: Marines who saw themselves as leaders were seen by commanders (but not by peers) as having more leadership potential . This suggests that what good leadership looks like is highly dependent on where evaluators are standing.

There is no shortage of advice for those who aspire to be effective leaders. One piece of advice may be particularly enticing: if you want to be a successful leader, ensure that you are seen as a leader and not a follower. To do this, goes the usual advice, you should seek out opportunities to lead, adopt behaviors that people associate with leaders rather than followers (e.g., dominance and confidence), and — above all else — show your exceptionalism relative to your peers .

• KP Kim Peters is senior lecturer in organizational psychology at the University of Queensland. Her research focuses on social influence processes (including communication and leadership) in social and organizational settings. She works closely with organizations to examine the role of psychological factors in organizational functioning.
• AH Alex Haslam is Professor of Psychology and Australian Laureate Fellow at the University of Queensland. His research focuses on the study of group and identity processes in social, organizational and clinical contexts. Together with over 200 co-authors around the world, Alex has written and edited 12 books and published over 200 peer-reviewed articles on these topics.

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Servant Leadership: a Systematic Literature Review and Network Analysis

Alice canavesi.

1 Business Economics, Carlo Cattaneo University (LIUC), Castellanza, Italy

Eliana Minelli

2 Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

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Servant leadership is a form of moral-based leadership where leaders tend to prioritize the fulfillment of the needs of followers, namely employees, customers and other stakeholders, rather than satisfying their personal needs. Although the concept is not new among both academics and practitioners, it has received growing consideration in the last decade, due to the fact that it can positively affect a series of individual and organizational outcomes, such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment. In particular, the latest trend in literature has focused on the identification of the antecedents, mediating and moderating mechanisms at the basis of this relationship, as well as on the development of a common scale to measure the construct across diverse economic and cultural contexts. The purpose of this paper is to depict the evolution of the scientific literature that has developed on the concept, to identify the main criticalities and provide avenues for future research. A dynamic methodology called “Systematic Literature Network Analysis” has been applied, combining the Systematic Literature Review approach with the analysis of bibliographic networks.

Introduction

With the beginning of the twenty-first century, the moral nature of leaders has started to be considered not only necessary for the good of society but also essential for sustainable organizational success (Freeman et al., 2004 ; Gulati et al., 2010 ; Padilla et al., 2007 ), thus marking a considerable shift in research. As a consequence, moral leadership theories, such as transformational, ethical, authentic and servant leadership, have recently received considerable attention from the scientific community.

Servant leadership seems to be the most promising and most investigated over the last few years, especially due to the holistic approach and broad focus adopted compared to the other philosophies, as well as to its important role in affecting individual and team-level outcomes, such as organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behaviour, job performance and job satisfaction. Like most other leadership constructs, the definition and measurement of servant leadership were primarily developed in the United States. In particular, the term servant leadership was coined by Greenleaf in 1970 in his essay “The Servant as Leader" to describe an emerging style of leadership where leaders focused on followers’ personal growth and development, by treating them in an ethical way. The author asserted that the servant leader is “primus inter pares” or “first among equals”, meaning that his/her highest priority is service to others in order to fulfill their needs, rather than fulfilling his or her personal needs. Greenleaf’s conception was then refined by many other scholars, such as Ehrhart ( 2004 ), who claimed that servant leadership is one in which the leader goes beyond the financial success of the organization recognizing his or her moral responsibility towards subordinates, customers and the entire company’s community. The emphasis of the servant leadership philosophy has been placed over time on serving and creating value for multiple stakeholders, both internal and external to the organization. Liden et al. ( 2008 ) further stressed the fundamental leadership behaviours of servant leadership, such as behaving ethically, helping followers grow and succeed, empowering, emotional healing, conceptual skills and creating value for the community.

Research on servant leadership can be categorized into three main phases: a first phase focusing on its conceptual development, a second phase investigating the measures and testing the relationships with some fundamental outcomes via cross-sectional research, and a third phase aimed at understanding the antecedents, mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions of servant leadership. The last “model development phase” is the most recent and has seen a proliferation of studies in the last twenty years. A significant contribution to provide an integrative theoretical framework has been recently made by Eva et al. ( 2019 ), who offered a clear conceptual distinction of servant leadership compared to other approaches, evaluated and assessed the most rigorous scales of the construct developed so far, and highlighted the most important antecedents, outcomes, moderating and mediating mechanisms identified in the literature.

The purpose of this research is to provide a further and complementary review of the literature on servant leadership through bibliometric methods, in order to assess the evolution of the field over time as well as the current state-of-art on the key trends and provide avenues for future research. In particular, the authors aim to identify:

• The structure of the field, the most consolidated research and its temporal and geographical evolution
• The most recurring theoretical underpinning and constructs
• The most cited articles representing milestones of the literature
• The most impactful authors and journals
• The disciplines and subject areas involved by the topic
• Research implications
• Future research directions

The structure of the paper is as follows. In the first section, the methodology adopted for the literature review and the steps taken in developing the research are presented. In the second section, the results of three different analyses are explained: namely, the paper citation network consisting in the connected components and the main path, the keywords analysis, and finally the global analysis with the basic statistics. In the third and final section, the main conclusions are drawn and questions to be addressed by future research are provided.

The paper is based on a two-step method, referred to as “Systematic Literature Network Analysis (SLNA)” (Colicchia & Strozzi, 2012 ): a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and a further analysis of the subset of relevant articles obtained through a bibliographic Network Analysis (NA): namely, the citation network analysis, the co-occurrence networks analysis and the basic statistics. The first qualitative assessment is mainly based on the researchers’ judgements as to the selection of keywords and leverages on an explanatory approach; while the bibliometric assessment provides more objective insights through quantitative and statistical evidence (Aliyev et al., 2018). In particular, bibliographic data analysed through bibliometric methods include the most impactful author names, journal titles, article titles, article keywords and article publication years (Block & Fisch, 2020). The aim is to “complement the traditional content-based literature reviews by extracting quantitative information from bibliographic networks and detect emerging topics, thus revealing the dynamic evolution of the scientific production of a discipline” (Strozzi et al., 2017 ). This dynamic analysis has proven to be effective in different research fields, as it highlights the literature development, identifies authors network and topic clusters, examines gaps and criticalities as well as presents further research directions. In contrast to narrative literature reviews, which aim to summarize the content of the studies of a particular research field, SLNA focuses on assessing the conceptual structure of the field and its development over time (e.g. how has the number of studies evolved, how have the topics evolved, how have the outlets evolved, etc.). It goes beyond a mere descriptive summary of prior literature, by leading a discussion of what we know and where we can go, and allows the measurement of the knowledge diffusion within and between disciplines, by identifying interdisciplinary links. Moreover, compared to traditional methods which lack a clear methodological approach, quantitative bibliographic studies make it possible to avoid the researchers’ selection bias by selecting clear keywords and exclusion / inclusion criteria and by adopting clear boundaries at every stage to ensure a systematic search of papers (Fetscherin & Heinrich, 2015; Block & Fisch, 2020), to the point that the process can be replicated at any time. Lastly, SLNA is characterized by a more up-to-date and broader scope (with regards, for instance, to the journals and publication years considered), thus minimizing the risk of producing an over-reflective and biased argument by the authors but rather leading to evidence-based conclusions.

Figure  1 clarifies all the steps of the methodology.

Systematic Literature Network Analysis (SLNA)

The reference database chosen for the development of the research was Scopus, due to its coverage, convenience, and in alignment with the current literature. According to Falagas et al. ( 2017 ) as well as to Block and Fisch (2020), Scopus includes a more expanded spectrum of journals and a faster and broader citation analysis compared to other research databases, such as Web of Science (WoS). This result has been confirmed by Chadegani et al. ( 2013 ), who assessed that Scopus covers a superior number of journals compared to WoS, even though it is limited to more recent articles, and by Bergman ( 2012 ), who demonstrated that Scopus also provides higher citation counts than Google Scholar and WoS. Moreover, compared to these two other databases, Adriaanse and Rensleigh ( 2013 ) proved that Scopus delivers the least inconsistencies regarding content verification and quality, such as author spelling and sequence, volume and issue number.

The key search criteria and final query were defined on the basis of the keywords used by scholars to address the concept of servant leadership, according to one reference paper among the main pillars of the literature: “Servant leadership: a systematic review and call for future research” (Eva et al., 2019 ) from which this paper mainly differs due to its quantitative citation-based methodology. The most common keywords in literature, also employed in this study, consist of: servant leadership, servant leader, service leadership, servant behaviour and servant organization . In order to develop a more comprehensive definition and consequently to obtain a more comprehensive sample on the topic, the search criteria were loosened to “servant leader*” OR “service leader*” to include both “servant leadership” and “servant leader(s)” OR “service leadership” and “service leader(s)”. Also, considering the different spelling between British English and American English, both terms “behaviour” and “behaviour” were included. As the literature on leadership is very broad, the terms above were limited to three streams of search in the section “Article title” to include only articles that were strictly related and focused on the topic, and not dealing with it in a marginal way, but also to obtain a moderate number of papers to conduct the analysis. This systematic literature review is most suitable when the number of papers is not too limited nor too big. The authors tried to conduct a broader search stream also including keywords and abstracts, but it resulted not applicable: it provided several thousand results and the content of papers obtained was in most cases out of scope. Since the focus of the research was servant leadership from a human resource and organizational perspective, areas were investigated individually to assess whether they were pertinent or not with the topic. On the basis of this analysis, it was possible to include: Business, Social sciences, Economics, Econometrics and Finance, Psychology, Arts and Humanities, Decision sciences, Environmental science and Multidisciplinary. Papers written in languages other than English were excluded. With regards to the time span, the year in which the study was conducted (2020) was eliminated in order to consider only papers of concluded years. Finally, the search was limited to articles and conference papers, as they contain very clear citations and make it possible to achieve ideal results. See Table ​ Table1 1 for the final specification of the query.

Query final specification

This procedure allowed us to obtain a subset of 357 papers published between 1984 and 2019, which were then analysed using VOSViewer (Van Eck et al., 2010 ; Waltman et al., 2010 ) and Pajek software (de Nooy et al., 2011) to identify the main citation path emerging from the citation network and also key concepts and trends emerging from the co-occurrence network. Afterwards, the basic statistics of the whole subset of papers were examined in order to provide some general insights: the temporal and geographical evolution of the literature, the subject areas involved, the ranking of the 10 most cited papers and the most influential authors and journals. The findings of these analyses are reported in the following sections.

Citation Network Analysis

The initial procedure of the network analysis was aimed at identifying the main article clusters emerging from the citation network by using the VOS Clustering analysis (Van Eck et al., 2010 ; Waltman et al., 2010 ). “A citation network is a network where the nodes are papers and the links are citations. The arrows go from cited to citing papers representing the flow of knowledge.” (Strozzi et al., 2017 ). For the identification of the connected component, the minimum threshold of 0 was maintained in order not to exclude recent papers and less relevant authors. The largest connected component (a set of nodes connected by links) consisted of 291 items connected to each other, with 85 different clusters. No other significant connected components emerged from the literature. Figure  2 presents the network obtained with VOSviewer, where nodes are weighted by the citations and coloured with both a cluster and year overlay.

Citation network analysis (size = citation, color = cluster)

The following procedure of the network analysis consisted in implementing the key route algorithm (main path) of the network, using Pajek: a program providing powerful visualization tools. The objective was to identify the nodes that cite or have been cited the most, thus representing the most consolidated research in the field. This was possible by conducting the betweenness centrality analysis of a vertex, which is “the proportion of all geodesics between pairs of other vertices that include this vertex” (de Nooy et al., 2011, p. 131). The betweenness centrality analysis allows to focus on the importance of a node in the communication between any node pair in the network, to identify those playing a central role in information flows and being responsible for the system vulnerability (i.e. vertexes lying on many of the shortest paths between other vertexes). Figure  3 shows the flow of knowledge over time, with the network of the 25 essential articles, intensively cited and referring to other papers, labelled by Pajek with the name of the first author and the year of publication. It is clear how the research structure has changed over time: from 1996 to 2012 it developed linearly, while from 2012 on it has started to articulate towards different directions often interconnected to each other. One possible interpretation of this pattern is the following: originally, the novelty of the subject led to a straight evolution of the field over time, afterwards, once the topic gained ground and different research trends emerged, referencing papers and literature reviews started to come out.

Main path of articles from citation network

Based on the previous analysis, the most relevant papers were studied not only to identify the key concepts expressed by the single paper but most importantly to understand the evolution of the field over time. The analysis of the main path allowed for pinpointing trends and variations that would not be very visible in the general set of papers. The main findings, which are the result of a quantitative analysis and have not been selected by the authors according to a discretionary criterion, are reported in the following section with the aim of depicting a landscape of the scientific literature on the concept of servant leadership.

Main Path Analysis

The most recent paper dealing with servant leadership is the one by Yang et al. ( 2019 ), which builds on self-determination theory to investigate, through an empirical study conducted in the Chinese banking sector, how servant leadership affects employee creativity. The authors used a survey based on five-point Likert scales to assess that there is a positive relationship between servant leadership and employee creativity, mediated by follower psychological empowerment and moderated by work-family conflict. This paper can be considered as a pillar of the literature as it gathers the contributions of several articles, including a paper by the same author written two years before. Yang et al. ( 2017 ) previously provided evidence on other mechanisms influencing the relationship between servant leadership and creativity both at the individual and team level: employees’ efficacy beliefs, as a mediator, and team power distance, as a moderator. With regards to work-family balance, a similar study conducted by Tang et al. ( 2016 ) demonstrated that servant leadership is negatively related to employees’ work-to-family conflict (WFC) and positively related to work-to-family positive spillovers (WFPS), with the moderator role of reduced emotional exhaustion in both relationships and the mediator role of enhanced personal learning in the relationship between servant leadership and WFPS. Hoch et al. ( 2018 ) compared servant leadership and other moral-based forms of leadership (authentic leadership and ethical leadership) with transformational leadership, to assess whether they were able to explain incremental variance with respect to a series of relevant organizational outcomes. Servant leadership emerged as the only positive leadership style adding incremental variance to that explained by transformational leadership, thus being of significant utility. Previously, Van Dierendonck et al. ( 2014 ) leveraged on two experimental studies and one field study to differentiate servant leadership from transformational leadership in the way they affect organizational commitment and work engagement, as the former is mediated by follower need satisfaction while the latter by perceived leadership effectiveness. Hsiao et al. ( 2015 ) systematically integrated the three levels of organization, employee and customer to demonstrate that leaders displaying servant behaviours stimulate customer value co-creation (CVC) with the key mediating roles of positive psychological capital (PPC) and service-oriented organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs). Newman et al. ( 2017 ) found that at the basis of the link between servant leadership and followers’ OCBs, there are also the mediating mechanism of leader-member exchange (LMX) and the moderating mechanism of leader proactive personality. Chiniara and Bentein ( 2016 ) previously provided other mediating mechanisms between servant leadership and individual performance outcomes such as OCBs and task performance: namely the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs of employees (autonomy, competence and relatedness). Ozyilmaz and Cicek ( 2015 ) tested the positive effects of servant leadership on OCBs and on job satisfaction, assessing that this second relationship is partially mediated by psychological climate. Hunter et al. ( 2013 ) further investigated both the direct effects generated by servant leaders at the individual level, such as decreased turnover intentions and disengagement, and the indirect effects generated at the team level, such as decreased turnover intentions, helping and sales behaviour through the mediation of service climate. Moreover, they investigated the basis for individuals enacting this mode of leadership and found that leader agreeableness represents a positive antecedent of servant leadership, while extraversion a negative one. Executive characteristics of servant leaders were also tested by Peterson et al. ( 2012 ) , who assessed that narcissism is negatively related to servant leadership while founder status (i.e. founder or non-founder) is positively related to servant leadership; both effects are partially mediated by the chief executive officer identification in the organization. Sun ( 2013 ) further concentrated on the identity of servant leaders, by explaining the psychological factors, both cognitive and behavioural, that constitute it. Neubert et al. ( 2016 ) tested servant leadership effects in hospitals, accumulating evidence that there is a positive relationship with both nurse and patient satisfaction, moderated by organizational structure. Similarly, Chen et al. ( 2015 ) explored how managers’ servant leadership affect the performance of frontline service employees’, such as hairdressers, through the partial mediation of self-efficacy and group identification. In relation to these performance behaviours, they also found that servant leadership explains additional variance above and beyond transformational leadership. Liden et al. ( 2014 ) developed a model to test servant leadership in restaurants and stores. Specifically, they demonstrated that servant leaders propagate servant leadership behaviours among employees, such as increased job performance, creativity and customer service behaviours as well as decreased turnover intentions, by establishing a serving culture at the unit level (e.g. store) and fostering employee identification with the unit. Liden et al. ( 2015 ) contributed to the literature by providing the shortest-to-date 7-item scale (SL-7) measure of global servant leadership, starting from a previous 28-item scale (SL-28) developed in 2008, and tested it across three empirical independent studies. Besides the topic of employee creativity already investigated in literature, Yoshida et al. ( 2014 ) ascertained the effects of servant leadership on individual relational identification and collective prototypicality, which, in turn, fosters team innovation. Antecedents of servant leadership discussed above have been examined by other scholars, such as Hu and Liden ( 2011 ), who identified team-level goal, process clarity and team servant leadership as three mechanisms affecting team potency, performance and organizational citizenship behaviour. The authors also emphasized the role of servant leaders in moderating the link between team-level goal and process clarity with team potency. Similar outcomes were found a year before by Walumbwa et al. ( 2010 ), whose analyses revealed that the relationship between servant leadership and OCBs is partially mediated by commitment to the supervisor, self-efficacy, procedural justice climate and service climate. Hale and Fields ( 2007 ) leveraged on three servant leadership dimensions introduced by Greenleaf (1977), namely service, humility and vision, to point out cultural differences affecting the way servant leadership is perceived in different countries. Specifically, they found that countries with a higher level of power distance and collectivism experience servant leadership behaviours less frequently. They also assessed that, when great value is placed on uncertainty avoidance, vision has a significant stronger relationship with leadership effectiveness. Previously, Dennis and Bocarnea ( 2005 ) developed and tested a scale aimed at measuring five out of the seven servant leadership constructs based on Patterson’s theory: agapao love (which means to love in a social or moral way), humanity, vision, trust and empowerment. This theoretical development was drawn on a literature review by Russell ( 2001 ), who provided an overview of the current individual and organizational values associated with servant leadership, deepening their role in three main attributes: trust, appreciation of others and empowerment. A sequential, upward-spiralling model based on the variables of vision, influence, credibility, trust and service was formerly developed by Farling et al. ( 1999 ) to explain how these variables relate one to another in defining the concept at the basis of servant leadership. This paper represented an evolution of two former analyses. The first one consists in a servant leadership model developed by Buchen ( 1998 ) within the context of higher education and based on five main dimensions: identity (the direction of ego and image), empowering (the sharing of power with collaborators), reciprocity (a relationship of mutual dependency between leaders and followers), commitment (the absolute devotion to academic discipline) and finally future (the alignment between faculty and institution). The second is a reflection paper on Greenleaf’s definition of servant leadership by Spears ( 1996 ), which, on the one hand, emphasizes the primary goal of serving the greater needs of others and, on the other hand, draws the evolution of the topic from its genesis (1970) to the current time (2019).

At first, from the mid 1990’s to the late 2000’s, research was mainly qualitative and moved towards the development of a theoretical framework of servant leadership, as well as of various scales aimed at measuring the main dimensions of the construct. The last stream of research from 2010 to 2020, instead, suggests the authors’ orientation for a quantitative approach based on surveys, experimental and field studies to investigate the antecedents, mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions of servant leadership. Recently, some qualitative studies have emerged again on the topic; however, very few scholars are taking advantage of mixed methods combining the quantitative and qualitative approach.

From a theoretical perspective, the attempt of the present paper was also that of identifying meaningful constructs, underpinnings and framework used in the most consolidated literature on servant leadership, even if not explicitly mentioned by single studies. All papers, except one, were built on the basis of the servant leadership theory, often in combination with theories on other leadership styles, such as transformational, or on antecedents, outcomes, mediators and moderators of servant leadership, such as LMX theory. Moreover, the majority of paper explicitly employed more than one theoretical basis. The most recurring theory (6 out of 25 papers) was the social exchange theory, which was defined by Blau (1964) as “voluntary actions of individuals that are motivated by the returns they are expected to bring and typically do in fact bring from others” (p. 91) and is based on the central premise that the exchange of social and material resources is a fundamental form of human interaction. Motivational theories were also found several times (6 papers), with different sub-theories, such as goal-setting theory, motivational language theory and intrinsic motivation theory, emphasizing various factors that can foster personal or followers’ motivation. The most important among these motivational theories came out to be the self-determination theory’s (SDT) basic psychological needs, which consists in an empirically-based theory of human behavior and personality development aimed at identifying the social-contextual aspects that promote or prevent motivation based on the satisfaction of basic psychological needs such as competence, relatedness and autonomy (Ryan & Deci, 2017, pag. 3). The social learning theory (SLT), then evolved in the social cognitive theory (SCT), also emerged to be fundamental (5 papers), positing that learning occurs within a social context through the combination of individual experience, social interaction and environmental factors. Finally, the least recurring theory was the social identity theory (2 papers), which is a social psychological theory examining the role of self and identity in group and intergroup dynamics (Hogg, 2016).

Co-word Network Analysis (Keywords Analysis: VOS Clustering)

A second type of analysis, focused on the authors’ keywords, was carried out in VOSviewer on the basis of the co-occurrence network. Co-occurrence analysis assumes that the article keywords chosen by various authors represent an adequate description of the content or of the relationship that the paper establishes between investigated problems (Strozzi et al., 2017 ). The aim of the analysis was to frame the development of the research trends over time: if many co-occurrences can be identified around a term, this is likely to represent a specific research pattern of the discipline. An occurrence threshold of 8 was used, with the goal of ensuring clusters’ consistency in terms of content and dimension. A set of the 17 most relevant keywords divided into 3 different clusters was obtained, as shown in Fig.  4 .

Co-occurrence author keywords network (size = total link strength, color = cluster)

The network’s nodes correspond to the keywords of the 357 papers’ authors and their link weights to how many times the words appear in the papers. Three colors (red, blue and green) differentiate the keywords belonging to one cluster from other clusters’ keywords, while the dimension of the node stands for the total link strength.

In the following section, the keywords clusters are examined in order to address the most relevant research patterns in the literature. Hence, the topics below have been discussed on the basis of the output of a quantitative analysis, aimed at addressing the most used keywords in the literature and identifying research trajectories within each cluster.

Cluster 1: Servant Leadership, Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Leadership Development, Scale Development, Trust

Servant leadership is one of the most recently investigated and adopted approaches belonging to the branch of moral leadership theories. As such, it has been studied in parallel with other similar leadership styles, such as transformational leadership. Transformational leadership is a positive form of leadership developed by Burns in 1978 as an ongoing process where “leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of morality and motivation beyond self-interest to serve collective interests”. This concept was then expanded by Bass ( 1985 ) and applied to organizations as a guideline for leaders to make followers perform beyond expectations. From a theoretical standpoint, a significant overlap between servant leadership and transformational leadership has been assessed by scholars, especially in terms of vision, influence, credibility, trust and service shown by leaders, to the point that servant leadership has often been considered as a form of transformational leadership (Farling et al., 1999 ). Trust, in particular, has been addressed in both leadership styles as central to relationship: an important factor in the interdependence existing between leaders and followers, consisting in four distinct dimensions: competence, openness, concern and reliability. Nevertheless, an attempt has been made to define the major variables involved in the servant-leader follower transformational model. On the other hand, research has tried to identify and address the main differences, or better nuances, between the two leadership approaches: while servant leadership focuses more on supporting and developing individuals within an institution, transformational leadership emphasizes the role of leaders in inspiring followers to work towards a common goal (Allen et al., 2016 ).

In 2010s, another stream of literature has focused on the development of a reliable and multidimensional scale to measure various aspects of servant leadership. Examples include the 6-item Servant Leadership Behavior scale (Sendjaya et al., 2019 ) to measure servant leadership behaviors in a leader, or the Executive Servant Leadership Scale (Reed et al., 2011 ) to measure executive servant leadership across different organizational contexts.

Cluster 2: Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment, Public Sector, China

Several empirical studies have analyzed the relationship between servant leadership and different organizational outcomes, both at the individual and collective level, such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Moreover, different mediating and moderating mechanisms as well as various antecedents of this type of relationship have been investigated. For instance, Kauppila et al. ( 2018 ) demonstrated that HR manager servant leadership positively influences organizational employees’ overall justice perception, which in turn enhances organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Moreover, they found that high leadership self-efficacy fosters a line manager’s effectiveness to emulate servant leadership behaviors from HR managers and use these behaviors to advance positive justice perceptions among their followers.

Since the general concept of leadership and the specific concept of servant leadership were developed in the US and in western societies, a consistent research stream has examined the generalizability of servant leadership constructs in completely different cultural contexts, such as China. US society is indeed highly individualistic, short-term oriented and characterized by low-power distance, meaning that relationships are expected to be participatory, democratic and consultative, while Chinese society is permeated by a collectivist culture, long-term goals and high-power distance, therefore based on the expectation that power is distributed unequally. Also, most of these studies were conducted in the public sector, where servant leadership has proven to be very effective in fostering many positive organizational outcomes. Liu et al. ( 2015 ) partially confirmed the generalizability of servant leadership constructs from Western society to China and also found a positive relationship between supervisors’ servant leadership and the public service motivation.

Cluster 3: Organizational Culture, Humans, Human, Adult, Male, Female, Article

Organizations across different fields and geographical contexts need to understand the role of a leadership that is responsive to a “service mission” in driving the company’s evolution and success. Effective servant leadership practices are “humane oriented”; they are implemented when managers or leaders invest in human resources to create a social exchange relationship with employees that makes them feel valued and repay the organization through positive outcomes (Karatepe et al., 2019 ). As a consequence, employees’ commitment and creativity are stimulated and organizational citizenship and prosocial behaviors are fostered, leading to an increase in organizational performance. For instance, Zhou and Miao ( 2014 ) found that servant leadership positively influences employees’ commitment through perceived organizational support as a mediator.

In this framework, culture, and particularly organizational culture, is strictly connected to the leadership style adopted within a company. On the one hand, servant leadership is more likely to apply in contexts characterized by specific cultural values such as paternalism, collectivism and low-power distance. On the other hand, servant leadership can be adopted to create a new organizational culture based on trust, fairness and high-quality leader–follower relationships (Lee et al., 2019 ).

Leadership attitudes also vary according to gender, as some studies reported that, relative to their counterparts, leading females are more likely to display behaviors of altruistic calling, emotional healing and organizational stewardship (Beck, 2014) and to hold service and altruistic value (De Rubio & Kiser, 2015); therefore, they more often behave as servant leaders.

Keywords Temporal Analysis

From a temporal standpoint, VOSviewer offers a graphic representation that allows us to identify the most recent keywords and therefore the core topics currently discussed in literature.

Figure  5 , overlay visualization, displays the ultimate research trends by coloring them in yellow, in contrast with the oldest, colored in blue. It is possible to infer that the concept of servant leadership has been recently discussed in relation to some important outcomes, such as organizational commitment and job satisfaction, to which it is linked by evidence. The effectiveness of this leadership style represented in several organizational contexts has encouraged the development of specific leadership practices, such as training or interventions, aimed at fostering the servant leadership behaviors. At present, most empirical studies have focused on the public sector, as it is often characterized by front-line employees who imitate servant leaders’ behaviors displayed by their managers, thus promoting the quality of relationships with end-customers and providing significant benefits to the whole organization. In this framework, the influence of organizational culture is still relevant, as it determines the way servant leadership is built by leaders and perceived by followers, along with its effectiveness in achieving the desired outcomes. In fact, according to the cultural climate, servant leadership may relate to both individual and organizational outcomes through different mediating and moderating mechanisms.

Overlay visualization

Global Analysis: Basic Statistics

In the “analyze search results” section of Scopus, it is possible to gain some general insights into the whole subset of 357 papers used for the purpose of this literature review.

Figure  6 shows how the topic of servant leadership dates back to the mid 1980s but started receiving significant attention only with the beginning of the new millennium. Particularly, it experienced exponential growth from 2007 to 2019. This corresponds to the period when the first scales for the measurement of servant leadership were developed allowing the conduction of several empirical studies across various organizational contexts.

Documents by year

From a geographical standpoint, it is possible to observe in Fig.  7 how the trend has interested primarily the United States (40.8%), where theories of servant leadership first originated, and China in the second place (13.8%), where the western construct of servant leadership was tested to assess its reliability and validity across cultures. Several cultural differences have indeed been assessed between the United States and the Chinese culture; for instance, China is a long-term and collectivist country committed to work loyalty and respect, while the United States are more individualistic and oriented to short-term business relationships. The topic has then spread in most Anglo-Saxon countries, such as Australia (7.7%), United Kingdom (7.4%), South Africa (5.8%) and Canada (4.5%), probably fostered by their use of a common language and their cultural and historical ties. The countries of Netherlands, Hong Kong, Spain and Turkey represent altogether the remaining 19.9%.

Documents by country or territory

Servant leadership is a versatile and multidisciplinary topic, as it can be applied to a variety of contexts that also fall outside that of the typical corporation. Figure  8 shows how, besides Business, Management and Accounting (38.7%), the subject areas of Social Sciences (25.3%) Psychology (11.1%) and Arts and Humanities (7.9%) are also significantly involved in the literature. This can be explained by the fact that, rather than organizations, at the core of servant leadership are humans: specifically, leaders and their followers.

Documents by subject area

Figure  9 shows the contribution of the most impactful journals over time. The Leadership and Organization Development Journal with 22 articles out of 63, is the leading in the field and has grown exponentially from 2015. The journal of Business Ethics, with its 15 articles, has also been very influential for contributions to servant leadership research in the last decade. Other articles focusing on servant leadership have been published in Leadership Quarterly (10), International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management (8), and Leadership Organization Development Journal (8), which are also the longest-running in time.

Documents per year by source

With regards to the scholars who significantly contributed to the academic research on servant leadership (Fig.  10 ), some are based in the United States, where leadership theories have originated and are still widely investigated; the remaining part are based in Europe and Australia but have worked for important American journals and communities, such as Greenleaf center for servant leadership. The most important contribution comes from van Dierendonck (2014, 2019), who has an expertise in leadership and leadership development at Erasmus University (Rotterdam, Holland) and is the associate editor of the International Journal of Servant Leadership, published by Gonzaga University (Washington, United States) in collaboration with the Spears Center for Servant-Leadership. Two other influential authors are Liden et al. ( 2008 , 2014 , 2015 ) and Sendjaya et al. ( 2008 , 2019 ), who have been writing for some of the most important journals in the field, such as Leadership quarterly, Journal of business ethics and Leadership and organizational development journal, which were also highlighted by the previous analysis (Fig.  9 ). The remaining scholars, Winston and Fields ( 2015 ), Eva (2019), Ruiz-Palomino (2018), Bande (2015), Barbuto and Wheeler ( 2006 ), Cooper (2014) and Jaramillo (2009, 2015), have to be mentioned as they also provided considerable contribution to research, as proved by the number of citations of their works.

Documents by author

Figure  11 shows the output of an analysis performed in order to identify recent breakthrough papers that have provided a significant contribution to the topic and have received considerable attention from the scientific community. The ten most cited papers have been identified by extracting all 357 papers from the Scopus database and ranking them according to the overall number of citations of the last 5 years, divided by 5 (average value of citation per year). This reduced time span has been chosen instead of the time-length of the whole dataset in order to avoid the biased result of obtaining the oldest papers as the most cited, due to the fact that they would have received a greater number of citations over time. The article with the highest number of citations is the one by Liden et al. ( 2008 ) who developed and validated a multidimensional measure of 28 items measuring 9 essential dimensions of servant leadership. This scale has been widely applied to test the construct validity in various organizational contexts in recent time, together with its shortened version of 7 item developed by Wayne et al. in 2015. The remaining most cited articles can be divided in three groups, according to the research streams. One stream has focused on the clarification of the construct and the servant leadership theories in organizations, including scale development and validation. A second stream has been investigating the mediating and moderating mechanisms through which servant leadership leads to a series of behavioral, attitudinal and performance outcomes, both at the individual and collective level. Finally, a third stream has compared servant leadership to other moral-based leadership styles, such as transformational, ethical and authentic leaderships in terms of focus and their associations with a wide range of organizationally relevant measures. All the most cited papers are part of the biggest component shown in Fig.  2 ; moreover, four out of the ten papers are included in the main path, while the remaining six are not. Being written by more than one authors, these impactful papers are the result of a significant investigation conducted on the topic by more scholars. Altogether, the articles suggest that the most consistent trend in literature is moving towards the measurement of servant leadership across various cultural and organizational contexts, at both the individual and collective levels (organization, employee, customer, etc.). This has been possible through the clarification of the common constructs composing servant leadership and the development of a scale able to test them across different organizations and organizational levels.

Ranking of the ten most cited papers in the last 5 years (mean value of citation per year)

This paper represents an attempt to rationalize the content of research developed in the context of servant leadership. The limitations of the study are mainly related to the adopted methodology. First of all, it consists in a literature review based on a citation network analysis, which may not be fully representative of a paper’s qualitative contribution to the body of knowledge, especially because VOSviewer shows only a part of the whole subset. Moreover, citations could be biased because scholars often tend to cite the most relevant articles in the literature, driven by their reputation and popularity. However, these limitations can be overcome due to the fact that the purpose of the current study is to depict an evolutionary path of the topic, rather than investigate in-depth the contribution of single papers.

The growing body of empirical studies on servant leadership, analyzed for the purpose of the analysis, has allowed to identify some consolidated streams of research and some areas of the literature deserving further investigation. First of all, there is evidence that servant leadership can foster employees’ positive outcomes, with different antecedents and through various mediating and moderating mechanisms. These outcomes have been found at the individual, team and organizational level and are of various types: behavioral, such as organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and proactive behavior (Chiniara & Bentein, 2016 ; Newman et al., 2017 ; Ozyilmaz & Cicek, 2015 ; Walumbwa et al., 2010 ) attitudinal, such as engagement and job satisfaction (Chiniara & Bentein, 2016 ; Hunter et al., 2013 ; Kauppila et al., 2018 ; Van Dierendonck et al., 2014 ) and performance, such as customer value co-creation and team performance (Hsiao et al., 2015 ; Hu & Liden, 2011 ). Moreover, servant leadership has been found to be of significant utility in explaining incremental variance above and beyond transformational, ethical and authentic leadership, with regards to these organizationally relevant criterion measures (Hoch et al., 2018 ). For this reason, scholars have addressed their attention to this leadership approach and several companies are moving towards the adoption of an organizational climate based on service, ethics and healthy work relationships that could significantly contribute to the organizational success (Eva et al., 2019 ). This aspect makes servant leadership attractive for both future research and usage. Also, in the analyses of the present study (main path, keywords clusters, global statistics), no significant criticism of servant leadership, from both an empirical and theoretical level, has emerged; the development of minor critical examinations has always started from a prior enhancement of the construct and its positive outcomes. It has to be considered, however, that the unquestioned positive praise of servant leadership may be due to the so called “Matthew effect”: the fact that those papers offering a promising perspective of servant leadership, which have previously been successful, are more likely to be cited again and again (Bol et al., 2018 ).

Although a positive interpretation of servant leadership prevails in the literature, the authors of the present study went beyond the outputs of the main analyses to identify in the literature some potential drawbacks associated with the adoption of this practice within organizations (Palumbo, 2015 ). First of all, it has to be considered that the servant leadership approach takes time to build, as it requires strong interpersonal relationships engaging the emotional, relational and ethical dimension of followers, in which both the leader and the followers play a vital role in maintaining them over time. Plus, the servant leadership style may not be suitable for all organizations, especially those characterized by a fast-changing environment where decisions have to be made quickly, due to the fact that they would require a fast top-down approach, rather than bottom-up. Another risk is losing sight of the purpose of the organization and ultimate goals in favour of people development: the servant leader is in fact devoted to the individual employee and their growth rather than to the organization. This could have negative effects on the organizational effectiveness. On the other hand, a successful company performance is not always due to a visionary leader who establishes a climate of service, as this represents a common misperception of the business world: the halo effect (i.e. the tendency to make specific inferences on the basis of a general impression).

Lastly, too much healing and empathy shown by the leader may turn into merely protective behaviour towards followers, which would discourage them from adopting a proactive role and promptly dealing with critical issues within the organization. This would challenge the prevailing arguments of the literature of servant leadership by producing a disabling environment that disempowers employees and leads to a situation of dependency on the leader (Palumbo, 2015 ). To prevent this possible counterintuitive consequence, servant leaders should act as role models and lead by example, ensuring at the same time that followers have the right degree of autonomy and responsibility. In light of these considerations, the conceptualization of servant leadership should be revisited to contemplate its side-effects, in terms of followers’ behaviour, leader–follower relationships and organizational outcomes, to prevent the impoverishment of the overall organizational effectiveness predicted by some studies (Andersen, 2009 ; Palumbo, 2015 ; Liu, 2019 ; Chenwei et al., 2021 , Wu et al., 2021 ).

In particular, the authors of the present study have leveraged on a critical assessment of the outputs of the main analyses of the literature on servant leadership to identify some research areas that have not been examined in detail and deserve further investigation:

• servant leaders’ system of beliefs and values (i.e. ethics) as well as other antecedents, that may significantly affect followers’ and organizational performance;
• other mediating or moderating mechanisms (i.e. contextual discriminants) influencing the relationship between servant leadership and positive outcomes, both at the individual and organizational level;
• servant leadership behaviours displayed by followers, that are useful to promote customers’ satisfaction, especially in the service sector;
• the utility of servant leadership in contexts where it has not yet been evaluated, such as technology, to test its validity across industries;
• longitudinal, multi-level studies confirming the effectiveness and generalizability of the most recent scale of global servant leadership assessment (SL-7) across culturally diverse countries (other than the US and China, as suggested by this literature review), according to well-known frameworks such as Hofstede’s
• critical theoretical and empirical investigation of the potential shortcomings of servant leadership often neglected by scholars, to challenge the current positive interpretation of the topic and advance the scientific knowledge

Additionally, on the basis of the authors’ considerations, the role of servant leadership, compared to other types of leadership, may be investigated within the institutional framework (e.g. public services and administration, where it has shown to be very effective) and companies’ organizational change management.

Conclusions and Managerial Implications

Due to its holistic approach, broad focus and important role in affecting both individual and team-level outcomes, servant leadership has seen a proliferation of studies in the last 20 years. In response to this research trend, the aim of this paper was threefold. First of all, the recent evolution of the field was depicted through the identification of the main articles cluster that has been cited the most, thus representing the consolidated literature. Second, the development of the research trends over time was framed on the basis of the co-occurrence of authors’ keywords. Third, by conducting analyses on the main subset of papers, the authors presented some general insights on the topic, such as its temporal and geographical development, the main contexts where it has been studied and applied, the most cited papers providing a significant contribution to the field and the most influential journals and authors. The results of the analyses conducted in the present study indicate that the interpretation of servant leadership prevailing in literature is positive, due to the promising attitudinal, behavioural and performance outcomes that it can produce on followers.

Nevertheless, scholars should examine the potential drawbacks of servant leadership, assess its validity across industries, as well as identify the best scenario where it can be implemented. From a practical standpoint, managers should consider the importance of promoting servant leadership in employment settings, to develop specific skills and ultimately improve an organizational climate of empowerment. The servant leadership approach may be particularly effective in the post covid-19 scenario and / or in contexts characterized by a high degree of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). In these environments, leaders struggle to make all decisions, thus requiring the proactiveness and motivational orientation of all employees, which have been identified as important mediators to positive followers’ outcomes in the servant leadership research (Eva et al., 2019 ). Specifically, further considerations are needed in relation to the potential role of this leadership practice in empowering and supporting followers, as well as in giving them the right degree of autonomy and responsibility to take on new challenges and act on behalf of the company when pressured by the external environment.

Data Availability

Code availability, declarations.

We have no conflict of interest or competing interest to disclose.

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Contributor Information

Alice Canavesi, Email: ti.cuil@isevanaca .

Eliana Minelli, Email: ti.cuil@illenime .

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Social capital in action: navigating the leader popularity landscape for enhanced leadership effectiveness

• Published: 22 May 2024

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• Ning Yang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0972-7287 1 &
• Ruohong Li 1 , 2  

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Since most tasks in today’s workplace involve collaboration. The popularity of individuals in the workplace has emerged as a significant and intriguing research subject. This study, utilizing social capital theory, investigates how leader popularity influences leadership effectiveness. We collected data from 156 leaders and 485 employees across various Chinese companies using a multi-source, multi-wave approach. Our findings indicate a positive relationship between leader popularity and leadership effectiveness. Team cohesion mediates the positive impact of leader popularity on leadership effectiveness. Furthermore, leader openness moderates the relationship between leader popularity and team cohesion. Leader openness moderates the indirect relationship between leader popularity and leadership effectiveness through team cohesion. This indirect relationship is stronger when leader openness is high. The study’s conclusion supports integrating the concept of popularity into organizational behavior research. It also offers practical insights for organizations and leaders to enhance leadership effectiveness.

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The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Yang, N., Li, R. Social capital in action: navigating the leader popularity landscape for enhanced leadership effectiveness. Curr Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-06123-0

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She gives each of her undergraduate and graduate students individualized attention, meeting with them weekly and working to support their personal academic and professional goals. Students are regularly encouraged to attend local and international conferences, brush up on skills at workshops, and apply for prestigious awards and scholarships. She helps students build networks by connecting them with leaders in industry and academia and brings in professionals working in industry, government and public health to speak about their career journeys.

“Ideally, a principal investigator is both a good supervisor and a good mentor, but not everyone is. However, Jennifer is both,” writes Dr. Jonathan Newman, vice-president of research at Wilfrid Laurier University and former CBS dean, in the nomination package. “She runs a busy and highly productive lab that has published over 35 papers in the last two years, many of them with her graduate students. She has endless patience not only for her students but also for her colleagues.”

Mentorship Award for Post-Doctoral Fellows

Dr. Brendan Daisley, postdoctoral fellow in Molecular and Cellular Biology Nominated by Christine Macpherson, MSc student in Molecular and Cellular Biology

Described as a dedicated, thoughtful and inspiring, Daisley has supported students in their research and professional development and provided a safe space to discuss personal challenges.

“He embodies the greatest characteristics that any academic aspires to have: the passion and intelligence to embrace and elevate scientific pursuits, and the drive to advance the skills and knowledge of others,” writes Allen-Vercoe in the nomination package.

Graduate Teaching Assistant Award of Excellence

Alex Cosby, PhD student in Integrative Biology Nominated by Dr. Quinn Webber, Integrative Biology

Cosby has been a teaching assistant for seven courses in the past three years. This past year, she took the initiative to independently organize and manage the Courselink pages for Dr. Quinn Webber’s two courses, BIOL*4150 and ONEH*1000, as well as helped write and edit assignments and rubrics, and made herself available to students when they needed help, especially those struggling to learn the R coding language in BIOL*4150.

“BIOL*4150 in F23 was my first course as an Assistant Professor at the University of Guelph and ONEH*1000 in W24 was my second,” writes Webber in the nomination package. “Having an experienced and dedicated TA like Alex made all the difference for me in my first two courses.”

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