Not So Lonely At The Top?: An Exploratory Study Of The Multiple Commitments Of Aspiring Leaders

Leadership is often viewed as a lonely endeavor, as this quote exemplifies. Leaders are frequently perceived as standing “alone” at the top of the hierarchy. Drive and sustained commitment have been linked to the attainment of leadership positions (McClelland & Boyatzis, 1982), findings that are corroborated by the many public and private sector leaders who have described the years of intense work, perseverance, and sacrifice that led to their success. Traveling the path to career success and leadership positions can come at the expense of developing rewarding relationships with friends and family (e.g., Hewlett, 2002)

Negative Outgroup Leader Actions Increase Liking for Ingroup Leaders: An Experimental Test of Intergroup Leader-Enhancement Effects

We conducted two studies to examine how information about outgroup leaders' negative actions affect ingroup leader favorability ratings. Study 1 found that people hold more favorable attitudes toward ingroup leaders (i.e. their own nation's leaders) when learning of negative actions of outgroup leaders (i.e. another nation's leaders). Study 2 replicated the finding, examining social identity strength as a moderator of this effect, and found that participants with strong national identification exhibit this intergroup leader-enhancement effect but participants with weak national identification do not. These data extend previous research on liking for leaders and are consistent with predictions derived from social identity theory. The implications of these findings for intergroup relations research and the psychological study of leadership are discussed

Leader Authenticity Markers: Findings From A Study of African-American Leaders

Authenticity has become a central concept in leadership studies, but the question of how followers assess the authenticity of their political leaders has not been addressed. With few exceptions, the literature on authenticity and leadership focuses on normative arguments rather than empirical study, and on the leader rather than on his or her followers. Normative models of leadership advise leaders to “be authentic.” Yet leadership is a social process. As leaders struggle to be authentic, followers make decisions about the degree to which they believe their leaders are authentic. In this study we develop the scholarship on authenticity and leadership by introducing and applying what we call leader authenticity markers. These are features and actions that others use to determine the degree to which they believe a leader is authentic or inauthentic. We present findings from an exploratory study of authenticity markers of African-American political leaders. Political leadership of ethnic minority groups is a particularly important realm in which to study leader authenticity and leader authenticity markers. We report and discuss the seven authenticity markers identified in the research and five themes about authenticity markers. The implications of these findings for leadership studies and practice are discussed, as are directions for future research

Contemporary Public Leadership In China: A Research Review and Consideration

Background China’s economic and political importance has captured the world’s attention. China has become increasingly integrated into the global economy. Between 2000 and 2003, it accounted for one-third of global economic growth measured at purchasing-power parity, more than twice as much as the United States (“Food for Thought,” 2004). Politically, China is the largest communist country in the world. As China seeks to raise its international prestige by hosting the 2008 Olympic Games, social factors have also captured the world’s attention: China’s status as the most populous country in the world, and its domestic and international crises over democratization, legitimization, and corruption. For all these reasons, China is a compelling case for inquiry into public leadership. Throughout its rich 5000-year history, China has witnessed drastic public leadership transformations, from imperial, semi-colonial, semi-feudal, and semi-capitalist to socialist and Communist leadership. But today, China faces opportunities and challenges it has not previously encountered. 2. Purpose This review is motivated by the need to (a) provide researchers and practitioners interested in contemporary public leadership in China with a comprehensive overview of the recent literature and (b) establish the context for future theoretical and empirical work on public leadership both within China and cross-culturally

Knowledge Nomads: Understanding an Overlooked Segment of the Workforce Helps Managers Lead

Managers have formal and official supervisory authority within an organizational hierarchy. As a result, a perennial concern of managers is employee mobility, i.e., the turnover of workers, and the implication of worker mobility for the staffing of critical functions in the organization

Bounded Rationality\u27s Account for the Influence of Group Identification on Ingroup Favoritism: A Field Investigation Using Jewish and Arab Populations in Israel

We used the bounded rationality approach to explore the impact of group identification on intergroup relations. 1,289 Jewish and Arab citizens completed assessments of group identification, functional relations, and indices of ingroup favoritism. Results provided evidence of (a) a positive relation between group identification and ingroup favoritism; (b) perceptions of more positive functional relations that were associated with less ingroup favoritism; and (c) that high-identifiers who evaluated relations as positive experienced the lowest levels of ingroup favoritism. We discuss how the results clarify the complex relation between group identification and ingroup favoritism

Empathic Joy in Positive Intergroup Relations

Research on empathy focuses almost exclusively on its negative variety, empathic sorrow, either by defining empathy as a state involving negative emotions or by confining its empirical study to the negative. In contrast, we investigate empathy\u27s positive variety, empathic joy. We do so in the context of intergroup relations. A total of 1,216 predominantly White teachers participated in a yearlong investigation of whether their attitudes toward, and empathy for, their predominantly ethnic minority students affected their teaching style and the students’ learning. Consistent with expectations, we found that teachers’ experience of empathic joy predicted better student outcomes and that it did so by leading to more allophilia toward students and, in turn, toward more proactive and positive interactions with students. Implications are considered for the role of empathic joy in positive intergroup relations more generally

Measuring the Efficacy of Leaders to Assess Information and Make Decisions in a Crisis: The C-LEAD Scale

Based on literature and expert interviews, we developed the Crisis Leader Efficacy in Assessing and Deciding scale (C-LEAD) to capture the efficacy of leaders to assess information and make decisions in a public health and safety crisis. In Studies 1 and 2, we find that C-LEAD predicts decision-making difficulty and confidence in a crisis better than a measure of general leadership efficacy. In Study 3, C-LEAD predicts greater motivation to lead in a crisis, more crisis leader role-taking, and more accurate performance while in a crisis leader role. These findings support the scale's construct validity and broaden our theoretical understanding of the nature of crisis leader efficacy.

Measuring the Efficacy of Leaders to Assess Information and Make Decisions in a Crisis: The C-LEAD Scale

Based on literature and expert interviews, we developed the Crisis Leader Efficacy in Assessing and Deciding scale (C-LEAD) to capture the efficacy of leaders to assess information and make decisions in a public health and safety crisis. In Studies 1 and 2, we find that C-LEAD predicts decision-making difficulty and confidence in a crisis better than a measure of general leadership efficacy. In Study 3, C-LEAD predicts greater motivation to lead in a crisis, more crisis leader role-taking, and more accurate performance while in a crisis leader role. These findings support the scale’s construct validity and broaden our theoretical understanding of the nature of crisis leader efficacy

Measuring the Efficacy of Leaders to Assess Information and Make Decisions in a Crisis: The C-LEAD Scale.

Based on literature and expert interviews, we developed the Crisis Leader Efficacy in Assessing and Deciding scale (C-LEAD) to capture the efficacy of leaders to assess information and make decisions in a public health and safety crisis. In Studies 1 and 2, we find that C-LEAD predicts decision-making difficulty and confidence in a crisis better than a measure of general leadership efficacy. In Study 3, C-LEAD predicts greater motivation to lead in a crisis, more crisis leader role-taking, and more accurate performance while in a crisis leader role. These findings support the scale’s construct validity and broaden our theoretical understanding of the nature of crisis leader efficacy