SUMMARY COURSE 3.4: LEADERSHIP &
COACHING
BY ROWAN MOELIJKER
YEAR 2018/2019
POSITIVE & ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
ERASMUS SCHOOL OF SOCIAL AND BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCES
,MEETING 1
PROBLEM 1: WHO IS IT?
ARTICLE 1: AVOLIO, B., WALUMBWA , F., & WEBER, T. J. (2009). LEADERSHIP: CURRENT
THEORIES, RESEARCH, AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS. ANNUAL REVIEW OF PSYCHOLOGY, 60, 421–
449. DOI:10.1146/ANNUREV.PSYCH.60.110707.163621
Authentic leadership: a pattern of transparent and ethical leader behaviour that encourages openness in
sharing information needed to make decisions while accepting followers’ inputs.
There appears to be general agreement in the literature on four factors that cover the components of
authentic leadership:
• balanced processing: objectively analysing relevant data before making a decision
• internalized moral perspective: being guided by internal moral standards, which are used to self-
regulate one’s behaviour.
• relational transparency: presenting one’s authentic self through openly sharing information and
feelings as appropriate for situations.
• self-awareness: a demonstrated understanding of one’s strengths, weaknesses, and the way one
makes sense of the world.
Work on defining and measuring authentic leadership is in the very early stages of development. Future
research will need to offer additional evidence for the construct validity of this measure or other measures, and
it will also need to demonstrate how authentic leadership relates to other constructs within its nomological
network.
Authentic leadership development
Heritability and Leadership: Preliminary evidence using a behavioural genetics approach has shown that
approximately 30% of the variation in leadership style and emergence was accounted for by heritability; the
remaining variation was attributed to differences in environmental factors such as individuals having different
role models and early opportunities for leadership development. → CONCLUSION: The “life context” one
grows up in and later works in is much more important than heritability in predicting leadership emergence
across one’s career.
Examining Evidence for Positive Leadership Interventions: To determine whether experimental interventions
actually impacted leadership development and/or performance, a qualitative and quantitative review of the
leadership intervention literature was undertaken. Regardless of the theory being investigated, results showed
that leadership interventions had a positive impact on work outcomes (e.g., ratings of leader performance),
even when the duration of those interventions was less than one day.
Future focus required:
• Relatively little work has been done over the past 100 years to substantiate whether leadership can
actually be developed.
• Not clear what constitutes leaders’ working self-concept and/or identity with respect to how they go
about influencing others.
• Another very promising area of research that has not received sufficient attention in the leadership
literature focuses on understanding what constitutes an individual’s level of developmental readiness
or one’s capacity or motivational orientation to develop to one’s full potential.
Cognitive Psychology and Leadership
This is an area of research and theory containing a wide range of approaches that are united by their focus on
explaining the way leaders and followers think and process information.
Future focus required: This broad stream of research has potential for enhancing existing theories of leadership
in terms of helping to explain how leaders and followers attend to, process, and make decisions and develop.
, Additional work linking self-concept and meta-cognitive theories to research on leadership will no doubt
contribute to our understanding of how leaders and followers actually develop. For example, if a leader has low
self-concept clarity, to what extent can we expect that same leader to be self-aware? What are the implications
for enhancing a leader’s self-concept clarity or working self-concept about what constitutes the roles of
effective leadership in developing that leader’s self-awareness and performance?
New-Genre Leadership
New-Genre Versus Traditional Leadership: Unlike the traditional leadership models, which described leader
behaviour in terms of leader-follower exchange relationships, setting goals, providing direction and support,
and reinforcement behaviours, the new leadership models emphasized symbolic leader behaviour; visionary,
inspirational messages; emotional feelings; ideological and moral values; individualized attention; and
intellectual stimulation.
The theory of charismatic/transformational leadership suggests that such leaders raise followers’ aspirations
and activate their higher-order values (e.g., altruism) such that followers identify with the leader and his or her
mission/vision, feel better about their work, and then work to perform beyond simple transactions and base
expectations.
Future Focus Required
• Questions remain as to what determines or predicts charismatic or transformational leadership.
• Further research is needed that explores the process and boundary conditions for charismatic and
transformational leadership with beneficial work behaviours.
• There has been a dearth of conceptual and empirical research on examining the relationships between
the new leadership theories and followers’ affective states.
• More research is needed that focuses on potential mediating and moderating variables.
• The article recommends that researchers incorporate a number of alternative research designs,
including but not limited to experimental designs, longitudinal designs, and qualitative designs, as well
as the use of multiple sources and mixed methods studies.
Complexity Leadership
Based on this framework, leadership is viewed as an interactive system of dynamic, unpredictable agents that
interact with each other in complex feedback networks, which can then produce adaptive outcomes such as
knowledge dissemination, learning, innovation, and further adaptation to change.
Future focus: the complexity leadership field clearly lacks substantive research. The article suspects this is a
result of the difficulties in assessing this type of emergent construct within a dynamically changing context.
Shared, Collective or Distributed Leadership
Shared leadership: a dynamic, interactive influence process among individuals in groups for which the objective
is to lead one another to the achievement of group or organizational goals or both. This influence process often
involves peer, or lateral, influence and at other times involves upward or downward hierarchical influence.
More specifically, shared leadership is defined as a team-level outcome.
Future focus: One of the criticisms of research on shared leadership involves the lack of agreement on its
definition. Other potential areas that have yet to be explored involve certain boundary conditions, mediators,
and moderators that have been recommended as a focus for future research. Another area that has not
received much research attention involves the environment in which teams function. Future research also
needs to examine how external team leaders affect the team’s ability and motivation to be self-directed and
share in leadership.
Leader-Member Exchange
COACHING
BY ROWAN MOELIJKER
YEAR 2018/2019
POSITIVE & ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
ERASMUS SCHOOL OF SOCIAL AND BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCES
,MEETING 1
PROBLEM 1: WHO IS IT?
ARTICLE 1: AVOLIO, B., WALUMBWA , F., & WEBER, T. J. (2009). LEADERSHIP: CURRENT
THEORIES, RESEARCH, AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS. ANNUAL REVIEW OF PSYCHOLOGY, 60, 421–
449. DOI:10.1146/ANNUREV.PSYCH.60.110707.163621
Authentic leadership: a pattern of transparent and ethical leader behaviour that encourages openness in
sharing information needed to make decisions while accepting followers’ inputs.
There appears to be general agreement in the literature on four factors that cover the components of
authentic leadership:
• balanced processing: objectively analysing relevant data before making a decision
• internalized moral perspective: being guided by internal moral standards, which are used to self-
regulate one’s behaviour.
• relational transparency: presenting one’s authentic self through openly sharing information and
feelings as appropriate for situations.
• self-awareness: a demonstrated understanding of one’s strengths, weaknesses, and the way one
makes sense of the world.
Work on defining and measuring authentic leadership is in the very early stages of development. Future
research will need to offer additional evidence for the construct validity of this measure or other measures, and
it will also need to demonstrate how authentic leadership relates to other constructs within its nomological
network.
Authentic leadership development
Heritability and Leadership: Preliminary evidence using a behavioural genetics approach has shown that
approximately 30% of the variation in leadership style and emergence was accounted for by heritability; the
remaining variation was attributed to differences in environmental factors such as individuals having different
role models and early opportunities for leadership development. → CONCLUSION: The “life context” one
grows up in and later works in is much more important than heritability in predicting leadership emergence
across one’s career.
Examining Evidence for Positive Leadership Interventions: To determine whether experimental interventions
actually impacted leadership development and/or performance, a qualitative and quantitative review of the
leadership intervention literature was undertaken. Regardless of the theory being investigated, results showed
that leadership interventions had a positive impact on work outcomes (e.g., ratings of leader performance),
even when the duration of those interventions was less than one day.
Future focus required:
• Relatively little work has been done over the past 100 years to substantiate whether leadership can
actually be developed.
• Not clear what constitutes leaders’ working self-concept and/or identity with respect to how they go
about influencing others.
• Another very promising area of research that has not received sufficient attention in the leadership
literature focuses on understanding what constitutes an individual’s level of developmental readiness
or one’s capacity or motivational orientation to develop to one’s full potential.
Cognitive Psychology and Leadership
This is an area of research and theory containing a wide range of approaches that are united by their focus on
explaining the way leaders and followers think and process information.
Future focus required: This broad stream of research has potential for enhancing existing theories of leadership
in terms of helping to explain how leaders and followers attend to, process, and make decisions and develop.
, Additional work linking self-concept and meta-cognitive theories to research on leadership will no doubt
contribute to our understanding of how leaders and followers actually develop. For example, if a leader has low
self-concept clarity, to what extent can we expect that same leader to be self-aware? What are the implications
for enhancing a leader’s self-concept clarity or working self-concept about what constitutes the roles of
effective leadership in developing that leader’s self-awareness and performance?
New-Genre Leadership
New-Genre Versus Traditional Leadership: Unlike the traditional leadership models, which described leader
behaviour in terms of leader-follower exchange relationships, setting goals, providing direction and support,
and reinforcement behaviours, the new leadership models emphasized symbolic leader behaviour; visionary,
inspirational messages; emotional feelings; ideological and moral values; individualized attention; and
intellectual stimulation.
The theory of charismatic/transformational leadership suggests that such leaders raise followers’ aspirations
and activate their higher-order values (e.g., altruism) such that followers identify with the leader and his or her
mission/vision, feel better about their work, and then work to perform beyond simple transactions and base
expectations.
Future Focus Required
• Questions remain as to what determines or predicts charismatic or transformational leadership.
• Further research is needed that explores the process and boundary conditions for charismatic and
transformational leadership with beneficial work behaviours.
• There has been a dearth of conceptual and empirical research on examining the relationships between
the new leadership theories and followers’ affective states.
• More research is needed that focuses on potential mediating and moderating variables.
• The article recommends that researchers incorporate a number of alternative research designs,
including but not limited to experimental designs, longitudinal designs, and qualitative designs, as well
as the use of multiple sources and mixed methods studies.
Complexity Leadership
Based on this framework, leadership is viewed as an interactive system of dynamic, unpredictable agents that
interact with each other in complex feedback networks, which can then produce adaptive outcomes such as
knowledge dissemination, learning, innovation, and further adaptation to change.
Future focus: the complexity leadership field clearly lacks substantive research. The article suspects this is a
result of the difficulties in assessing this type of emergent construct within a dynamically changing context.
Shared, Collective or Distributed Leadership
Shared leadership: a dynamic, interactive influence process among individuals in groups for which the objective
is to lead one another to the achievement of group or organizational goals or both. This influence process often
involves peer, or lateral, influence and at other times involves upward or downward hierarchical influence.
More specifically, shared leadership is defined as a team-level outcome.
Future focus: One of the criticisms of research on shared leadership involves the lack of agreement on its
definition. Other potential areas that have yet to be explored involve certain boundary conditions, mediators,
and moderators that have been recommended as a focus for future research. Another area that has not
received much research attention involves the environment in which teams function. Future research also
needs to examine how external team leaders affect the team’s ability and motivation to be self-directed and
share in leadership.
Leader-Member Exchange
