Cognitive skills and leadership performance: The nine critical skills

Over the years, a growing body of evidence indicates that certain cognitive skills are a critical determinant of leader performance. In the present effort we show that application of these skills is typically founded in case-based knowledge. Subsequently, we identify nine key skills people in leadership positions employ when working with case-based knowledge to address leadership problems: 1) problem definition, 2) cause/goal analysis, 3) constraint analysis, 4) planning, 5) forecasting, 6) creative thinking, 7) idea evaluation, 8) wisdom, and 9) sensemaking/visioning. Individual and situational contingencies shaping effective application of these thinking skills is discussed. In addition, the implications of findings bearing on leader thinking skills for leader assessment and leader development are considered.     

License to fail? How leader group prototypicality moderates the effects of leader performance on perceptions of leadership effectiveness

Leadership often serves as an explanatory category for performance outcomes (i.e., failure and success). This process can strengthen or weaken leadership effectiveness, because contingent on their performance leaders may gain or lose follower endorsement — the basis of leadership. Drawing on the social identity analysis of leadership, we hypothesized that leader group prototypicality and performance information interact to predict followers' perceptions of leadership effectiveness. Because group prototypical leaders are more trusted by their followers, we hypothesized that group prototypical leaders are evaluated as more effective after failure information than non-prototypical leaders. In contrast, we predicted that both prototypical and non-prototypical leaders should receive similar evaluations of leadership effectiveness after success. We found support for our predictions in a scenario experiment, a cross-sectional field study, and a laboratory experiment.     

The role of vertical conflict in the relationship between leader self-enhancement and leader performance

Although studies have shown that inflated self-perceptions of transformational leadership behavior negatively affect leader performance, insight into the underlying processes explaining this relationship is lacking. The current study addresses this gap by identifying vertical conflict between leaders and subordinates as one such underlying process. Using a sample of 52 leaders supervising 259 subordinates, it was found that leader self-enhancement of transformational leadership behavior is significantly and positively related to vertical conflict about both task and relationship issues. Results further indicate that vertical task conflict rather than vertical relationship conflict mediates the negative relationship between leader self-enhancement and leader performance.     

Ethical leadership and employee knowledge sharing: Exploring dual-mediation paths

Drawing on social learning and self-determination theories, this study investigates the mediating effects of controlled motivation for knowledge sharing and moral identity in the relationship between ethical leadership and employee knowledge sharing. We conducted a field study with 337 full-time employees to test our hypotheses. Results supported the mediating effects of both controlled motivation and moral identity in accounting for the relationship between ethical leadership and employee knowledge sharing. Our study is among the first to examine whether and why ethical leadership predicts employee knowledge sharing. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Exploring the link between integrated leadership and public sector performance

This study develops the concept of integrated leadership in the public sector. Integrated leadership is conceived as the combination of five leadership roles that are performed collectively by employees and managers at different levels of the hierarchy. The leadership roles are task-, relations-, change-, diversity-, and integrity-oriented leadership. Using data from the Federal Human Capital Survey and Program Assessment Rating Tool, we analyze the relationship between integrated leadership and federal program performance. The findings from the empirical analysis indicate that integrated leadership has a positive and sizeable effect on the performance of federal sub-agencies. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings and limitations of the study.     

Physician leadership. Learning to be a leader

As the business role of health care delivery expands and complex reform is imposed, physicians must assume leadership roles and imprint medical expertise on business dynamics. Before the end of this century, health care and its delivery will likely become unrecognizable to those who ended their practices only a decade ago. Traditional management will wither away to be replaced by self-managed, self-trained, and self-motivated workers, no longer employed in jobs but working through processes, projects, and assignments in integrative health care delivery systems. Becoming a leader is an active and arduous process that can no longer be approached haphazardly. To be effective, the physician must plot a course with clear and calculated intent and effort, which requires acquiring organizational tools and administrative skills to innovatively alter medical care for the good of all.     

Effects of leader intelligence,personality and emotional intelligence on transformational leadership and managerial performance

This study investigates the effects of intelligence, personality traits and emotional intelligence on transformational leadership and the effective performance of leaders in the organizational context. Data were collected from 134 midlevel managers from a large Brazilian company that operates in the energy sector. Our findings suggest that leadership effectiveness, as measured by the achievement of organizational outcomes, is a direct function of a leader's transformational behaviors, and is an indirect function of individual differences (experience, intelligence and conscientiousness) that work through transformational behaviors. A negative effect of neuroticism on leadership effectiveness was also observed. In addition, while emotional intelligence seemed to be statistically related to transformational leadership if considered in isolation, when ability and personality were controlled for, the effect became non-significant. We discuss implications for theory, research and practice.     

Is a happy leader a good leader? A meta-analytic investigation of leader trait affect and leadership

Organizational scholars have long been concerned with identifying traits that differentiate effective leaders from ineffective leaders. Although there has been renewed interest in the role of emotions in leadership, there is currently no quantitative summary of leader trait affectivity and leadership. Thus, the current paper meta-analyzed the relationship between leader trait affectivity and several leadership criteria, including transformational leadership, transactional leadership, leadership emergence, and leadership effectiveness. Results show that leader positive affect is positively related to leadership criteria, whereas leader negative affect is negatively related to leadership criteria, and regression analyses indicate that leader trait affect predicts leadership criteria above and beyond leader extraversion and neuroticism. Additionally, mediational analyses reveal that the relationship between leader trait affect and leadership effectiveness operates through transformational leadership. Taken together, these results contribute to the literature on emotions and leadership by highlighting the role of leader affect as a meaningful predictor of leadership.     

Propensity for self-development of leadership attributes: Understanding,predicting, and supporting performance of leader self-development

Little systematic research has been reported to advance understanding of the characteristics associated with individuals who initiate self-development activities to grow leadership skills. The purpose of the present research was to examine cognitive, dispositional, and motivational precursors to the propensity to engage in leadership self-development. A second purpose was to examine the role of organizational support on the relationships between self-development propensity and reported self-development activities. Over 400 junior-military leaders participated in a three-stage survey administration designed to test a structural model of leader self-development. Results indicate that a person having individual characteristics related to mastery, work, and career-growth orientations displayed more motivation to perform leader self-development and more skilled at performing instructional and self-regulatory processes. Higher self-development motivation and skill resulted in greater reported self-development activities. Surprisingly, organizational support reduced the magnitude of this relationship. This study concludes with implications for future research on and practice of leader self-development activities.     

Nurturing overconfidence: The relationship between leader power,overconfidence and firm performance

This paper analyzes the relationship between leader power and overconfidence in the corporate context. Building on psychology research, we postulate that by activating self-serving cognition and illusion of control, the amount of power allocated to the leader of an organization positively influences the probability that he/she will exhibit overconfident beliefs. Using various measures of both formal and symbolic leader power we provide corroborating evidence for such endogeneous - power-based - origin of leader overconfidence. Then, we develop an empirical framework that allows to test the endogeneity-free effects of leader overconfidence on firm performance. Namely, we use a propensity score matching technique to construct a sample of reasonable counterfactuals (i.e., leaders in similar power-allocation conditions who do not exhibit overconfidence). As a result, we provide dissenting evidence about the effects of overconfidence, showing an economically and statistically significant positive influence of overconfidence on firm performance.     

Development of leadership skills: Experience and timing

To develop organizational leaders we need to understand how requisite skills are acquired over the course of people's careers. In this article, a cross-sectional design was used to assess differences in leadership skills across six grade levels of officers in the U.S. Army. Increased levels of knowledge, problem-solving skills, systems skills, and social skills were found at higher grade levels. Certain skills and experiences, however, were found to be particularly important at certain phases of leaders' careers. These findings are used to propose an organization-based model of skill development. Implications of this model for leader development programs are discussed.     

Reconciling identity leadership and leader identity: A dual-identity framework

Research exploring the powerful links between leadership and identity has burgeoned in recent years but cohered around two distinct approaches. Research on identity leadership, the main focus of this special issue, sees leadership as a group process that centers on leaders’ ability to represent, advance, create and embed a social identity that they share with the collectives they lead—a sense of “us as a group”. Research on leader identity sees leadership as a process that is advanced by individuals who have a well-developed personal understanding of themselves as leaders—a sense of “me as a leader”. This article explores the nature and implications of these divergent approaches, focusing on their specification of profiles, processes, pathways, products, and philosophies that have distinct implications for theory and practice. We formalize our observations in a series of propositions and also outline a dual-identity framework with the potential to integrate the two approaches.     

The influence of follower mood on leader mood and task performance: An affective,follower-centric perspective of leadership

Based on the notion that leadership involves affective exchange (Dasborough, Ashkanasy, Tee & Tse, 2009), we hypothesize that a leader's mood and task performance can be determined in part by follower mood displays. In two laboratory experiments, leaders supervised teams where the team members were confederates instructed to display positive or negative moods. Results were that followers' mood influenced leader mood and task performance. Moreover, leaders of positive mood followers were judged to have performed more effectively and expediently than leaders of followers who expressed negative mood states. We replicated these findings in Study 2 and found further that leaders high on neuroticism performed less effectively than their low neuroticism counterparts when interacting with negative-mood followers. Collectively, by demonstrating that follower moods influence leader affect and behaviors, our studies provide support for a core element of the Dasborough et al. (2009) reciprocal affect theory of leadership.     

Is leadership a part of me? A leader identity approach to understanding the motivation to lead

Drawing on social comparison and identity literature, we suggest that individuals' comparisons of themselves to their own standards of leadership relate to their leadership motivation. We propose and test a model of motivation to lead (MTL) based on two types of self-to-leader comparisons: self-to-exemplar and self-to-prototype comparisons with respect to affiliation. In our main study, using data from a sample of 180 executives, we apply structural equation models to test our predictions. We find that self-comparisons with concrete, influential leaders of the past or present (self-to-exemplar comparisons) relate positively to MTL. We also find that self-comparisons with more general representations of leaders (self-to-prototype comparisons in affiliation) relate to MTL. Whereas the effect of self-to-exemplar comparisons is mediated through individuals' leadership self-efficacy perceptions, the effect of self-to-prototype comparisons is not. We replicate these findings in three follow-up studies using different research designs. We derive implications for theory and practice.     

Using leadership criteria to measure and reward performance

Physicians speak of performance and outcomes. They speak of customers and patients. While many leaders nod their heads, shake hands in agreement, and establish liaisons, agreements are implemented without an appropriate understanding of how to recognize and measure leadership performance. How are physicians and other management team members measured? Are you measuring the right things? Physician executives should be measured for simplicity, for streamlining, for standardization, and for knowing the right processes. That's productivity. They should be measured for taking risks, for being creative, and for exploring and initiating new ways to use existing resources. That's entrepreneurship. And they should be measured for kindness, for empathy, for building trust, for sharing with colleagues, and for working together. That's teamwork.     

Communication and trust are key: Unlocking the relationship between leadership and team performance and creativity

Considerable theoretical and empirical work has identified a relationship between transformational leadership and team performance and creativity. The mechanisms underlying this link, however, are not well understood. To identify the intervening processes inherent in this relationship, we experimentally manipulated the leadership style assigned to 44 teams taking part in a resource-maximization task. Teams were exposed either to a leader using inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, or a control condition. Our findings reveal important differences between leadership styles in communication and team outcomes (objective task performance and creativity). These results suggest that different dimensions of transformational leadership should be emphasized depending on the outcome sought. In addition, our results provide evidence for a sequential mediation model where leadership influences team outcomes through overall team communication and trust in teammates. This study suggests mechanisms by which transformational leaders may impact team outcomes, which has implications for team building and leadership training.     

The entanglement of leader character and leader competence and its impact on performance

Whereas the micro- and macro-oriented leadership literatures have often studied leader competencies necessary for effective performance, the role of leader character in relation to competencies and performance has been to a large extent neglected. Our work seeks to shift the scholarly dialogue by introducing the concept of character-competence entanglement, which reflects the binding between character and competence over time. The highest degree of entanglement represents the deep and more persistent interconnection and mutually-reinforcing effect between highly-developed leader character and highly-developed leader competence, whereas in cases of low entanglement, character can be activated temporarily in a particular context to help strengthen the relationship between competence and performance. Our core proposition is that high character-competence entanglement will lead to extraordinary performance over time. In addition, we emphasize that relying on naturally-occurring learning opportunities and the processes of “learning-by-living” both outside and inside the organization will positively impact the development of character-competence entanglement.     

Contextual leadership,transformational leadership and the performance of international innovation seeking alliances

In this paper, we examined aspects of contextual leadership [Osborn, R. N., Hunt, J. G., & Jauch, L. R. (2002). Toward a contextual theory of leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 13, 797–837] and transformational leadership [Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations. New York: Free Press] by alliance heads and by executives in the sponsoring firms for a sample of innovation seeking U.S./Japanese alliances in research-intensive sectors. We identified three aspects of performance (a) alliance innovation, (b) the strategic contributions to the U.S. sponsor and (c) the strategic contributions to the Japanese sponsor. We found that (a) knowledge/ information based (contextual dimensions) leadership by the alliance head was associated with higher innovation and strategic contributions to the sponsors and (b) transformational leadership by sponsoring executives was dysfunctional for alliance innovation but contributed positively to the strategic contribution the alliance provided a sponsor and, (c) the linkage between leadership by the alliance head and performance was much more important for some types of alliance governance (administrative) structures than others. That is, we argue that appropriate leadership is embedded in its context.