Chapter 4 - Assessing leadership and measuring its effects. Although this chapter focused on leadership research, there are several reasons it is relevant for leadership practitioners even though they are unlikely to actually conduct leadership research themselves. First, organizations can and do use a number of techniques to assess the values, personality, intelligence, and behaviors for any applicant pool. | CHAPTER FOUR Assessing Leadership and Measuring Its Effects Conventional Wisdom About Leadership People who are tall and athletic make better leaders. Smarter people make better leaders. Leaders who are stable and predictable are more effective. Research Findings About Leadership People who are tall and athletic do not necessarily make better leaders. In some situations, smarter leaders consistently performed less well than those who were less smart (Fiedler et al.) The most effective leaders use different bases of power to meet situational demands. Competency Model The set of skills, knowledge, abilities, or other attributes that are relevant to successful performance in a particular job. Multiple Hurdles Approach Paper-and-pencil measures Interviews Assessment centers The Relevance and Legality Of Unstructured Interview Questions If you were any part of a car, what part would you be and why? If you could go out to dinner with anyone, who would it be and why? Do you plan on having any more children? How do you feel about women in leadership positions? Measures Of Successful and Unsuccessful Leadership Superiors’ effectiveness and performance ratings Subordinates’ ratings of satisfaction, organizational climate, morale, motivation, and leadership effectiveness Unit performance indices Drawbacks Of Using Superiors’ Ratings Ratings may not be an accurate reflection of performance because supervisors: May not take the time. May be unaware or unfamiliar with a leader’s performance. May have difficulty dealing with conflict. Ratings can also be biased by friendships, perceptual sets, and attribution errors. Drawbacks Of Using Subordinate Ratings Subordinates may be relatively unmotivated toward work no matter what the leader does. Motivation and cohesiveness does not guarantee effective performance. Subordinates may rate the leader as effective because he or she does not make them work very hard and vise-versa. Variations of Leadership studies Research method Surveys Experiments Time frame Static Longitudinal Research objective Replication Explore new issues Locus of leadership Heroic individual Shared/distributed Causality Unidirectional Reciprocal Data sources Single Multiple Level of leader Supervisor Executive Feature Common Uncommon Source: G. Yukl, Reflections and Directions in Leadership Research Critical Thinking Questions Practitioners Should Ask Who is the sample? What is the situation? What leadership qualities, characteristics, or behaviors are being assessed? How is leadership success being determined? How do the writers link leadership assessment to success?
