This study explored the leader-follower relationship and its influence on individual performance through interviews with leaders and followers. The researcher conducted in-depth interviews with 23 participants, including 7 leaders and 16 followers, from a government agency. The interviews were analyzed and identified collaborative, partnership, and engaged relationships as major contributors to high-quality leader-follower relationships and positive influence on individual performance. The study aimed to understand how these relationships are formed, evolve over time, and impact performance from the perspectives of both leaders and followers.

1. Developing the Leader-Follower Relationship:
Perceptions of Leaders and Followers
Thomas Joseph
Colorado Technical University
Leader-member exchange (LMX) theory considers the impact
that leaders and followers relationships
have on an organization. This study was an investigation of the
leader-follower relationship and the
influence these relationships have on individual performance in
an organization. The purpose of the study
was to explore the lived experiences of leaders and followers
who had experienced the phenomenon. A
qualitative research method and phenomenological design was
employed for data collection and analysis
to examine leaders and followers lived experiences. Twenty-
three participants, comprising of seven
leaders and sixteen followers, were interviewed using an in-
depth, one-on-one semi-structured interview
process. Data from the interviews were recorded, transcribed,
and analyzed. Analysis of the data
identified collaborative relationship, partnership relationship,
and engaged relationship as major
contributors to the leader-follower relationship and the

2. influence of the relationship on individual
performance.
INTRODUCTION
As organizations endeavor to become more successful, leaders
play a significant role in the way their
followers devote their time, efforts, and commitment to, first of
all, their job and secondly, how they
extend their support to achieving organizational objectives.
Studies of the leadership discipline
acknowledge that the exchange of information forms the basis
to high-quality relationships that exist
within organizations (Brown & Moshavi, 2005; Pothos & Juola,
2007). Leaders can potentially inspire the
actions of their followers by improving the quality of the
leader-follower dyadic relationship (Graen,
Cashman, Ginsburgh, & Schliemann, 1977). Dansereau, Graen,
and Haga (1975) affirmed that the quality
of the dyadic relationship can impact individual performance.
The relationship shared between leaders
and followers in the workplace is significant in determining the
levels of employee performance,
satisfaction, retention, loyalty, and commitment (Shaw, 1997;
Dirks & Ferrin, 2002).
Leader-member exchange (LMX) theory considers the impact
that leaders and followers relationships
have on an organization. Harris and Kacmar (2006) affirmed
that nearly all of the literature published on
LMX expresses the possibility that high-quality relationships,
typified by high levels of trust, increased
communication channels, rewards, and favors, offer some
positive benefits both to followers and the
company where they are employed. Followers who have high

3. LMX are typically more devoted and
productive to their group and leader than followers who have
low LMX (Schriesheim, Castro, Zhou, &
Yammarino, 2001). LMX instruction has been accepted as a
preparation for effective leadership (Graen &
Uhl-Bien, 1991) and more often than not as a universal theory
(Anderson, & Shivers, 1996).
132 Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics Vol.
13(1) 2016
Amid environmental changes, organizations benefit from
developing leader-followers relationships
through continued effective exchanges. Clear and unobstructed
leader-follower exchanges (Senge, 2003)
permeate and inculcate employee confidence (Weymes, 2005)
and encourage outstanding individual
performance (Adebayo & Udegbe, 2004; Densten, 2005).
However, a frequently found condition in the
life of an organization is bias and inequality in leader -follower
relationships, through which certain
individuals have a more positive relationship with their leader
than others do. LMX is one vehicle for
understanding and improving leader-follower relationships in an
organization (Gerstner & Day, 1997;
Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995; Liden, Sparrowe, & Wayne, 1997;
Schriesheim, Castro, & Cogliser, 1999).
Kouzes and Posner (2002) posited that organizational leaders
are charged with the task of improving
the performance and commitment within their organization.
They posited that the shared values between
leaders and followers and their organization can boost

4. commitment, enhance collective performance, and
develop employee loyalty. Leaders and followers are expected
to model shared organizational values
through ongoing relationships that drive performance and
commitment to the organization. These
relationships can be understood through the lens of LMX
theory.
LMX theory, a relationship-based method for studying leader-
follower relationships, has over the
years produced some inconclusive results (Schriesheim,
Chester, Castro, & Cogliser, 1999) even while
affirming that the heart of the leadership practice is the dyadic
relationship among leaders and followers
(Dansereau et al., 1975; Graen & Cashman, 1975; Graen, 1976;
Northouse, 2007). Furthermore, LMX
theory focuses on the individualize relationships leaders
develop with some individual employees and not
with others (Erdogan & Liden, 2002; Gerstner & Day, 1997).
The literature supports LMX relationships
as exclusive and interpersonal.
LMX theory implies that leaders establish individualized
relationships with their followers through
the progression of ongoing work-related exchanges (Graen et
al., 1977; Epitropaki & Martin, 2005;
Greguras & Ford, 2006). The theory finds its’ roots in
Dansereau et al. (1975) vertical dyadic linkage
paradigm as an addition to social exchange theory (Epitropaki &
Ford). It is primarily concerned with the
significance and value of the shared relationship, vertical dyad
or dyadic relationship (Suazo, Turnley, &
Mai-Dalton, 2008) between the leader and his/her follower. The
basis of the leader-member exchange is
the idea of mutual trust and loyalty (Bass & Avolio, 2004). This
idea emphasizes that leaders in

5. communal or group cultures are entrusted with the task of
taking care of their followers and followers, on
the other hand, have an ethical and honest responsibility to
respond with absolute respect and loyalty to
their leaders (Bass & Avolio).
LMX theory finds its theoretical and empirical roots i n both
role theory (Liden et al., 1977; Katz &
Kahn, 1978) and social exchange theory (Blau, 1964). The
leader as well as the follower is required to
perform a unique role within the organization (Katz & Kahn).
According to Graen (1976), within an
organization, employee roles are gradually accepted through
informal exchanges that take place between
the leader and his/her follower. Researchers (Dienesch & Liden,
1986; Graen & Scandura, 1987) have
posited that these roles progress due to the mutual agreement
between the leader and follower assuming
their role and the combined belief that the result will benefit
both parties. Consequently, a level of
confidence between the leader and his/her followers develops
[Dansereau et al., 1975; Graen & Cashman,
1975; Dienesch & Liden, 1986).
The exchange relationship is created on the basis of personal
closeness and the subordinate’s
adequacy and devotedness (Graen & Cashman, 1975).
Specifically, LMX theory has focused on the
relation between quality leader-member exchanges and positive
results for leaders, followers, and the
organization (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). Researchers have
discovered that positive employee performance
is a result of high-quality exchange relationships (Liden,
Wayne, & Stilwell, 1993; Graen & Uhl-Bien).
Yukl (2006), however, recognized the limited number of studies
done on situational conditions affecting

6. the development of exchange relationships and suggested
conducting research that will endeavor to
discover the evolution of exchange relationships over time.
This research contributed to the emerging work pertaining to
LMX relationships, which suggests that
the quality of employee and direct supervisor relationships are
connected to employee performance
(Wayne & Green, 1993; Erdogan & Enders, 2007). If LMX
quality moderates employee performance, it
Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics Vol. 13(1)
2016 133
seems imperative to understand how these relationships are
formed, evolved, and influence individual
performance. The study, therefore, proposed a focus on
followers’ commitment to their leaders as a
means for improving overall job performance in an
organization. A qualitative phenomenological theory
was employed to understand the exchange relationships from the
perspectives of leaders and followers in
an organization and to understand how this exchange
relationship influences individual performance. The
primary research question for this study was: What constitutes
the leader-follower relationship in an
organization? Two sub-questions also assisted with
investigating the phenomenon inherent in these
experiences. The sub-questions comprised the following: How
does this relationship impact or influence
the performance of the leader and follower in that organization?
How does the nature of the relationship
evolve over time?

7. Campbell and Dardis (2004) affirmed that an understanding of
leader-follower relationships and the
influence these relationships have on followers’ ability to
achieve their goals is an essential contribution
to leadership development skills. Beng-Chong and Ployhart
(2004) posited that knowledge of the role
high-quality dyadic relationships have on inspiring followers
can increase a leader’s probability of
follower success. These high-quality relationships can
potentially improve organizational results like
performance, job satisfaction, and reduced turnover ratios
(Brouthers, Gelderman, & Arens, 2007;
Janssen & Van Yperen, 2004). Moreover, the knowledge
attained from understandi ng leader-follower
relationships can assist leaders to shape the strategy of their
organization (Sashkin & Sashkin, 2003).
METHOD
Research Design Appropriateness
The purpose of this present study was to explore the lived
experiences of exchange relationships
between leaders and followers and to provide a deeper
understanding of the experiences of these leaders
and followers. The social relations between leaders and
followers have created an awareness to describe
the richness and context of the experiences of the individuals
involved in the relationship (Collingson,
2006; Covey, 2006). The quality of the relationship between
leaders and followers is, instinctively,
subjective with each individual having his/her viewpoints
(Collingson; Vassallo, 2007) on its quality.
Acquiring leaders and followers perspectives in the form of
qualitative data facilitated the discovery of a

8. phenomenon of the exchange relationship between leaders and
followers. A qualitative research method
and phenomenological approach helped in developing a fresh
understanding of the phenomenon being
studied as entailed in the exploration of the lived experiences of
leaders and followers.
Qualitative research method is subjective and originates in
exploring the way individuals interpret
their experiences (Creswell, 2003; Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). It
employs a realistic perspective to examine
comprehensive human experiences (Creswell; Vishnevsky &
Beanlands, 2004). Researchers have agreed
that a qualitative research method is inspirational in
understanding the ontological perspectives of people
in natural environments (Creswell; Ruane, 2004; Barbuto,
2005). Wilding and Whiteford (2005) and
Hesse-Biber and Leavy (2005) affirmed that qualitative research
is applicable to understanding the
expectations of conflicting realities in relation to individual
opinions.
Phenomenology is a qualitative research approach that attempts
to represent the lived experiences,
opinions, and interpretations of the research participants
(Simon, 2006; Marshall & Rossman, 2006). It is
an interpretive and practical approach and builds from human
beings lived experiences (Marshall &
Rossman). In phenomenology, creating meaning is
accomplished by means of descriptive instruments
since unbiased viewpoints cannot be efficiently captured
(Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). Because
phenomenology focuses on the descriptions of individual lived
experiences (Moustakas, 1994), it does not
endeavor to offer descriptions, hypotheses, interpretations, or
assumptions concerning the phenomenon

9. being studied (Wertz, 2005). According to Creswell (2007), a
phenomenological design aspires to
comprehend various individuals’ general or universal
experience.
134 Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics Vol.
13(1) 2016
Participants
One government agency in an island of the Caribbean which
employed approximately 600 permanent
or full-time workers participated. The sample size for this study
comprised twenty-three participants
consisting of seven leaders and sixteen followers. The leaders
and followers were not necessarily matched
by one leader and that leader’s followers. This process was used
to ensure that conflict of interest among
leaders and followers chosen for the study, although they may
have a leader-follower relationship, was
not violated. A criterion based purposive sampling approach
was used to identify the sample size.
Purposive criterion based sampling in a phenomenological study
ascertains the individuals have
experienced the phenomenon being studied and can provide a
clear understanding of the research problem
(Creswell, 2007).
Instrumentation

10. One-on-one, semi-structured face-to-face interview sessions
were conducted with each participant
where they were required to answer specific interview
questions. For this phenomenological study, open-
ended, semi-structured questions was essential to obtain
descriptions from the participants concerning the
leader-follower relationship. A set of questions were developed
for leader participants and another set of
questions for follower participants. It was important to validate
that the content of the interview questions
was understandable, and to conduct a face-to-face authenticity
test of the interview questions. In order to
complete these tasks, a field test was conducted with four
individuals who assessed the interview
questions. These individuals comprised of two leader-
participants and two follower-participants who were
government employees. Each participant was required to si gn an
informed consent form to affirm their
voluntarty participation in the field study. These participants
were selected because of their experience
and understanding of the leader-follower relationship. They
were not members of the organization where
the actual study took place and, moreover, did not paticipate in
the actual study. The interview questions
were refined based on the feedback and recommendations
obtained during the field test.
Leader participants were asked to respond to eleven questi ons
concerning their perceptions of leader-
follower relationships including: (1) “What is your overall
concept of what the relationship between a
leader and his/her follower should be like?”, (2) “As a leader,
what do you expect of your followers?”,
(3) “How do your followers contribute to the creation of your
performance?”, (4) “During the time you
have been in a leadership role in this company, what has the

11. experience of getting to know your followers
been like?”, (5) “What specific steps (if any) do you take to
develop a relationship with your followers?”,
(6) “In your own words, how can an individual leader build
relationships with his followers?”, (7) “It
appears that leaders generally want to have a relationship with
their followers for various reasons, how
does it all begin specifically for you as a leader?”, (8) “How
does your overall concept of a leader-
follower relationship influence employee performance in your
organization?”, (9) “How do you engage
followers in the influence process?”, (10) “How do you
demonstrate trust in your followers?”, and (11)
“Is there anything else you would be interested in adding
concerning leader-follower relationships and
individual performance that could be pertinent to this study?”
Follower participants were also asked to respond to twelve
questions concerning their perceptions of
leader-follower relationships including: (1) “What is your
overall concept of what the relationship
between a leader and his/her follower should be like?”, (2)
“What specific characteristics do you look for
in a leader?”, (3) “How important is it for you to have a
relationship with your leader?”, (4) “In what
way(s) does your relationship with your leader impact your
performance?”, (5) “How does your leader
contribute to the creation of your performance?”, (6) “During
the time you have been employed in this
company, what has the experience of getting to know your
leader been like?”, (7) “What specific steps (if
any) do you take or have you taken to develop a relationship
with your leader?”, (8) “It appears that
people generally want to have good relationships with their
leaders, how does it all begin for you?”, (9)
“In your own words, how can an employee build a relationship

12. with his/her leader?”, (10) “How does
your overall concept of a leader-follower relationship influence
employee performance in your
organization?”, (11) “How do you demonstrate trust in your
leader?”, and (12) “Is there anything else you
Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics Vol. 13(1)
2016 135
would be interested in adding concerning leader-follower
relationships and individual performance that
could be pertinent to this study?”
Procedure
Upon obtaining approval from the IRB, solicitation to
participate which described the research study,
process, and expectations associated with participation in the
study was sent by company e-mail to
managers and employees of the participating organization.
Obtaining assurance of each participant’s
qualification to participate in the study required a formal
process of control (Creswell, 2003). The
selection comprised of a request for voluntary participation and
written acknowledgment of the
participation’s terms and conditions. One government agency
from a Caribbean island was selected for
participation. Upon receiving a sufficient among of responses
for participation, participants were
approached to set up an appointment for one-on-one, face-to-
face interview.
Interviews were conducted in a private setting at the facility

13. where the research population was
employed. At the start of the interview session, an informed
consent formed was reviewed with each
participant to confirm the purpose of the study, attain a signed
agreement to participate in the study, and
to provide consent for the interview to be audio-recorded. Once
consent was obtained, the audio-
recording began and interview questions were administered.
Data Validity and Analysis
Upon completion of the interviews, the recorded interview
responses were reviewed and transcribed
verbitim for each participant. Creswell (2005) asserted that
participant check is an essential technique for
researchers using a qualitative method to verify the accuracy of
their findings. Each participant was asked
to examine the interview’s transcribed version. They
authenticated the interpretation and confirmed that
the transcribed information was a valid representation of what
was said and recorded during the interview.
After the transcriptions were validated, the responses were
uploaded into ATLAS.ti®, a well-liked
qualitative software data analysis tool, to assist with data
analysis and for coding and creating code
families. ATLAS.ti was also used to help find correlations,
similarities, unity, analogies, or homologies
contained by the varied sets of data and helped in uncovering
patterns. It was also suitable for making
connections between various elements of the data and effective
for making well-defined connections
between the data elements (Barry, 1998). Moustakas’ (1994)
proposition for data analysis and coding
steps was employed to analze the data: (a) reviewed the
complete information to find a generalization in

14. relation to the data, (b) utilized horizonalization to discover
important statements that present a perception
of the research participants’ experience with the phenomenon,
(c) arranged those important statements
into clusters of meanings or themes, and (d) developed an
inclusive explanation or report of the real
meaning of the experience for each individual and combined
relationship for the group.
RESULTS
The findings of this study were based on responses to each
interview question from leaders and
followers where each response was coded to identify emerging
themes. Data coding recognized indicators
and signals in the various nodes. This allowed for logical and
pragmatic coding of the finalized analysis.
The coding process entailed analyzing the data from the leader -
participants interview transcriptions and
the follower-participants interview transcriptions about what
code would be most appropriate or suitable
for the specific response to each interview question.
Transcription and analysis of the data allowed for the
assessment of word use and the number of times or consistency
of their occurrence. Keywords from
participant (leaders and followers) responses were: (a)
supportive, (b) partnership, (c) creative, (d) work
together, (e) respect, (f) trust, (g) colleague, (h) example, (i)
motivate, (j) initiative, (k) important, (l) do
work, (m) communicate, (n) understand, (o) contact, (p) good
rapport, (q) engage, (r) professional, (s)
observe, and (t) relate. The method of phenomenological data
reduction and horizontalization generated
three emerging themes during the interpretive process of data

15. analysis. The three themes that emerged
136 Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics Vol.
13(1) 2016
were mapped back to the research questions (Creswell, 2007).
Emerging themes comprise collaborative
relationship, partnership relationship, and engaged relationship.
Employees who participated in the study considered
collaboration between the leader and the
follower as a requisite and significant element of the leader -
follower relationship and individual
performance. The participants accentuated the significance of
leaders and their followers working
collaboratively to realize and attain organizational success and
enhance individual performance levels.
They described the leader-follower relationship as a
collaborative relationship where (i) the leader sets the
tone for the organization by functioning as an example for
his/her followers to follow, (ii) leaders and
followers work together towards a common goal through good
and skillful communication strategies, (iii)
mutual trust, respect for each other, and honesty steer the
relationship so that each individual visualizes
himself or herself as part of the group and an invaluable asset to
the organization, and (iv) individuals are
given the opportunity to express themselves, share their ideas,
and feel comfortable to speak about issues.
As part of the collaborative relationship, these participants
insinuated that leaders as well as followers
must actively seek out and take initiatives that provide
opportunities to develop quality LMX

16. relationships that lead to organizational success.
The participants also identified the leader-follower relationship
as a partnership. The quality of this
relationship was categorized as synergetic, that is, the leader (s)
and follower(s) partnering together in a
creative and innovative manner to produce results that are
individualistically unattainable. The
participants believed that one individual is not sufficient
enough to drive organizational success. They
shared the idea that two is better than one and that by working
together they are able to accomplish more
and sometimes more within a lesser time period. The leaders,
for example, would rather approach or treat
their followers as colleagues within the organization who have
specific portfolios to fulfill. The
participants considered themselves to be a fulfillment of
another’s portfolio and that each must work
together to see the organizational assignments accomplished.
This partnership relationship comprise of
independence or impartiality and mutual trust. Independence
implied making a contribution to the
importance and implication of partnership in the leader-follower
relationship. Trust was presented as
being critical for maintaining confidentiality, treating each
other with respect, and a motivational element
for the relationship.
Engagement emerged as the kind of relation that leaders and
followers must embrace in order to
participate in the kind of quality LMX relationship required to
enhance individual performance, achieve
organizational goals, and establish more reliable and effective
leader-follower roles. The participants,
therefore, described the relationship as an engaged relationship
implying that it is critical for leaders and

17. followers to be consistenly engaged with each other to help the
relationship evolve into a dynamic
relationship.
DISCUSSION
The purpose of this study was to discover what the leader -
follower relationship experience
represented to each individual participant who already had the
experience, and how the participants
defined the phenomena. The research purpose answered the
study’s three research questions. The results
of the data collected from the interviews discovered three
fundamental themes constructed from explicit
meanings obtained from the responses of the leader and
follower participants. Meaningful expressions
were revealed that exposed individual experiences resulting in
the discovery of the study’s core themes.
The three themes emerged from the study include: (a)
collaborative relationship, (b) partnership
relationship, and (c) engaged relationship.
The findings of the study suggested: (a) leaders and followers
value availability of being able to work
together to attain organizational goals and objectives, (b)
leaders and followers believed that a partnership
relationship is essential to their ability to perform effectively in
the organization, and (c) the leader-
follower relationship was built on an engaged relationship
where leaders and followers were consistently
engaged with each other through on-going communication
channels.

18. Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics Vol. 13(1)
2016 137
Findings were consistent with existing literature concerning
various leadership theories,
communication, and the leader-member exchange (LMX)
theory. Prevailing concepts of the LMX theory
were confirmed in the results of the study. The significance of
the leader-follower relationship from the
seminal exploration presented by Dansereau, Graen, and Haga
(1975), Cashman and Graen (1975), and
Graen (1976) was valuable to discovering what constitutes the
leader-follower relationship in an
organization, how the exchange relationship influences
individual performance, and how exchange
relationships between leaders and followers evolve and develop
over time. The findings implied that the
leader-follower relationship comprise a collaborative
relationship that is supported by a partnership
relationship which evolves and develops by means of an
engaged relationship resulting in quality leader-
follower relationship and high level performing individuals.
Each of the themes, collaborative
relationship, partnership relationship, and engaged relationship,
presented a clearer perception of the
phenomenon and is discussed below relative to the research
findings.
Collaborative Relationship
Collaborative relationship emerged as an important contributor
to the leader-follower relationship and

19. individual performance. When leaders and followers work
together (collaboratively), it is possible for the
organization to be successful and enhance individual
performance. The leaders and followers in this study
expressed that leaders and followers alike have a unique role to
play in fostering the collaborative
relationship. Participants valued their experience of working
together to achieve the organizational goal.
They expressed dissatisfaction when there was a gap in the
willinness of members to work together.
Partcipants believed that any individual who chooses to work
without complete collaboration with the
other members of the organization could create unnecessary
tension in the workplace. The leaders and
followers have confidence that if collarboration is pivotal in the
leader-follower relationship, the
possibility of a win-win setting is attainable.
The leaders and followers described the leader-follower
relationship as a collaborative relationship
which is supported by good communication skills among the
members, and the leaders’ expertise to
manage, guide, inspire, give direction, and set the example in
the organization. A mutual and communally
concurred framework amongst leaders and followers in the
organization emerges from what LMX theory
identifies as the second stage of the exchange relationship
where agreements are perfected, and mutual
trust, respect, and loyalty are cultivated (Graen & Scandura,
1987; Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1991; Yukl, 2006).
Ultimately, collaboration constitutes the leader-follower
relationship in organization.
Partnership Relationship

20. LMX theory encourages fairness to all employees and the
opportunity to allow each employee to
become as participating in the organization’s work as much as
they intend to be participative (Northouse,
2007). This level of participation requires leaders and followers
to exercise respect and trust for each
other, knowing that individuals are unique in what they bring to
the table and focus their attention on
learning to relate to each other. The leaders and followers who
participated of this study believed that as
members of the organization, it is imperative for them to partner
together to accomplish the organization’s
objectives.
The results of my finding affirmed that the research participants
perceived their leader-follower
relationship as a partnership. The leaders and followers of the
organization were zealous and enthusiastic
to contribute to the entire group and add value to the
organization. Even though the participants, both
leader and follower, recognized the hierarchical setting of the
leader-follower relationship, they voiced
the value of partnering together to get the job done. By the
leaders and followers being in a partnership
with each other, it allowed them the independence to
accomplish their work assignments. Employees
appreciated the independence and flexibility to decide the most
appropriate way for performing their tasks
and recognized their independence as an opportunity for them to
explicitly apply their skills and
potentials. Independence, they considered, was an indication
that they were able to effectively solve
problems individually.
138 Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics Vol.
13(1) 2016

21. Additionally, the employees believed that a partnership
relationship was crucial to their ability to
perform effectively. They categorized the relationship as being
synergetic, affirming that it was better and
easier for them to work together in a more creative and
innovative manner. They shared the idea that two
was better than one and that the ability to perform effectively
was dependent on working with each other.
In fact, they emphasized that good relationships result in good
performance or high output while poor
relationships result in poor performance or low output. The
leaders and followers affirmed that they
needed each other to become effective in their role or portfolio.
The followers indicated that they looked
forward to their opinions and suggestions to be inquired about,
and felt appreciated when their leader
included their opinions or suggestions in the decision-making
process. The leaders, on the other hand,
acknowledged that their followers had valuable information that
they could continually utilize when
making organizational decisions. Together, they (leaders and
followers) believed that they had what was
necessary amongst themselves to obtain strong leader-follower
relationship and influence their ability to
perform at a high level. My findings for this study proposed that
the leader-follower relationship plays a
significant role in individual performance.
Engaged Relationship
Northouse (2007) five key strengths of LMX theory included: a)
strong explanatory theory, b) unique

22. theory because of its focus on the dyadic relationship as the
focal point of the leadership process, c)
emphasizes communication in leadership, d) reminds leaders to
be equal and impartial with their
followers, and e) connects with positive organizational results
such as performance (Graen & Uhl-Bien,
1991). According to Graen and Cashman (1975), the exchange
relationships between leaders and
followers are rooted in personal compatibility and the
follower’s competency and dependability. LMX
theory also notes the need to be cognizant and sensitive about
relating to followers (Northouse). Graen &
Uhl-Bien (1995) proposed that leaders should strive to form
distinct exchange relationship with all their
followers instead of a selected few. The leaders and followers
of this study adhere to this concept
affirming the leader-follower relationship as an engaged
relationship.
The employees believed that an engaged relationship was
critical for the organization. They
suggested that while it was important to establish the leader -
follower relationship from their initial
interaction, they needed to continue being involved with each
regularly so that the relationship can mature
progressively. The leaders and followers described the engaged
relationship as an opportunity for them to
share information on a regular basis, have on-going channels of
communication, each individual taking
the initiative to discuss issues, and commitment to professional
and social obligations. They maintained
that good communication skills were the key component for the
relationship and that each individual
should be aware of how they communicate with each other.
They believed in the idea that communication
can make or break the relationship. Therefore, they felt that to

23. be engaged with each other, they would
have to learn and get to know each other and make a conscious
decision to treat each other with respect.
The leaders and followers of this study further indicated that
there were key motivators that contributed to
the engaged relationships which entailed the kind of quality
leader-follower relationship they desired,
well-defined expectations, untarnished and clear-cut
communication, willingness to contribute to the
group, opportunities for professional and personal advancement,
and availability of needed resources for
effectiveness (Macey & Schneider, 2008; Maylett & Riboldi,
2008). They believed that it is out of this
engaged relationship or continued interaction that the leader -
follower relationship evolves into a well-
nurtured and mature relationship.
IMPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY FINDINGS TO LMX
THEORY
A major thrust behind the key concerns in LMX theory has been
the meaningful and important
relationships discovered between performance-related outcomes
and LMX. Study conducted by
Wakabayashi & Graen (1989) on Japanese firms posited that
establishing high-quality exchanges in the
initial stages of joining an organization was an effective
promotion and successive career success
predictor. Higgins, Judge, and Ferris (2003) affirmed that some
followers take the initiative to develop
Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics Vol. 13(1)
2016 139

24. favorable relationships instead of submissively accepting
anything their leader choose to do. Gerstner and
Day’s (1997), meta-analytical study which focused mostly on
the relationships between LMX indications
and the number of outcome variables, discovered a deeper
connection between LMX and subjective
factors than between LMX and objective factors. Their
conclusions were further affirmed by a study
conducted by Liden, Sparrowe and Wayne (1997). Moreover,
research in LMX theory has also
discovered that leaders, trained to develop high-quality
relationships with their followers, experienced
continual achievements in the actual performance of their
followers (Graen, Novak, & Sommerkamp,
1982; Scandura & Graen, 1984). Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995)
integrated the results of the studies
outcomes and incorporated the recommendation that leaders
should attempt to establish and develop
individual relationships with all followers; not just with a
preferred few. Research in LMX theory,
however, has revealed that the relationship between leaders and
their followers are imperative for both
organizational and individual outcomes. These outcomes
include job satisfaction (Schriesheim et al.,
1998), organizational commitment (Kinicki & Vecchio, 1994),
citizen behaviors (Wayne et al., 1997;
Deluga, 1994), staff turnover (Ferris, 1985), job satisfaction
(Wayne, Linden, Kraimer, & Graf, 1999),
and goal commitment (Klein & Kim, 1998).
The findings of the study confirmed the previous findings for
LMX theory. The leaders and followers

25. who participated in the study affirmed the ideas that positive
leader-follower relationships are co-related
with positive individual performance. They further believed that
as they cultivate on-going relationships
among themselves, they will be able to achieve the
organizational goals and objectives. The employees
affirmed other LMX theory findings that leaders and followers
should develop strong dyadic relationships
in an organization. My findings for this confirmed the findings
for LMX theory that positive
organizational outcomes such as, improved individual
performance, are related to high-quality dyadic
relationships.
LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
The limitations of the study comprised employing a qualitative
method, a phenomenological research
design, the number of research participants from the
organization, and the data collection and analysis
process. The limitations of the study could have influenced the
results because of the process used for
collecting and analyzing the qualitative data. The qualitative
methodology comprises probable influence
of my biases and skills.
Qualitative research methodology depends on examination of
relational exchanges that resulted in the
probability of the presentation of unexpected variables affecting
the extent and quality of information
obtained from the research participants. I interpreted the data by
utilizing proven methods that foster
objectivity. The reliability and validity of the emerging themes

26. were limited to both cultural and
contextual dynamics of the research sample as well as the
expanse to which the research instruments
retained objectivity. In qualitative research, the researcher is
integrated as an instrument for collecting,
interpreting, and analyzing the data. This limitation may have
possibly inspired the study’s results even if
sufficient cautionary measures were adopted to exclude
probable bias and skill.
Phenomenological research design is one which attempts to
investigate the lived experiences,
perspectives, and understandings of participants (Simon &
Francis, 2006). The study is limited by
employing phenomenology because the research design was
utilized to study perceptive structures that
define and understand experiences without direct concern for
assumptions (Simon & Francis). Even if a
phenomenological research design was suitable for the study,
employing this research design could have
influenced the results of the study. The use of an alternate
research approach could have uncovered
different themes.
The study may have been limited by the choice of single
organization in one Caribbean island. If this
study had incorporated multiple organizations within the public
sector or incorporated organizations
within the private sector, the study would probably achieve
different results.
140 Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics Vol.
13(1) 2016

27. FUTURE RESEARCH
This study examined the leader-follower relationship and how
the relationship influence individual
performance in an organization in an island of the Caribbean.
The results of the study revealed that a
phenomenon exists concerning the leader-follower relationship
and the influence of the relationship on
individual performance. Future research should consider added
study that enhances organizational
knowledge about various elements that enable and advance the
leader-follower relationship and its
influence on individual performance.
This study examined the experiences of leaders and followers in
a single public sector organization in
a Caribbean island. Further understanding is needed concerning
factors that contribute to the leader-
follower relationship in other organizations in the Caribbean
such as, other public sector organizations
and private sectors industries like finance and healthcare.
Moreover, future research could also comprise a
replication of this study in other Caribbean islands within the
same sector or other public or private
sectors. Research of that magnitude may possibly offer more
knowledge about elements that constitute
the leader-follower relationship and the influence of the
relationship on individual performance.
This research has been limited to the lived experiences of the 23
individuals comprising 7 leaders and
16 followers who volunteered to participate in the study. The 23

28. participants comprised of men and
women. Replicating this study to the following could possibly
expand the findings’ generalizability: a
larger sample size that incorporates men and women, and a
population comprising of either men or
women only.
Finally, future studies could employ different qualitative
approaches, for instance, grounded theory or
case study, to obtain more knowledge of the leader-follower
relationship and the influence of the
relationship on individual performance in an organization or
organizations in the Caribbean. A
quantitative research methodology could also be utilized to
provide empirical discovery of the leader-
follower relationship and the influence of the relationship on
individual performance in an organization or
organizations in the Caribbean. By replicating this study by
using other qualitative approaches or
quantitative method may enhance the leadership studies by
discovering new themes and/or authenticating
the finding of this study.
CONCLUSION
The examination of the lived experiences of 23 research
participants comprising 7 leaders and 16
followers employed in an organization in an island of the
Caribbean has disclosed significant data about
what constitutes the leader-follower relationship and the
influence of the relationship on individual
performance in an organization. On the whole, the themes which
emerged from the study were coherent
with research conducted on LMX relationships that identify

29. elements of the leader-follower relationship
and individual performance or positive organizational outcomes.
The three themes emerged from the
study were identified as collaborative relationship, partnership
relationship, and engaged relationship. Put
together, these themes indicated that the leader-follower
relationship is progressive in nature which begins
through collaboration amongst the leader and the follower,
continues in partnership between the leader
and the follower through synergy, and evolves or develops
through engagements between the leader and
the follower. These themes, however, inspired proposals for
further research concerning leader-follower
relationship and individual performance. Furthermore, they
contributed to the body of knowledge
concerning leader-follower relationships and the influence of
the relationship on individual performance.
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144 Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics Vol.

39. 13(1) 2016
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further
reproduction prohibited without
permission.
Servant Leadership and the Effect of the Interaction Between
Humility, Action, and Hierarchical Power on Follower
Engagement
Milton Sousa1 • Dirk van Dierendonck2
Received: 24 January 2015 / Accepted: 13 June 2015 /
Published online: 2 July 2015
� The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open
access at Springerlink.com
Abstract Servant leadership has been theorized as a
model where the moral virtue of humility co-exists with
action-driven behavior. This article provides an empirical
study that tests how these two apparently paradoxical
aspects of servant leadership interact in generating follower
engagement, while considering the hierarchical power of

40. the leader as a contingency variable. Through a three-way
moderation model, a study was conducted based on a
sample of 232 people working in a diverse range of com-
panies. The first finding is that humble leaders showed the
highest impact on follower engagement regardless of their
hierarchical position. Less humble leaders in lower hier-
archical positions seem to be able to compensate for that
through a strong action-oriented leadership style. Most
notably for leaders in high hierarchical positions, the moral
virtue of humility seems to strengthen the impact of their
action-oriented leadership the most. These findings provide
empirical support and a better understanding of the inter -
play between the moral virtue of humility and the action-
oriented behaviors of servant leadership.
Keywords Servant leadership � Virtue � Action �
Humility � Power � Engagement
Introduction
When servant leadership was first introduced through the
seminal work of Greenleaf (1977), it brought a moral

41. dimension to the leadership field, which for many years had
been somehow subordinated to behavioral and contingency
type of approaches (e.g., Fiedler 1967; Hersey and Blan-
chard 1969; Lewin et al. 1939). In a similar vein, Burns
(1978) advanced the notion of transforming leadership that
later evolved into transformational leadership, likewise
with a strong moral emphasis and in contrast with trans-
actional leadership (Bass 1985; Bass and Avolio 1994).
Accelerated by the corporate scandals of the 1990s and
2000s (e.g., Adler 2002; Carson 2003; Crane and Matten
2007; Fombrun and Foss 2004), this moral side of leader -
ship has gained interest as a way of ensuring performance
while addressing ethical concerns in business, leading to
the first empirical data on servant leadership (Russell and
Stone 2002; van Dierendonck 2011), ethical leadership
(Brown and Treviño 2006), and the birth of other theories
like authentic (Gardner et al. 2005) or spiritual leadership
(Fry 2003), to name a few. Additionally, scholars have

42. recently tried to capture and operationalize this moral
dimension of leadership into constructs of virtue (Arjoon
2000; Cameron 2011; Dale Thompson et al. 2008; Hackett
and Wang 2012; Pearce et al. 2006). Virtues represent
attributes of moral excellence, which aggregate into an
overall dimension of virtuousness that can instill respon-
sible leadership behavior (Cameron 2011). For Greenleaf
(1977), this moral side or virtuousness was essential in
forming the core motivation to serve of the servant leader,
but it was not that morality should replace effective action,
but instead that both should co-exist and reinforce each
other. In practice, this translates into a dual mode of virtue
and action which was captured, albeit not always explicitly,
& Milton Sousa
[email protected]
Dirk van Dierendonck
[email protected]
1
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University,
Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, J Building, 3062 PA Rotterda m,

43. The Netherlands
2
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University,
PO Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands
123
J Bus Ethics (2017) 141:13–25
DOI 10.1007/s10551-015-2725-y
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10551-015-
2725-y&domain=pdf
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10551-015-
2725-y&domain=pdf
in some servant leadership models (e.g., Barbuto and
Wheeler 2006; Dennis and Bocarnea 2005; Laub 1999; van
Dierendonck 2011; van Dierendonck and Patterson 2015;
Wong and Davey 2007). Most noticeably, the model of van
Dierendonck (2011) makes this split between these two
types of behaviors more apparent, with some empirical
evidence of this being shown through a second-order factor
analysis in a later study (van Dierendonck and Nuijten

44. 2011). This study shows one cluster with the dimensions of
humility and standing-back, which could be associated
with a moral side and another cluster with the dimensions
of empowerment, accountability, and stewardship, which
could aggregate into an action side. Despite this co-exis-
tence, little is in fact known about how these two aspects
interact with each other. Following on the work of Nielsen
et al. (2010), who advanced a conceptual model whereby
the follower attributions of the leader’s humility would
moderate the socialized charismatic leader’s effectiveness
in motivating followers, this study aims to further elaborate
on this potential interaction for the specific case of servant
leadership. The original question therefore that triggered
this study was as follows: how does a humble attitude of
being of service affect a servant leader’s ability to instill
effective action?
Knowing more about this interaction effect is important
for two main reasons. First of all, it allows understanding

45. leadership from within its complex behavioral relationships
and not just as a linear aggregated concept. Secondly, it
helps clarifying the apparently paradoxical mix of humble
service and effective action, so markedly part of servant
leadership (Morris et al. 2005; Patterson 2003; Russell
2001; van Dierendonck 2011) but also present in other
models like authentic leadership, level 5 leadership, and
transformational leadership (Morris et al. 2005).
Given also the potential interaction between power and
humility (Collins 2001; Owens and Hekman 2012), we
proposed to further investigate if the effect of a humble
service attitude would be more salient for servant leaders in
higher hierarchical positions of power in an organization.
In sum, our study aims to confirm the three-way interaction
between the action side of servant leadership (captured in
the dimensions of empowerment, accountability and
stewardship), the humble service-oriented side (captured in
the dimensions of humility and standing-back), and the

46. hierarchical rank of the leader in inducing follower
engagement (see Fig. 1).
Servant Leadership: A Balancing Act Between
Humble Service and Action
For Greenleaf (1977), the moral foundation of the servant
leader is built on a motivation to serve. As eloquently put
by Greenleaf himself (2002, p. 7), ‘‘The servant-leader is
servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one
wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings
one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from
one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to
assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material
possessions.’’ However, while Greenleaf (1977) clearly
highlighted the importance of the moral backbone of the
servant leader, he also emphasized that being a servant
leader is not the same as servitude and that such leaders
need also to show initiative, assume risks and take own-
ership for action in order to be truly effective. The fol-
lowing statement testifies that ‘‘…the leader needs more
than inspiration. A leader ventures to say, ‘I will go; come

47. with me!’ A leader initiates, provides the ideas and the
structure, and takes the risk of failure along with the chance
of success.’’ (Greenleaf 2002, p. 29). This means that
servant leadership implies a balancing act between an
overall humble attitude of service and behaviors that instill
action and efficacy. So, whereas it may be possible to speak
about servant leadership as one specific way of leadership,
at a deeper level, and as mentioned before, there seem to be
two overarching encompassing dimensions: a humble ser-
vice-oriented side and an action-driven side, both co-ex-
isting and complementing each other.
While some measures (e.g., Liden et al. 2008; Sendjaya
et al. 2008) put a stronger focus on moral, ethical, and
service-oriented dimensions, a closer look at other servant
leadership measures shows more or less explicitly these
Empowerment,
Stewardship and
Accountability
(SLACTION)

48. Hierarchical Rank of
the Leader (RANK)
Engagement
(ENGAGE)
Humility & Standing-
Back (SLHUMBLE)
Fig. 1 Conceptual three-way
interaction
14 M. Sousa, D. van Dierendonck
123
two sides of humble service and action-driven orientation,
as shown ahead. For example, Laub’s (1999) conceptual
model and measure include both sharing and providing
leadership. Sharing leadership requires accepting that oth-
ers are equipped to take responsibility themselves, and
therefore implies an overall attitude of humility with regard
to the leader’s own ability. At the same time, the servant
leader is pro-active in providing leadership, not retracting
from acting when necessary. Barbuto and Wheeler (2006)

49. refer to both altruistic calling and stewardship. According
to the authors, ‘‘altruistic calling describes a leader’s deep-
rooted desire to make a positive difference in others’
lives… Because the ultimate goal is to serve, leaders high
in altruistic calling will put others’ interests ahead of their
own and will diligently work to meet followers’ needs’’
(Barbuto and Wheeler 2006). Such selflessness can be
translated into an attitude of humble service. At the same
time, servant leaders are also stewards, ensuring that action
is taken toward a greater purpose. Wong and Davey (2007)
incorporate both humility and selflessness together with
inspiring and influencing others while Dennis and Bocar-
nea (2005) mention both humility and vision. In both cases,
there is an apparent dichotomy between humility and tak-
ing a pro-active role in setting direction and instilling
action. In this regard, the Servant Leadership Survey (SLS)
of van Dierendonck (2011) seems to be perhaps the one
that most explicitly and accurately captures Greenleaf’s
original dual mode of humble service and effective action.

50. Two particular studies (Asag-Gau and van Dierendonck
2011; van Dierendonck and Nuijten 2011) based on the
SLS seem to confirm, through a second-order factor anal-
ysis, a potential sub-set of 5 core dimensions that could be
split between humble service (humility and standing-back)
and action (empowerment, accountability and steward-
ship). As such, our research was focused on this core set of
5 servant leadership behaviors and the potential interaction
between the two sub-groups. The different dimensions will
now be explained in more detail.
As mentioned before, humility forms the essential
backbone of the servant leader (Patterson 2003; Russell
2001). As incorporated in the servant leadership construct
of van Dierendonck (2011), humility is translated into three
essential aspects: (1) the ability to put one’s accomplish-
ments and talents in perspective (Patterson 2003), (2)
admitting one’s fallibility and mistakes (Morris et al.
2005), and (3) understanding of one’s strong and weak

51. points. As such, ‘‘servant leaders acknowledge their limi -
tations and therefore actively seek the contributions of
others in order to overcome those limitations’’ (van
Dierendonck and Nuijten 2011). Morris et al. (2005) sug-
gested that humility ‘‘might be the operating mechanism
through which servant leaders function’’ and that it forms
the essential marker of a leader’s motivation to serve.
Humility is further supported by the leader’s ability of
standing-back (van Dierendonck 2011), which ‘‘is about
the extent to which a leader gives priority to the interest of
others first and gives them the necessary support and
credits… (and) is also about retreating into the background
when a task has successfully been accomplished’’ (van
Dierendonck and Nuijten 2011). Standing-back could be
seen as a synonymous of modesty, which is essentially a
‘‘moderate estimation of one’s merits and achievements’’
(Peterson and Seligman 2004, p. 463). As defended by
several scholars (e.g., Morris et al. 2005; Nielsen et al.

52. 2010; Peterson and Seligman 2004), humility and modesty
are related constructs but differ insofar as humility is
internally focused and modesty externally focused. As
such, humility likely leads to modesty while the reverse
might not always be true. For example, a leader could still
acknowledge and give credit to others (modesty) while
internally believing he or she was in fact the one respon-
sible for success (no authentic humility). For this reason,
we posit that an overall attitude of humble service will be
reflected in both humility and modesty (or standing-back).
Such position is in agreement with the findings of van
Dierendonck (2011) where these measurement variables
were combined into one overarching conceptual dimen-
sion. In summary, we suggest that humility and standing-
back are closely related dimensions underpinning the moral
concern for others above the self, forming this way the
fundamental foundation of the servant-first leader (the
humble side).

53. The other 3 dimensions of servant leadership used in this
study can be combined into a second overarching dimen-
sion of action. Starting with empowerment, this construct
has many similarities with the notion of empowering
leadership (Pearce and Sims 2002) and is essentially about
encouraging autonomous decision making, sharing infor-
mation, and the coaching and mentoring of individuals for
increased innovative performance (Konczak et al. 2000).
Accountability allows the servant leader to provide direc-
tion while considering the specific capabilities of people, as
well as their particular needs and possible areas of contri -
bution. In the end, accountability makes sure that people
feel responsible for their results. This particular aspect is
essential as a control mechanism for both performance
management and learning. From all different servant
leadership measures we identified, SLS is the only one that
incorporates this essential control or feedback mechanism
(van Dierendonck 2011). Finally, stewardship is a dimen-

54. sion that ensures that the common interest and the good of
the whole are taken in account, while establishing a com-
prehensive framework for providing meaning to work and
ensuring consistent action. In SLS, stewardship is the
dimension that comes closer to the notion of vision or long-
term orientation, which is essential in servant leadership
Servant Leadership and the Effect of the Interaction Between
Humility, Action, and Hierarchical… 15
123
(Dennis and Bocarnea 2005). One can already notice how
these three servant leadership dimensions distinguish
themselves from humility and standing-back in their
action-oriented focus, as they all reflect behaviors that
actively stimulate both individual and organizational per -
formance while ensuring congruent direction. While
humility and standing-back almost imply a detachment
from action, these three highlight the servant leader’s need
to ensure pro-active involvement in setting course and

55. facilitating others in their tasks. In light of this, we suggest
that the three core dimensions of empowerment, steward-
ship, and accountability form the action-oriented side of
the servant leader (the action side).
In summary, we suggest that the core set of five servant
leadership dimensions as suggested by Asag-gau and Van
Dierendonck (2011) can be split into a humble service-
oriented side, based on the dimensions of humility and
standing-back, and an action side captured in the constructs
of empowerment, stewardship, and accountability.
The Relation Between Servant Leadership
and Engagement
Engagement is considered as the antithesis of burnout
(Maslach et al. 2001). Schaufeli et al. (2006) characterize
engaged employees as demonstrating behaviors of energy
and connection to their work, while being able to deal well
with the demands of their jobs. Schaufeli et al. (2006)
further split engagement into three main components:

56. vigor, dedication, and absorption. Vigor is shown by the
energy and resilience demonstrated by workers and by their
willingness and persistence in face of difficulties (Schaufeli
et al. 2006). Dedication is explained by Schaufeli et al.
(2006) as those behaviors that demonstrate a ‘‘sense of
significance, enthusiasm, inspiration, pride, and challenge’’
in work. Finally, Schaufeli et al. (2006) advance that ab-
sorption is reflected in the involvement shown in work,
which can be characterized by a loss of a sense of time and
an unwillingness to stop when working.
In recent years, several scholars have been able to
empirically demonstrate the importance of engagement in
generating organizational commitment (Hakanen et al.
2006) and work performance (Bakker and Bal 2010;
Xanthopoulou et al. 2009). Other studies, more focused on
aspects of personal well-being, have shown how engage-
ment can contribute toward higher levels of psychological
soundness (Demerouti et al. 2001; Schaufeli and Bakker

57. 2004; Schaufeli et al. 2008; Xanthopoulou et al. 2009).
When looking at the antecedents of engagement, Bakker
and Demerouti (2007) advanced two key individual aspects
that positively contribute to engagement: first, through the
available job resources reflected in aspects like
organizational support, management feedback or the level
of autonomy, among others, and secondly through personal
resources such as resilience, self-efficacy or optimism. At
the same time, Bakker and Demerouti (2007) suggest that
engagement will be negatively influenced by the level of
job demands, including aspects like work pressure and the
emotional, mental, and physical demands of the work at
hand.
When looking at the antecedents presented before, one
can see servant leadership as potentially playing an
important role in creating the conditions for engagement to
flourish in organizations. Servant leadership is oriented to
the followers’ needs and development (van Dierendonck

58. 2011) through pro-active individual support and the cre-
ation of a work environment that fosters personal growth.
This communicates to followers that the organization, in the
person of the leader, cares about them and stimulates their
development through their own work. For the servant lea-
der, work is an instrument of personal growth and realiza-
tion through which the organization fulfills both its business
and social mission. In essence, servant leaders have a
‘‘other’’ focus as opposed to a ‘‘self’’ focus (Morris et al.
2005), which is reflected on serving both the employees of
the organization and its external stakeholders. Such a
serving and empowering attitude can be inductive of
engagement as demonstrated in different empirical studies.
For instance, Schaufeli and Bakker (2004) argued that a
social supportive work environment reduces job demands,
helps in achieving work goals, and stimulates personal
growth, learning, and development which are all part of
servant leadership. In an extensive study to validate their

59. new measure of servant leadership, van Dierendonck and
Nuijten (2011) found supporting evidence for the potential
impact of servant leadership on workforce engagement. In
other empirical studies, aspects closely related to servant
leadership like humility (Owens et al. 2013) and empow -
erment (Tuckey et al. 2012) were also found to be strongly
related to engagement. We therefore suggest that both the
action side and the humble side of the servant leader as
advanced before will be positively related to engagement,
which constitutes our first hypothesis.
Hypothesis 1 Both the action side and the humble side of
servant leadership will have a significant impact on the
overall level of work engagement among followers.
The Amplifying Effect of Attributed Humility
on Leadership Effectiveness
The etymological origin of humility is based on the Latin
word humilis (on the ground) which is derived from the
word humus (earth) (Online Etymology Dictionary 2010).
16 M. Sousa, D. van Dierendonck

60. 123
In this sense, one can say that humility literally brings
someone down to earth. In accordance, humility was
qualified by Park and Peterson (2003) as a temperance
virtue that grounds and stabilizes one’s self-perception.
Grenberg (2005) further suggests that humility is a sort of
meta-virtue sustaining other virtues like forgiveness,
courage, wisdom, and compassion, while Morris et al.
(2005) define humility ‘‘as a personal orientation founded
on a willingness to see the self accurately and a propensity
to put oneself in perspective.’’
The importance of humility for leaders was captured by
scholars like van Dierendonck and Patterson (2015),
Morris et al. (2005), Nielsen et al. (2010), and Snyder
(2010). In particular, humility seems to be essential in
keeping the leader’s achievements and strengths in per-
spective, while focusing more on others than on self-in-

61. terest (Morris et al. 2005; Fairholm and Fairholm 2000;
Sandage and Wiens 2001), which is congruent with the
tempering effect suggested by Park and Peterson (2003)
and Morris et al. (2005). In addition, van Dierendonck and
Patterson (2015) propose that the virtuous attitude of ser -
vant leaders, based on humility, gratitude, forgiveness, and
altruism, will give rise to other behaviors like empower-
ment, stewardship or providing direction.
Owens and Hekman (2012) propose that the leader’s
humility can be split essentially around ‘‘three categories:
(1) acknowledging personal limits, (2) spotlighting fol -
lowers’ strengths and contributions, and (3) modeling
teachability.’’ In a later study, these three categories have
been captured in a quantitative instrument of leader
expressed humility, which was shown to correlate with
aspects like job engagement, job satisfaction, and team
learning goal orientation (Owens et al. 2013). One can
observe that these three aspects suggested by Owens and

62. Hekman (2012) coincide in many ways with the combined
notions of humility and standing-back presented before
(underpinning the humble service side). As suggested by
van Dierendonck (2011), these two dimensions are reflec-
ted in putting one’s accomplishments and talents in per-
spective, admitting one’s errors, understanding own
strengths and weaknesses, and valorizing the strengths and
achievements of others. Based on an empirical qualitative
study, Owens and Hekman (2012) further propose that a
leader’s humble behaviors can have two main outcomes:
(1) at the individual level, it can increase the sense of
personal freedom and engagement among followers by
legitimizing their developmental journey, and (2) at the
organizational level, it increases the fluidity of the orga-
nization by legitimizing uncertainty. This emphasizes that
the leader’s humility can affect performance both by
improving the quality of the leader–follower relationship
(individual level) and through the creation of a learning and

63. adaptive organization (systemic level). Based on these
conceptualizations and empirical findings, it seems that
humility operates on the leader’s effectiveness at multiple
levels, but its specific mechanisms still seem somehow
unclear, both in terms of the internal psychological pro-
cesses of the leader and in terms of the psychological effect
that perceived humility can create in the follower. The
work of Nielsen et al. (2010) might provide some inter-
esting clues into this.
Taking a socialized charismatic leadership model,
Nielsen et al. (2010) conceptualize that humility can sup-
port a leader’s effectiveness from two perspectives. First of
all, it can improve the ability of leaders to generate,
implement, and communicate their vision. From this angle,
humility is seen as an internal and personal character trait
(Vera and Rodriguez-Lopez 2004) that will help the leader
incorporate the followers’ viewpoints, self-concepts, and
needs while keeping the leader grounded, hereby improv-

64. ing the quality of the leader’s aforementioned visioning
behaviors (Nielsen et al. 2010). Secondly, the follower
attributions of the leader’s humility (i.e., being perceived
as humble) will function as a ‘‘critical moderator, either
strengthening or weakening the relationship between’’
these visioning behaviors and diverse follower outcomes,
including motivation and willingness to sacrifice (Nielsen
et al. 2010). Such amplification effect of the attribution of
humility is essentially driven by an increased perception of
trustworthiness, honesty, confidence, and competence,
inducing greater ‘‘loyalty and trust in the leader, which will
in turn inspire greater willingness and commitment to
following the leader’s vision’’ (Nielsen et al. 2010). Here, it
is not so much about the actual humility of the leader but
instead the perceived humility as seen by the followers, and
how it enlarges the feeling of trust toward the leader. It is
important to note that while Nielsen et al. (2010) incor-
porate these direct and indirect effects of leader humility

65. and follower attributed leader humility within the model of
socialized charismatic leadership, they contend that similar
assertions could be made for servant leadership.
Measuring actual humility is quite hard. Comte-Spon-
ville (2001) and Richards (1992) remind us that humble
people will most likely not call themselves humble, so self-
assessments will always be poor indicators of humility.
While one could operationalize actual humility as the gap
between self and other evaluations (Rowatt et al. 2002),
this was beyond the scope of our study and we concen-
trated instead on the assessment of perceived humility and
the close companion of standing-back (or modesty) as seen
by the followers, which amounts to the notion of attribu-
tions of humility as suggested by Nielsen et al. (2010).
Based on these considerations, we suggest that the humble
service side of servant leaders (as perceived by followers)
can work as catalyst of their action side by improving the
relationship of trust with followers. This interaction

66. Servant Leadership and the Effect of the Interaction Between
Humility, Action, and Hierarchical… 17
123
between the humble side and the action side of servant
leadership and the impact on the motivational construct of
engagement form the second hypothesis of this study:
Hypothesis 2 The humble service side of servant lead-
ership (as perceived by followers) will work as moderating
variable by amplifying the effect of the action side on work
engagement among followers.
Hierarchical Power as a Contingency Factor
Power and leadership are strongly interrelated, which are
evident in the different definitions given for these two
concepts. For example, Stoner and Freeman (1985) define
power essentially as the capacity to influence and shape the
behaviors and attitudes of individuals and groups. On the
other hand, Yukl (2006, p. 8) defines leadership as ‘‘the

67. process of influencing others to understand and agree about
what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of
facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish
shared objectives’’. Both definitions share that influence is
the essential defining element of both constructs. From a
systemic point of view however, the difference seems to
rely on the fact that power is seen as a potential to influence
(a relatively stable measure of potency), while leadership
seems to be more associated with the process and dynamics
to exercise that influence (the behaviors that are conductive
of exercising that influencing power). One’s level of power
will influence one’s ability to lead and of course, effective
leadership will increase one’s power or potential to influ-
ence, in a positive and reinforcing feedback loop.
French and Raven (1959) advanced that power can have
5 bases or sources. These evolved later to 6 bases (Raven
1965), namely coercion (the ability to influence based on
the possibility of punishment or penalty), reward (the

68. power to compensate for achieving certain targets), legiti -
macy (power based on a certain recognized right to influ-
ence, like, for example, a job title), expertise (based on the
perception about one’s level of knowledge and skills for a
certain job), reference (power that stems from a strong
sense of identification and admiration), and information
(essentially the capacity to communicate either through
logical or emotional reasoning, eloquence, or charisma).
The stronger these bases, the more the power one pos-
sesses. We theorize that the moderating role of follower
attributions of leader humility will be more salient for
leaders with stronger power bases. In other words, the more
power the leader possesses, the more followers will value
his or her humility, hence increasing their motivation to
follow. This, we posit, emerges from two aspects. First,
humility will be seen as a good and positive trait, once
power is legitimate and recognized, as it testifies that the
leader is working beyond self-interest and focusing on

69. others. Secondly, under the same conditions of legitimate
and recognized power, humility will create a sense of
closeness and proximity whereby the leader becomes ‘‘one
of us.’’ In other words, there is an aspirational element
where the follower becomes one with the leader through
his or her humility.
Some scholars seem to refer to similar effects, albeit in
different terms. For example, when elaborating on the
positive impact of humility on the leader’s effectiveness,
Owens and Hekman (2012) advance possible contingency
factors that might condition this impact. One of these
factors is the level of perceived competence, which is
similar to French and Raven’s (1959) expert power, felt by
followers with regard to the leader. Based on several
interviews conducted in a qualitative study, it becomes
apparent that humility is only effective when followers
recognize that the leader is competent and able (Ow ens and
Hekman 2012). In addition, for leaders in higher ranks

70. (CEOs and executives), ‘‘competence… would be less
likely to be called into question than would be likely in the
case of a lower-level leader’’ (Owens and Hekman 2012).
This essentially could mean, as we suggested earlier, that
the amplifying effect of humility will be stronger for
leaders in upper ranks with more power and implicitly
more competent.
A similar possibility seems to be implicit in Collins’
(2001) leadership model, which is based on 5 levels. Level
1 is called the ‘‘Highly Capable Individual,’’ essentially
based on a contribution through talent, knowledge, skills,
and good work habits. Level 2 further adds the ability of
the individual to contribute toward team objectives and to
work effectively with team members. This level is called
the ‘‘Contributing Team Member.’’ At level 3, there is a
stronger component of management of both people and
resources toward the organization’s objectives. Collins
(2001) calls this the ‘‘Competent Manager.’’ Level 4, the
‘‘Effective Leader,’’ adds the ability of the leader to gen-

71. erate commitment toward a compelling vision and high-
performance standards. Finally, at level 5, the ‘‘Executive’’
is able to endure greatness through what Collins (2001)
calls a paradoxical mix between a strong professional will
and humility. While such levels do not necessarily have to
correspond to positions of power in the organization, they
seem to provide a natural ranking as people move from
professionals and team members to middle, senior, and
executive management positions, with humility gaining
relevance at the highest level to explain their effectiveness.
This could mean again that humility will be most salient
for leaders in higher positions of power.
Our third hypothesis captures this potential indirect
effect of hierarchical power, moderating the effect of
humility on leadership effectiveness, as formulated below.
18 M. Sousa, D. van Dierendonck
123

72. Hypothesis 3 The higher the hierarchical power position
of the leader, the stronger will be the amplifying effect of
the humble side of servant leadership on the relation
between the action side and engagement among followers.
Methods
Subjects
Participants were employees from a varied range of orga-
nizations in Portugal from different sectors. A total of 236
people answered the survey in different hierarchical posi -
tions. 56.3 % of the sample was male and 43.7 % female.
44.1 % of respondents were between 35- and 44-year old,
31.9 % between 25 and 34, 16.4 % between 45 and 54,
5.9 % higher than 55 and 1.7 % below 25-year old. In
terms of their distribution in hierarchical ranking, 2.9 %
were at board level, 34.0 % at director level, 24.0 % at
senior management level, 11.8 % at junior management
level, 20.6 % at intermediate non-managerial level, and
another 2.9 % as junior professionals. 2 respondents

73. answered as being freelancers and 2 others as unemployed.
In order to ensure that all participants were currently i n a
stable job and reporting to a direct manager, these 4 per -
sons were taken out of the sample, giving a sample size of
232 persons. In terms of size of the organizational they
worked in, the sample was quite fairly distributed, with
29.4 % of respondents being from organizations bigger
than 1000 people, 24.0 % between 250 and 999, 21.4 %
between 50 and 249, 16.8 % between 10 and 49, and 8.4 %
below 10 people.
Measures
Servant Leadership
All participants reported on how they perceived the lead-
ership behaviors of their direct manager through items
taken from the Servant Leadership Survey developed by
van Dierendonck and Nuijten (2011). A 7-point Likert
scale was used ranging from 1 (completely disagree) to 7
(completely agree). In order to further attest the quality of

74. our model splitting the humble and action sides, discrimi -
nant validity of the servant leadership measure was tested
through confirmatory factorial analysis with Mplus 6.1
(Muthén and Muthén 2009). Three models were tested:
(i) a one-dimensional model with all items loading on a
single servant leadership variable; (ii) a 5-dimensional
model with a second-order servant leadership variable; and
(iii) a 5-dimensional model with two second-order vari-
ables capturing humility and standing-back (SLHUMBLE)
and empowerment, accountability, and stewardship
(SLACTION). The fit indices for the 5-dimensional model
loading on one second-order servant leadership variable
(V2 = 494.56, df = 184, CFI = .92, TLI = .91,
RMSEA = .09, SRMR = .05) were very similar to the
model with the split between SLACTION and SLHUM-
BLE (V2 = 493.20, df = 183, CFI = .92, TLI = .91,
RMSEA = .09, SRMR = .05). Both showed significantly
better fit indices than the one-dimensional model
(V2 = 811.93, df = 189, CFI = .85, TLI = .83,

75. RMSEA = .12, SRMR = .06), confirming the discrimi-
nant validity of the multi-dimensional measure used for
this study and the potential split into two underlying
dimensions of an humble service attitude and an action
orientation.
Once the discriminant validity of the measure was tes-
ted, the items related to stewardship (3 items), account-
ability (3 items), and empowerment (7 items) were
composed into the action-side measure of servant leader-
ship (captured in a variable called SLACTION). The
internal consistency of this overall measure was .94 with
the 13 items. On the other hand, the items of humility (5
items) and standing-back (3 items) were composed into one
humble-side dimension of servant leadership (captured in a
variable named SLHUMBLE). The internal consistency of
this measure was .93 with the 8 items. According to
Nunnally (1978) and Kline (1999), a Cronbach alpha of .70
is acceptable for a survey, meaning that the scores for both

76. SLACTION and SLHUMBLE are very good.
Engagement
The short version of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale
by Schaufeli et al. (2002) was used. The scale includes 9
self-assessment items on vigor, dedication, and absorption.
Ratings were given on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from
1 (completely disagree) to 7 (completely agree). Results
were composed into one single indicator of engagement
(the variable was called ENGAGE) with an overall internal
consistency of .94, which is again a very good score.
Hierarchical Power
Instead of measuring perceived power through a survey,
our approach was instead to assess power through the
hierarchical level of the respondent (and implicitly, their
leader). In this study, our intention was not to dissect the
different aspects of power and their relation to humility but
instead get a first indication of how hierarchy (as a proxy of
organizational power) affects this relationship. This

77. approach has two other advantages. Firstly, it allowed
reducing the survey size substantially and increases this
way the response rate. Secondly, as the question on hier-
archical level is objective and based on the participant’s
Servant Leadership and the Effect of the Interaction Between
Humility, Action, and Hierarchical… 19
123
actual position, it reduces concerns on common-method
bias, whereby the assessment of perceived power would be
conditioned by the answers given on servant leadership
behavior. In order to determine the hierarchical position in
their organization, participants were asked to classify their
current rank according to 6 possible categories: board level
(1), director level (2), senior management level (3), junior
management level (4), intermediate non-managerial level
(5), and junior professional (6). Logically, it follows that
the participant’s leader is either at the same level or a level
above. For this particular study, it was critical to ensure

78. that the sample included people currently employed such
that their relative position in the hierarchical rank could be
determined. 4 participants responded ‘‘other’’ but did pro-
vide a detailed job title which allowed re-classifying them
according to the 6 categories. The hierarchical position, as
a proxy of organizational power, was captured in a variable
called RANK.
Results
The Regression Models
In order to validate the three hypotheses advanced before,
three analytical steps were conducted based on a multiple
linear regression, a single moderation model, and a model
with two moderators (where the second moderator interacts
with the first moderation) as suggested by Hayes (2013).
Further details and respective results of this study are
provided next.
Table 1 shows the mean values, standard deviations, and
intercorrelations of the variables of the study. As men-

79. tioned before, in order to validate the three hypotheses
advanced before, three regression analytical steps were
conducted. In order to test the first hypotheses, a multiple
linear regression analysis was done, with SLACTION,
SLHUMBLE, and RANK as independent variables and
ENGAGE as dependent variable. For the second hypothe-
ses, a bootstrapping technique was used in SPSS using
model 1 of the PROCESS script as provided by Hayes
(2013). This single moderation model incorporated
SLACTION as an independent variable, SLHUMBLE as
moderating variable, ENGAGE as a dependent variable,
and RANK as a covariate. This model allowed interpreting
the conditional effect of the two-way interaction between
SLACTION and SLHUMBLE. Finally, in order to test the
third hypotheses, the same bootstrapping technique was
used in SPSS but using model 3 of the PROCESS script as
provided by Hayes (2013). This model was tested by
having SLACTION as an independent variable, SLHUM-

80. BLE as primary moderating variable, RANK as a sec-
ondary moderating variable (interacting with
SLHUMBLE), and ENGAGE as dependent variable
(Fig. 1). This allowed observing the conditional effect of
the three-way interaction between SLACTION, SLHUM-
BLE, and RANK. We will now present the results of these
three analytical steps.
Results of the Three Analytical Steps
Table 2 shows the results for the different steps, including
the coefficients and the statistical significance of the two-
way and three-way interactions.
As can be seen in Table 2, when considering SLAC-
TION (b = .286, se = .091, p .01), SLHUMBLE
(b = .184, se = .080, p .05), and RANK (b = -.214,
se = .044, p .01) as independent variables in a multiple
linear regression, the model accounts for 38.45 % of the
variance on engagement. Step 2 adds the two-way inter-
action between SLACTION and SLHUMBLE in a single
moderation, which is statistically not significant

81. (b = -.015, se = .033, p = .653), leaving the overall R
2
practically unchanged when compared to the previous step.
With step 3, we incorporated the three-way interaction
between SLACTION, SLHUMBLE, and RANK. This
three-way interaction was found to be statistically signifi-
cant (b = -.061, se = .025, p .05), with a 95 % confi-
dence interval between -.11 and -.012, meaning that we
are at least 95 % certain that the interaction coefficient is
not zero. This three-way interaction accounts for an addi-
tional 1.61 % of the variance of the model (incremental
R
2
), with a total R
2
of .405.
The diagram on Fig. 2 allows observing the effect of the
three-way interaction on the impact of the action side of
servant leadership on engagement for different hierarchical
ranks (high, medium, and low). The first observation is that
humility seems to have always a positive impact on

82. engagement regardless of the hierarchical position of the
leader. In addition, for higher ranks, the humble side will
increase significantly the effect of the action side on
engagement. Finally, for lower ranks, less humble leaders
seem to be able to compensate for this by having a strong
action-oriented leadership. As for medium ranks, although
it is evident that the humble side positively affects
Table 1 Descriptives and intercorrelations of study variables
Mean SD 1 2 3
SLACTION 4.98 1.20
SLHUMBLE 4.17 1.37 .85**
ENGAGE 5.41 1.10 .55** .54**
RANK 3.25 1.31 -.17** -.16* -.35**
n = 232. RANK is in reversed order (lower numbers = higher
ranks)
* p .05, ** p .01
20 M. Sousa, D. van Dierendonck
123

83. engagement, it does not change the nature of the relation
between the action side and this motivational construct.
When probing the interaction for different moderator
values (see Table 3), one can observe that the conditional
effect of the action side is significant for most points (re-
sults were mean centered to ease interpretation). The
changes in the conditional effects clearly show how the
three-way interaction affects the relationship between the
action side and engagement, as explained above. Using the
Johnson-Neyman technique (Bauer and Curran, 2005), the
significance region for the three-way interaction is given
for mean-centered values of SLHUMBLE below -2.141
(high ranks) and above 1.497 (low ranks), which is con-
sistent with the previous analysis.
Discussion
This study provides two important contributions. First of
all, it contributes to a better understanding of servant

84. leadership by showing how the humble and action-ori-
ented dimensions of the servant leader can interact to
affect motivation (engagement in our case). As described
in this article, the humble side can be captured in an
overarching service attitude through humility and stand-
ing-back, and the action side through aspects like
empowerment, accountability, and stewardship. This
comes to sustain the potential split of the different
dimensions of servant leadership as advanced by van
Dierendonck and Nuijten (2011) and the original think-
ing of Greenleaf (1977) whereby servant leadership
entails both a moral concern for serving people (the
virtue of humility) and the ability to mobilize them for
performance and growth (action). At the same time, the
positive impact of servant leadership on engagement is
once again confirmed through an empirical study, further
supporting previous findings (van Dierendonck and
Nuijten 2011) and our first hypothesis.

85. Secondly, this article contributes to comprehending the
potential role of hierarchical power in explaining the
interaction between the humble and action sides of servant
leadership. More specifically, we were able to provide
empirical evidence on the amplifying effect of the humble
side of the servant leader on leadership effectiveness. This
was reflected in an increased impact of the action side on
engagement for leaders in higher ranks (hence with more
hierarchical power). These findings seem to confirm pre-
vious theorizing on the indirect moderating effect of
attributed humility on leadership effectiveness (Nielsen
et al. 2010) mainly for leaders in higher positions of power,
supporting similar assertions by Collins (2001) and Owens
and Hekman (2012). For lower ranks, humility still seems
to play an important role in ensuring engagement (although
with lower overall impact than in higher ranks). It is worth
to note that less humble leaders at the lower levels of the
hierarchy still seem able to compensate for this through a

86. strong action-oriented leadership style. Something of this
nature has been suggested by Nielsen et al. (2010), where
attributions of humility could have a negative effect for
certain types of leadership, namely for transactional leaders
in opposition to transformational leaders (Bass 1985). This
could very well be the process in place here, where leaders
in lower ranks due to their operational focus would make
more use of transactional leadership mechanisms. This
might raise the possibility that, in its fullness, servant
leadership could be a model particularly effective for
executive and board-level functions and maybe less so for
more practical hands-on line management positions. In
Table 2 Regression results
Step 1 Betas Step 2 Betas Step 3 Betas
Intercept 3.91** 6.12** 5.43**
SLACTION .29** .27** .29**
SLHUMBLE .19* .19* .15
RANK 3.91** -.21** -.13*
SLACTION 9 SLHUMBLE -.02 .00

87. SLACTION 9 RANK .00
SLHUMBLE 9 RANK .00
SLACTION 9 SLHUMBLExRANK -.06*
R .62 .62 .64
R-sq .39 .39 .41
F 47.48** 35.54** 21.78**
DR-sq .00 .02
F .20 6.05*
** p .01, * p .05
Servant Leadership and the Effect of the Interaction Between
Humility, Action, and Hierarchical… 21
123
other words, the combination of humility and action seems
to be most effective for senior executives.
Going in more detail into the three hypotheses of this
study, one can advance the following conclusions. First of
all, as seen in the correlation figures of Table 1 and the
multiple linear regression analysis of Table 2, both the
action and humble sides of servant leadership seem to have

88. a significant effect on engagement, confirming our first
hypothesis. When considering a single interaction, we
cannot observe an amplifying effect of the humble side of
the servant leader on the impact of the action side on
engagement, which does not allow us to confirm hypothesis
2. However, when the hierarchical rank is introduced as a
secondary moderating variable, we observe a significant
three-way interaction where the humble side of the servant
leader significantly amplifies the effect of the action side on
follower engagement for leaders in higher ranks at board
and executive level, which confirms hypothesis 3. The fact
that the amplifying effect of the humble side only becomes
visible when the hierarchical rank is introduced in a three-
way regression model comes to demonstrate the impor-
tance of incorporating additional contingency variables in
the further study of servant leadership and the specific
mechanisms through which it can affect performance.
Some further considerations are important. While our

89. study seems to indicate that there is indeed an indirect
moderating effect of attributed humility on leadership
performance especially for leaders in higher position of
power, the mechanism through which that happens remains
to be explored. We support the idea that attributions of
humility will increase trustworthiness, as suggested by
Nielsen et al. (2010). Trust is related to the level of con-
fidence that an individual has toward another’s competence
and willingness to act fairly, ethically, and in a predictable
way (Nyhan 2000). How perceptions of humility affect
these different aspects of trust is something that deserves
attention and should be included in future research.
One other aspect that deserves some attention relates to
the fact that our study concentrates on follower attributions
of humility and standing-back (the aggregate humble side),
which addresses the indirect effect on leadership effec-
tiveness suggested by Nielsen et al. (2010). Incorporating
measures of actual humility would be an important addition

90. for a wider comprehension of the overall effect of this
construct (actual and perceived) on leadership effective-
ness. Given the difficulties of measuring actual humility
with self-assessments alone (Comte-Sponville 2001;
Richards 1992), future studies could incorporate new
methods such as mapping the gap between self and other
evaluations of leadership behaviors (Rowatt et al. 2002).
Fig. 2 Effect of the three-way interaction between SLACTION,
SLHUMBLE, and RANK
Table 3 Conditional effects for different values of the
moderators
using PROCESS by Hayes (2013)
RANK SLHUMBLE Effect SE T p LLCI ULCI
-1.31 -1.37 .19 .13 1.45 .15 -.07 .44
-1.31 .00 .30 .14 2.08 .04 .02 .58
-1.31 1.37 .40 .18 2.23 .03 .05 .76
.00 -1.37 .29 .09 3.21 .00 .11 .47
.00 .00 .29 .10 2.96 .00 .10 .49
.00 1.37 .29 .12 2.36 .02 .05 .54
1.31 -1.37 .40 .13 3.20 .00 .15 .65

91. 1.31 .00 .29 .13 2.23 .03 .03 .55
Values are mean-centered. RANK is in reversed order (lower
num-
bers = higher ranks)
22 M. Sousa, D. van Dierendonck
123
Studies on self-other agreement (SOA) might provide also
interesting clues in this regard (Atwater et al. 1998).
When looking at possible limitations of this study, we
acknowledge that national culture should be considered as
potential moderator (Morris et al. 2005) as it can have a
significant influence on perceptions about humility, power,
and leadership (Hofstede 1983, 1993; Hofstede et al. 2010;
House et al. 2002, 2004). Interestingly, some scholars
contended that humility would be more accepted in coun-
tries with low power distance (Kets 2004; Peterson and
Seligman 2004), but our study seems to show that also in a

92. country with relatively high power distance like Portugal
(Hofstede n.d.), humility still seems to have a positive
effect. On the other hand, Morris et al. (2005) further
suggest that feminine societies, like the Portuguese one
(Hofstede n.d.) might be more open toward behaviors of
humility than masculine societies. Given this apparent lack
of clarity, future research would certainly be welcome to
address these concerns by for example incorporating
measures of national culture as a moderating variable.
One additional note concerns our approach toward
measuring power. The hierarchical level of the respondent
has been used as an indirect proxy of the leader’s power in
an organizational hierarchical setup. While this has the
advantage of reducing common-method bias concerns as it
is an objective measure (Chang et al. 2010), we acknowl-
edge that it is indeed a rather rough indicator of power
prone to some level of error. We suggest that future
research includes a measure of power bases (e.g., Rahim

93. 1988), assessed in a separate moment to reduce again
concerns with common-method bias that would allow
distinguishing the specific impact of the different sources
of power on the relationship between humility and lead-
ership effectiveness.
Another possible limitation is the cross-sectional character
of the study. However, in addition to the measures taken to
reduce common-method bias explained before, it has been
shown that within regression analysis, artificial interactions
caused by common-method bias are unlikely (Evans 1985).
These and other studies actually warn against the very real
possibility of Type 2 errors when trying to detect interaction
effects. A rough rule suggested by Evans (1985) is to take 1 %
of the explained variance as the criterion as to whether a
significant effect exists. With additional explained variance of
approximately 2 % for the three-way interaction on employee
engagement, this criterion was met.
Conclusion

94. In conclusion, the results of our study are quite promising
as they seem to provide quantitative empirical evidence on
the potential split between the humble and action sides of
servant leadership (Greenleaf 1977; van Dierendonck and
Nuijten 2011). At the same time, evidence is given on the
specific workings of humility, and the accompanying
behavior of standing-back, on leadership effectiveness,
while incorporating the specific role of hierarchical power
as a contingency variable, further sustaining the proposi -
tions suggested by Owens and Hekman (2012) and Nielsen
et al. (2010). Our findings suggest that the combination of
humility and action is most potent in generating engage-
ment at the higher hierarchical ranks. This could lead us to
conclude that in its wholeness, servant leadership might be
particularly effective for leaders in executive and board-
level positions. On the other hand, for managers working at
lower levels in the organization, maybe more operational,
the action side of servant leadership might suffice in gen-

95. erating engagement. As a final note, our study comes to
confirm the comprehensive reach and applicability of the
servant leadership model developed by van Dierendonck
(2011), adequately capturing the multiple and complex set
of virtues and action-oriented behaviors of leadership in
driving performance in different contexts and situations.
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
(http://cre-
ativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted
use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you
give
appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source,
provide a
link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes
were
made.
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Servant Leadership and the Effect of the Interaction Between
Humility, Action, and Hierarchical… 25
123
Servant Leadership and the Effect of the Interaction Between
Humility, Action, and Hierarchical Power on Follower
EngagementAbstractIntroductionServant Leadership: A
Balancing Act Between Humble Service and ActionThe Relation
Between Servant Leadership and EngagementThe Amplifying
Effect of Attributed Humility on Leadership
EffectivenessHierarchical Power as a Contingency
FactorMethodsSubjectsMeasuresServant
LeadershipEngagementHierarchical PowerResultsThe
Regression ModelsResults of the Three Analytical
StepsDiscussionConclusionOpen AccessReferences

112. Leadership, Followership, and Evolution
Some Lessons From the Past
Mark Van Vugt University of Kent
Robert Hogan Hogan Assessment Systems
Robert B. Kaiser Kaplan DeVries Inc.
This article analyzes the topic of leadership from an evo-
lutionary perspective and proposes three conclusions that
are not part of mainstream theory. First, leading and
following are strategies that evolved for solving social
coordination problems in ancestral environments, includ-
ing in particular the problems of group movement, intra-
group peacekeeping, and intergroup competition. Second,
the relationship between leaders and followers is inher -
ently ambivalent because of the potential for exploitation of
followers by leaders. Third, modern organizational struc-
tures are sometimes inconsistent with aspects of our
evolved leadership psychology, which might explain the
alienation and frustration of many citizens and employees.
The authors draw several implications of this evolutionary
analysis for leadership theory, research, and practice.
Keywords: evolution, leadership, followership, game the-
ory, mismatch hypothesis
Why is leadership important? During times ofpeace and
prosperity, it seems not to matter.However, when politicians
start wars, when
business leaders gamble with our life savings, and when
religious leaders create violent sectarian divides, leadership
becomes a matter of life and death.

113. We know a lot about leadership (Bass, 1990; House &
Aditya, 1997; Yukl, 2006). It is a universal feature of
human societies and affects the quality of life of citizens in
important ways (Brown, 1991; R. Hogan, Curphy, &
Hogan, 1994). When people are placed in ad hoc laboratory
groups, leader–follower structures quickly emerge (Bales,
1951; Mann, 1959; Van Vugt & De Cremer, 1999). Hu-
mans easily recognize leadership potential in others (Lord,
DeVader, & Alliger, 1986). People also romanticize lead-
ership; we often attribute great importance to leaders even
when it is not warranted (Hackman & Wageman, 2007;
Meindl, Ehrlich, & Dukerich, 1985). Leadership is an un-
avoidable theme in society and arguably the most important
problem in the social sciences.
Although the leadership literature is enormous, it
lacks an integrative theoretical framework that can make
sense of the richness of the data (Chemers, 2000; R. Hogan
& Kaiser, 2005). There are several reasons for this. First,
the literature contains many useful mid-level theories that
are not very well connected (Bass, 1990; Yukl, 2006).
Second, the literature focuses on leaders and tends to
ignore the essential role of followers (Hollander, 1992;
Yukl, 2006). Third, research largely concentrates on prox-
imate issues of leadership (e.g., What makes one person a
better leader than others?) and rarely considers its ultimate
functions (e.g., How did leadership promote survival and
reproductive success among our ancestors?) (R. Hogan &
Kaiser, 2005). Finally, there has been little cross-fertiliza-
tion between psychology and disciplines such as anthro-
pology, economics, neuroscience, biology, and zoology,
which also contain important insights about leadership
(Bennis, 2007; Van Vugt, 2006).
This article offers a view of leadership inspired by

114. evolutionary theory, which modern scholars increasingly
see as essential for understanding social life (Buss, 2005;
Lawrence & Nohria, 2002; McAdams & Pals, 2006; Nettle,
2006; Schaller, Simpson, & Kenrick, 2006). We argue first
that an evolutionary approach to leadership raises some
important new questions. Next we analyze the implications
of leader–follower relations in early human and nonhuman
societies for theories of leadership. We use (evolutionary)
game theory to model the emergence of leadership; this
model is followed by a hypothetical account of how lead-
ership developed over four stages of evolutionary history.
We conclude with some novel implications of this analysis
for leadership theory, research, and practice.
An Evolutionary Analysis of
Leadership
Researchers define leadership in many ways (Stogdill,
1974). We define it broadly in terms of (a) influencing
individuals to contribute to group goals and (b) coordinat-
Mark Van Vugt, Robert Hogan, and Robert B. Kaiser
contributed equally
to this article.
We are indebted to Rob Kurzban for his intellectual input and to
Robin Dunbar, Dominic Johnson, Muhammad Ghufran Ahmad,
and Peter
Richerson for their comments on previous versions. We also
acknowledge
constructive criticism from William C. Howell.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Mark Van Vugt, Department of Psychology, University of Kent,
Can-
terbury CT2 7NP, United Kingdom; Robert Hogan, Hogan
Assessment

115. Systems, 2622 East 21st Street, Tulsa, OK 74114; or Robert B.
Kaiser,
Kaplan DeVries Inc., 1903-G Ashwood Court, Greensboro, NC
27455.
E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], or
[email protected]
kaplandevries.com
182 April 2008 ● American Psychologist
Copyright 2008 by the American Psychological Association
0003-066X/08/$12.00
Vol. 63, No. 3, 182–196 DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.63.3.182
ing the pursuit of those goals (cf. Bass, 1990; Hollander,
1992; Yukl, 2006). We think pragmatically of leadership as
building a team and guiding it to victory (R. Hogan et al.,
1994). Leadership is both a resource for groups and an
attribute of individuals, but we believe that its primary
significance concerns group performance (R. Hogan &
Kaiser, 2005; Kaiser, Hogan, & Craig, 2008). Given the
fitness and reproductive benefits associated with social
status (Betzig, 1993; Buss, 2005; Chagnon, 1997), the
“selfish-gene” view of evolution (Dawkins, 1976) suggests
that everyone should strive to become a leader. From this
same perspective it is not obvious why some would vol-
untarily subordinate themselves. Researchers rarely con-
sider the origins of followership, but the topic is central to
an evolutionary analysis.
Although Sigmund Freud, William James, William
McDougall, and E. L. Thorndike were enthusiastic Dar-
winians, evolutionary thinking fell out of favor in main-
stream psychology for most of the 20th century (Pinker,

116. 2002). It is now returning in the form of evolutionary
psychology. Evolutionary psychology proposes that the
mind is composed of mechanisms, called psychological
adaptations, that were favored by natural selection because
they solved adaptive problems faced by our ancestors.
Examples of such mechanisms include mating strategies,
cheater detection, status sensitivity, and language (Barkow,
Cosmides, & Tooby, 1992; Buss, 2005; Schaller et al.,
2006; cf. Darwin, 1871).
Evolutionary psychologists use Tinbergen’s (1963)
four functions model to analyze psychological adapta-
tions. This framework first asks about the proximate
functions of a mechanism. For leadership we can ask
what kind of people make good leaders, a question that
interests social, industrial/organizational, and appli ed
psychologists. The second question concerns ontogene-
sis: When do leader–follower patterns emerge in the life
span? Does developmental history predict leadership
propensity? Developmental, personality, and educational
psychologists are interested in these issues. The third
question concerns phylogenesis: When did leadership
emerge in our species, and are there parallels in other
species? This question concerns comparative psycholo-
gists, anthropologists, and zoologists. Finally, there is
the question of the ultimate (evolutionary) functions of a
mechanism, a question that interests evolutionary psy-
chologists and biologists: Did leadership promote the
survival of our forebearers so that it became part of our
evolved psychology?
Each of Tinbergen’s (1963) functions analyzes lead-
ership from a different perspective and should be kept
distinct. For instance, functional theories assume that lead-
ership involves identifying obstacles between groups and

117. their goals and then finding ways to overcome those ob-
stacles (Hackman & Walton, 1986; Lord, 1977). These
theories offer proximate explanations for why particular
leaders are effective in particular circumstances. They can
be complemented with an analysis of the functions of
leadership in ancestral environments, which may explain
why and how the role of leadership evolved in the first
place.
Human Evolution, Group Life, and
Leadership
Humans evolved as group-living animals (Baumeister &
Leary, 1995; D. T. Campbell, 1975; Darwin, 1871). The
genus Homo is estimated to be about 2.5 million years old,
and for most of their existence, hominids lived in small,
kin-based bands on the African savannah, adopting a no-
madic hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Group living allowed our
ancestors to cope with an environment well supplied with
predators but poorly supplied with shelter, water, and food
(Foley, 1997; E. O. Wilson, 1975). Collective foraging and
hunting, food sharing, division of labor, group defenses,
and communal parenting provided a buffer against external
threats (Kenrick, Li, & Butner, 2003). The need for collec-
tive action raises the question of how individuals in social
groups decide what to do and how and when to do it. For
example, finding food would require group members to
decide on the location and timing of foraging activities
(Couzin, Krause, Franks, & Levin, 2005). Such problems
can be solved by a decision-making process in which one
individual takes the initiative and provides direction while
others acquiesce and follow that direction.
Individual and group survival would also have de-
pended on cooperative effort and group cohesion (Bloom,
2000; Darwin, 1871; Sober & Wilson, 1998), which are
inversely related to group size (Dunbar, 2004; Ingham,

118. Levinger, Graves, & Peckham, 1974). Anthropological ev-
idence suggests that life in ancestral groups involved con-
stant conflict, and homicide was common (Chagnon, 1997;
Knauft, 1987; Wrangham & Peterson, 1996). The need for
peacekeeping created a niche for individuals who, with the
support of the group, intervened in conflicts before they
Mark
Van Vugt
183April 2008 ● American Psychologist
consumed the rest of the group (Boehm, 1999; de Waal,
1996).
Conflict and warfare between groups was a major
force in human evolutionary history (Alexander, 1987;
Bloom, 1997; Chagnon, 1997; Diamond, 1997; Keeley,
1996; Van Vugt, De Cremer, & Janssen, 2007; Wade,
2006; Wrangham & Peterson, 1996). Intergroup competi-
tion may have created pressures for the evolution of a range
of groupish traits such as altruism (Axelrod, 1984), empa-
thy (Preston & de Waal, 2002), morality (de Waal, 1996;
Haidt, 2007), social identity (D. T. Campbell, 1965), and
perhaps leadership. Darwin (1871, p. 132) noted, “A tribe
including many members who . . . were always ready to aid
one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common
good, would be victorious over most other tribes, and this
would be natural selection.” Deferring to a central com-
mand enhances group performance during intergroup con-
flict (Keegan, 1994; Sherif, 1966), creating a role for lead-
ership.
Thus, leadership probably has a long evolutionary

119. history. It may have emerged as a solution to specific group
coordination challenges— group movement, intragroup
conflict, and intergroup competition are prime candidates.
Arguably, individual fitness would be enhanced by living
in groups with effective leadership. As a test of Darwin’s
(1871) observation, imagine two groups of early humans
living in the same region and competing for the same
resources. One group is characterized by poor group deci-
sion making and internal discord. The second is character -
ized by efficient group decision making and internal cohe-
sion. Over time, the second group will prevail. In this way,
psychological mechanisms supporting leadership and fol-
lowership could eventually spread through a population.
Adaptations Supporting Leadership and
Followership
A computational analysis of the coordination problem pro-
vides clues to the cognitive processes needed to support
leadership (cf. Cosmides & Tooby, 1992; Pinker, 2002).
The simple decision rule “follow the leader” can be broken
down into several components. First, individuals must per-
ceive the need for coordination. In emergencies, people
coordinate spontaneously (Argote, 1982), which suggests
that humans may have specialized mechanisms for identi-
fying situations requiring coordination. Second, situations
in which threats are not obvious (e.g., a slow decline of
resources) or are novel (e.g., climate change) require mech-
anisms that allow people to plan ahead and anticipate new
dangers, which suggests a role for general intelligence
(Kanazawa, 2004). Third, individuals must decide on a
collective course of action—for instance, whether to attack
another group—and differing opinions offer a prominent
role for leadership. Various specialized decision rules (ma-
jority rules, voting procedures, conformity, and minority
influence) might have emerged to support this aspect of

120. leadership.
Fourth, once a course of action is identified, it is
important to initiate group action. This is facilitated by
individual differences in temperament—assertiveness and
proactivity on the one hand, and patience, self-control, and
acquiescence on the other hand—which ensure that not
everyone is likely to make a first move (Ames & Flynn,
2007; Couzin et al., 2005; Nettle, 2006). A related problem
involves identifying individuals worth following because
they have the requisite competence and expertise. The
solution to this problem requires mechanisms for recogniz-
ing leadership potential, which humans possess in abun-
dance (Littlepage, Robinson, & Reddington, 1997; Lord,
Foti, & DeVader, 1984).
Finally, the problem of maintaining cohesion in
large, dispersed groups could be solved by specialized
mechanisms for communication, perspective taking, and
conflict management. Specific abilities such as theory of
mind, empathy, social identity, and language may have
played a role in maintaining group cohesion (de Waal,
1996; Haidt, 2006, 2007; Van Vugt & Schaller, 2008).
Also, the capacity for imitation and social learning along
with mechanisms that direct attention to higher status
individuals would prompt followers to emulate leaders,
thereby adding to group identification and cohesion
(Chance, 1967; Henrich & Gil-White, 2001). Punish-
ment of free riders (individuals who benefit from group
living without contributing to it) and rule enforcement
provide alternative means for maintaining cohesion and
are also crucial leadership functions (De Cremer & Van
Vugt, 2002).
Thus, specialized mechanisms for planning, commu-
nication, group decision making, competence recognition,

121. social learning, and conflict management would have con-
tributed to the emergence of a specific leadership and
followership psychology in humans. It remains to be seen
whether these evolved mechanisms were specifically de-
Robert
Hogan
184 April 2008 ● American Psychologist
signed to solve leadership problems or whether they were
co-opted for these purposes (cf. Buss, Haselton, Shackel -
ford, Bleske, & Wakefield, 1998).
Game Theory Analysis of Leadership
Game theory was devised during World War II to ana-
lyze strategic interactions among combatants; it has sub-
sequently become an important method for studying
social processes (Gintis, 2007). Evolutionar y psycholo-
gists use game theory to model social behaviors such as
altruism, conformity, and social intelligence (Axelrod,
1984; Schmitt & Pilcher, 2004; D. S. Wilson, Near, &
Miller, 1996). Leadership and followership can also be
modeled, and framing them in terms of game theory does
three things. First it suggests the way leadership and
followership may have evolved. Second, it requires re-
searchers to consider the perspectives of leaders and
followers simultaneously, clarifying the costs and ben-
efits for each. Third, it suggests how individuals whose
interests potentially conflict might work together to
maximize mutual benefits.
Evolutionary game theory (Maynard-Smith, 1982)
views social interaction as a process in which strategies

122. compete in a Darwinian fashion. In these games, the agents
embody strategies that are encoded in genes and, over the
course of evolution, are tested against alternative strategies
and copies of themselves. Genes spread through a popula-
tion depending on the relative superiority of their associ-
ated strategies in evolutionarily relevant situations. By re-
garding leadership and followership as alternative game
strategies, we may be able to tell how well these strategies
fare in competition with each other as well as with alter-
native strategies.
The Leader Game
The game of leader (Van Vugt & Kurzban, 2007) can be
used to model the leader–follower coordination problem.
Table 1 depicts one version of this game, which can be
illustrated using an example from our ancestral environ-
ment. Note that although we use the simplest case—a
dyadic game—the analysis can be easily extended to a
coalition of actors or to multiple coalitions (Maynard-
Smith, 1982). Also note that the payoffs represent units of
reproductive success (the currency in evolution). Further,
the absolute value of these points matters less than the
ranking of preferences across the four game cells.
Suppose Pat and Jamie are both dehydrated and that
Waterholes A and B contain water. Whichever waterhole
they choose, they must travel together for protection. How-
ever, Pat prefers Waterhole A—perhaps because he or she
knows how to get there—and this advantage gives him or
her an outcome of �3. Jamie prefers Waterhole B—it is
closer to his or her family—and this advantage gives him or
her an outcome of �3. The payoffs are such that both Pat
and Jamie are better off going to the same waterhole, yet
this gives one of them a relative advantage (�2). The
asymmetrical payoffs in the leader game make it attractive

123. for players to take the lead. By coordinating on their
preferred hole, the leader gets a relatively better payoff
than the follower, which may ultimately be paid out in
greater reproductive success. Note that this game repre-
sents any social coordination problem—for example,
where to hunt, whether to fight or take a nap.
The coordinating cells (A, A or B, B; see Table 1) are
the equilibrium points of the game, an important concept in
game theory (Gintis, 2007). Natural selection will favor
adaptations that lead to equilibrium—where neither party
can obtain better payoffs by switching strategies—and this
is relevant to the emergence of leadership and followership
because leadership can lead to equilibrium. If people play
the game simultaneously, most pairs fail to coordinate
because each will opt for the leader role (Van Vugt &
Kurzban, 2007). However, if they play the game sequen-
tially and one person takes the lead by moving first or
indicating a preference (e.g., for Waterhole A), then most
Table 1
The Leader Game
Jamie
Pat
Waterhole A Waterhole B
Waterhole A 3, 1* 0, 0
Waterhole B 0, 0 1, 3*
Note. Payoffs are for Pat and Jamie, respectively; Waterhole A
and Water-
hole B represent alternative game strategies (underpinned by
gene alleles).

124. Game equilibria are indicated with asterisks.
Robert B.
Kaiser
185April 2008 ● American Psychologist
pairs coordinate.1 This analysis suggests that in species that
frequently encounter coordination problems, adaptations
for leadership and followership are likely to emerge. In
ancestral humans, these adaptations would have been sup-
ported by an increasingly sophisticated cognitive infra-
structure involving theory of mind, language, and culture,
with implications for the scale, complexity, and style of
leadership.
Note that this model makes no assumptions about the
design features of leadership and followership adaptations.
For instance, leader and follower roles may be adopted
flexibly by the same individual because in some cases it
pays to be a leader and in others to be a follower. This is
consistent with a conditional strategies model (West-Eber-
hard, 2003), which assumes that organisms adopt strategies
based on specific environmental and/or developmental in-
puts (see also Gangestad & Simpson, 2000, on strategic
pluralism)—for instance, being the firstborn in the family
or the tallest in the class might dispose people to assume
leadership roles in later life (Simonton, 1994). On the other
hand, natural selection may have coded leader and follower
strategies in a more static fashion, so that populations
reached equilibrium using strategies maintained through
frequency-dependent selection (Maynard-Smith, 1982;
D. S. Wilson et al., 1996). Such models suggest that pop-
ulations contain individuals with genotypes predisposing

125. them to either leadership or followership.2 As with sex
ratios, an increase in the frequency of leader genotypes in
a population reduces the payoffs for this strategy— because
many would-be leaders compete and fail to coordinate—
thus selecting against leader genotypes. The distinction
between conditional versus pure strategies is analogous to
the distinction between situational versus trait theories of
leadership (Van Vugt, 2006).
The Riddle of Following
An important implication of the leader game concerns the
origins of followership. Coordinated action serves the in-
terests of both leaders and followers, but the payoffs for
leaders are relatively better because they get benefits when
others adopt their goals (e.g., status and prestige; Buss,
2005; Henrich & Gil-White, 2001). Because natural selec-
tion is based on relative (rather than absolute) fitness, this
seems to make followership puzzling. Perhaps followers
simply make the best of a bad situation when they cannot
be leaders themselves (Dawkins, 1976). The mind may be
designed to evaluate one’s relative place in a hierarchy and
to evaluate the costs and benefits of competing for higher
status. Such a mechanism is implicit in the pecking order
phenomenon, first observed in chickens (Schjelderup-
Ebbe, 1935), which promotes stability over conflict in
hierarchical social groups. If the calculated costs of com-
peting for status outweigh the benefits, then followership
would be a rational choice that would free time and energy
for other pursuits (Gangestad & Simpson, 2000). Perhaps
to become leaders themselves someday, followers need to
defer to leaders to observe how they lead (Henrich &
Gil-White, 2001). Coordination benefits are also negotia-
ble, and followers can improve their relative benefits i f they
engage in collective bargaining (Boehm, 1993, 1999).

126. There is a final intriguing possibility. Although the
payoffs for followers may be less than those for leaders,
coordination leads to higher aggregate-level payoffs (in
Table 1, an aggregate of �4 points vs. 0 points). Thus,
groups with an effective leader–follower structure would
have higher aggregate fitness. Under the right conditions
(discussed in Sober & Wilson, 1998; D. S. Wilson, Van
Vugt, & O’Gorman, 2008), leadership might create enough
variation between groups for natural selection to operate. It
is possible that well-led groups are so much better at group
hunting, food sharing, and warfare that the relatively lower
within-group payoffs for followers are compensated for by
between-groups fitness benefits. That is, followers may not
be as well off as their leaders, but they are better off than
individuals in poorly led groups.3 The interplay between
individual- and group-level selection pressures yields po-
tentially interesting implications for leadership. Multilevel
selection models have provided novel insights into such
social traits as culture and morality (Haidt, 2006, 2007;
D. S. Wilson et al., 2008).
A Natural History of Leadership
In this section, we present a hypothetical description of
how leadership practices evolved over the course of non-
human to human primate history. Such scenarios always
risk being just-so stories because their key assumptions are
difficult to verify. Nonetheless, clues embedded in the
relevant literatures can be used to estimate the time frame
and structure of social organizations that promoted changes
in leadership practices in human societies. We identify four
nominal stages (summarized in Table 2).
Stage 1: Prehuman Leadership
The phylogenetic evidence suggests that preadaptations for

127. leadership precede primates. Simple leader–follower struc-
tures for coordinating group movement have been observed
in various social species (Bloom, 2000; Boinski & Garber,
2000; Couzin et al., 2005; E. O. Wilson, 1975). For exam-
ple, the waggle dance of honeybees recruits other hive
members to visit food resources and can be construed as
leadership. The foraging patterns of many insects, the
swimming patterns of schools of fish, and the flying pat-
terns of migrating birds also resemble leader–follower re-
1 Yet, the greater the asymmetry in payoffs, the longer it takes
to
establish coordination (Van Vugt & Kurzban, 2007).
2 Arvey and colleagues have conducted twin studies and
estimate that
about a third of the variance in holding a professional
leadership job is due
to genetic factors, which provides partial support for frequency-
dependent
selection (Arvey, Rotundo, Johnson, Zhang, & McGue, 2006;
Arvey,
Zhang, Avolio, & Kreuger, 2007).
3 Evolutionary models demonstrate that leadership substantially
in-
creases variability in outcomes between groups (Richerson &
Boyd,
2006). For instance, technological innovation, education, and
quality of
life are far greater for citizens in modern democracies than for
those in
dictatorships, totalitarian regimes, and corrupt societies
(Bloom, 1997;
Diamond, 1997; Lawrence & Nohria, 2002; Transparency
International,

128. 2005).
186 April 2008 ● American Psychologist
lationships. These examples suggest that species lacking
complex cognitive capacities can display follower behavior
using a decision rule as simple as “follow the one who
moves first.”
Group movement guided by leadership is also docu-
mented in nonhuman primates. Hamadryas baboons in
Ethiopia sleep in large groups on cliffs (Kummer, 1968).
They leave the cliffs in the morning to forage in open areas.
One individual, usually an adult male, will move a few
meters in a particular direction and sometimes the whole
group will follow. Sometimes, however, there are no fol-
lowers, and the would-be leader returns to the group. The
bidding starts again until the rest finally choose to follow
(Kummer, 1968). This reflects the two key decisions in the
leader game: the choice to initiate and the choice to follow.
Chimpanzees, our closest genetic relatives, often dis-
play peacekeeping, another response to a coordination
problem solved by leadership. The following incident from
the Arnhem Zoo chimpanzee colony was reported by de
Waal (1996):
A quarrel between Mama and Spin got out of hand and ended in
fighting and biting. Numerous apes rushed up to the two
warring
females and joined in the fray. A huge knot of fighting,
screaming
apes rolled around in the sand, until Luit [the alpha male] leapt
in

129. and literally beat them apart. He did not choose sides in the
conflict . . . instead anyone who continued to act received a
blow
from him. (p. 129)
De Waal (1996) argued that this peacekeeping behavior
constituted leadership because it was endorsed by the entire
group.
Leadership has also been observed during aggressive
encounters between groups of wild chimpanzees (Boehm,
1999; Wrangham & Peterson, 1996). Boehm (1999) re-
ported a conflict between neighboring chimpanzee groups
in Gombe, Tanzania, who met on a borderland in the forest.
The alpha male from one group charged the other group
and the rest followed him, prompting the other group to
retreat into its home range.
These examples support the claim that adaptations for
leadership and followership tend to evolve in social spe-
cies. This does not necessarily explain why leadership
evolved in humans; different selection pressures shaped the
adaptation of different species, and humans have many
unique adaptations (Buss, 2005; Darwin, 1871). Nonethe-
less, the continuity of evidence across species makes it at
least plausible that the selection pressures that gave rise to
leadership in nonhumans resemble those in humans.
Stage 2: Band and Tribal Leadership
It is likely that leadership was further shaped by the unique
evolutionary history of humans. One can think about modal
patterns of human leadership as evolving through three
stages. Each stage represents a change in the scale and
complexity of social organization and resource distribution
that had implications for the relationship between leaders

130. and followers.
The first (and by far the longest) phase extended from
the emergence of early humans around 2.5 million years
ago until the end of the last ice age, about 13,000 years ago
(Diamond, 1997; Wade, 2006). During this stage, the Pleis-
tocene era, humans lived in semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer
bands and clans consisting of 50 –150 mostly genetically
related individuals (Dunbar, 2004). Experts agree that mod-
ern hunter-gatherers—for example, the !Kung San of the
Kalahari Desert, the Yanomamo of the Amazon River
basin, the Inuit of the Arctic coasts, and the Aborigines in
Northern Australia—provide our best model for human
social organization in this stage, often referred to as the
environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA; Bowlby,
1969; Foley, 1997). Extrapolating from hunter-gatherer
evidence, we can infer that living conditions in the EEA
were fundamentally egalitarian, with no formalized leader-
ship role. The best hunters and warriors, so-called Big
Men, exercise disproportionate influence on group decision
making, but their power is limited to their domain of
expertise and accumulated degree of trust (Boehm, 1999;
Table 2
A Natural History of Leadership
Stage Time period Society Group size
Leadership
structure Leader
Leader–follower
relations
1 �2.5 million years
ago

131. Prehuman Any size Situational or
dominance
hierarchy
Any individual
or alpha
Democratic or
despotic
2 2.5 million to 13,000
years ago
Hominid bands,
clans, tribes
Dozens to
hundreds
Informal,
situational,
prestige
based
Big man, head
man
Egalitarian and
consensual
3 13,000 to 250 years
ago
Chiefdoms, kingdoms,
warlord societies

132. Thousands Formal,
centralized,
hereditary
Chiefs, kings,
warlords
Hierarchical and
unilateral
4 250 years ago to the
present
Nations, states,
businesses
Thousands
to millions
Structural,
centralized,
democratic
Heads of state,
managers,
executives
Hierarchical but
participatory
187April 2008 ● American Psychologist
Chagnon, 1997; Diamond, 1997). For example, regarding
how the Mae Enga in New Guinea make warfare decisions,

133. Meggitt (1977, p. 76) noted,
The men who initiated the conference, or their spokesmen,
briefly
indicate their view of the clan’s position and the action they
favor.
They may argue that now is the time to launch a full-scale
attack
on the neighboring clan with the aim of occupying a specific
section of its territory. The major Big Man [the leader] then
solicits responses from the audience. Ideally, everyone present
has a voice and being among his own clansmen can speak with
complete freedom. The task of the Big Man at this stage is to
ensure that all have a chance to offer their opinions and facts in
full and to make no attempt to cut off any but obviously
irrelevant
speeches.
If the Big Men try to dominate their groups—and they
do—they meet fierce resistance from the others, who can
collaborate to control them. Dominance hierarchies are the
norm in primate groups; for early humans, collaboration
among subordinates reversed this dominance hierarchy and
resulted in a democratic leadership style that may have
existed for nearly 2.5 million years (Boehm, 1993). We
believe that the EEA reflects our natural way of thinking
about and responding to leadership, and this has implica-
tions for modern leadership practice. Modern societies still
evaluate leadership against egalitarian “hunter-gatherer”
standards such as fairness, integrity, competence, good
judgment, generosity, humility, and concern for others, and
they regard such attributes as dominance and selfishness as
the antithesis of leadership (Den Hartog, House, Hanges,
Ruiz-Quintanilla, & Dorfman, 1999; Dirks & Ferrin, 2002;
Epitropaki & Martin, 2004; Lord et al., 1984; Nicholson,
2005; Van Vugt, Hart, Jepson, & De Cremer, 2004).

134. Homo sapiens emerged roughly 200,000 years ago
(Dunbar, 2004); modern humans’ increased cognitive ca-
pacities supporting theory of mind, language, and culture
may have enabled bands to merge into larger tribal struc-
tures—likely in response to the pressure of intergroup
warfare (Alexander, 1987; Bloom, 1997; Chagnon, 1997;
Diamond, 1997; Keeley, 1996; Van Vugt et al., 2007;
Wade, 2006; Wrangham & Peterson, 1996). The new hi-
erarchical authority structures were nonetheless inherently
democratic, despite more elaborate social structures and
larger groups (Boehm, 1999; Johnson & Earle, 2000; Rich-
erson & Boyd, 2006).
Stage 3: Chiefs, Kings, and Warlords
Our evolved leadership psychology may not have changed
fundamentally since the EEA, but our social structures
changed dramatically beginning with the development of
agriculture at the end of the last ice age some 13,000 years
ago. Agriculture and dependable food supplies enabled
groups to settle and populations to grow exponentially. For
the first time in human history, communities accumulated
surplus resources, and leaders played a key role in their
redistribution (Diamond, 1997; Johnson & Earle, 2000). As
communities grew, so did the potential for within- and
between-groups conflict. Leaders acquired extra power to
deal with such threats, which resulted in more formalized
authority structures that paved the way for the first chief-
doms and kingdoms (Betzig, 1993; Johnson & Earle,
2000). In their expanded role, leaders could siphon off
resources and use them to create groups of dedicated fol -
lowers, the cultural elite (Padilla, Hogan, & Kaiser, 2007),
and sometimes they established hereditary leadership. The
payoff for leaders increased substantially during this pe-

135. riod, attracting shrewd, resourceful individuals to these
positions for selfish reasons that are reflected in these
leaders’ astonishing relative reproductive success (Betzig,
1993).4 In contrast to hunter-gatherers, families in settled
communities found it difficult to move away from or de-
fend themselves against these exploitative leaders.
The inevitability of intergroup conflict led to the rise
of warlords and soldier classes, tough, aggressive men who
built coalitions of followers united in the common purpose
of extracting resources by force. Warlord societies are the
norm in preindustrialized societies such as medieval France
(Johnson & Earle, 2000). A substantial proportion of mod-
ern humanity, including those living in parts of Asia and
much of Africa, the Middle East, and South America, still
live under these oppressive conditions (Transparency In-
ternational, 2005). When centralized governments break
down, warlords inevitably emerge (e.g., Iraq or Afghani-
stan). Warlords are leaders—they have followers whose
loyalty is predicated on the possibility of gaining resources,
privilege, and prestige in the new regime (Padilla et al.,
2007). Warlords use their power to dominate resources and
advance their personal interests, agendas that conflict with
our evolved leadership psychology.
Stage 4: State and Business Leadership
The fourth leadership period corresponds roughly to the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution some 250 years ago.
Communities merged into states and nations, and large
businesses developed, all of which had implications for
leadership practices. Citizens of states and employees in
organizations are relatively free from the predations of their
leaders and may defect to other states or organizations.
This freedom shifts the balance of power away from lead-
ers and produces conditions more akin, but not equivalent,

136. to the reverse dominance hierarchy of the EEA (Boehm,
1993). In the early stages of the Industrial Revolution,
however, and in developing economies today, workers
were almost slaves. Class warfare is real, but in the devel -
oped world it is moderated and its effects are muted com-
pared with the situation in parts of the world still dominated
by warlords (Transparency International, 2005). Modern
academic discussions of leadership almost exclusively con-
cern social arrangements in the industrialized world (Wiel-
kiewicz & Stelzner, 2005).
Although modern bureaucratic arrangements make
business sense, they may be constrained by our evolved
leadership psychology. Human beings are not fungible;
4 For example, population geneticists estimate that 8% of the
men
living in southern Asia today are descended from the warlord
Genghis
Khan (Xue et al., 2005; also reported in Wade, 2006).
188 April 2008 ● American Psychologist
certain social arrangements are more compatible with hu-
man nature than others. For example, large organizations
seem to perform better when organized in units roughly the
size of hunter-gatherer groups with minimal status distinc-
tions between superiors and subordinates (Nicholson,
2000). Leadership practice should consider these con-
straints.
Summary
Cognitive preadaptations for leadership—for example, so-

137. lutions to simple coordination problems—probably
evolved long before humans. Leadership became more
refined during the EEA in response to challenges associated
with the growing size and complexity of groups and the
inevitability of conflict both within and between groups.
The development of cognitive capacities—notably lan-
guage, theory of mind, and culture—facilitated large-scale
leadership. Hunter-gatherer data suggest that leadership in
the EEA was consensual, democratic, and transitory. The
formalized leadership structures that emerged after the
agricultural revolution are novel and potentially conflict
with our evolved leadership psychology. The Industrial
Revolution helped free people from tyrannical warlords,
but the scale, complexity, and form of contemporary orga-
nizations pose novel challenges to our innate leadership
psychology.
Implications of an Evolutionary
Analysis for Leadership Theory and
Practice
In this final section, we note implications of the foregoing
discussion for leadership theory, research, and practice.
Some of these implications can be derived from other
models of leadership, for example, psychodynamic or so-
cial exchange theories. Yet, any proximate theory of lead-
ership must ultimately turn to evolution to explain its own
assumptions (e.g., why people are driven by sexual in-
stincts or motivated by fair outcomes). Moreover, an evo-
lutionary framework seems to generate a wider variety of
implications than other theoretical perspectives, as well as
some unique implications.
Understanding Followership
The leadership literature overwhelmingly focuses on the
people in charge (cf. Hollander, 1992; Kaiser et al., 2008),

138. but an evolutionary view highlights the importance of
followership. The psychology of followership is more com-
plicated and interesting than that of leadership. First, most
people are followers, so there is, in principle, more to talk
about. Second, and more interesting, it is not obvious why
people agree to subordinate themselves when this may put
them at an evolutionary disadvantage (Dawkins, 1976). We
suggest that followership emerged in response to specific
ancestral problems that were best solved through collective
effort coordinated by a leader–follower structure that en-
hanced individual and group survival. This implies that
leader–follower patterns will emerge more quickly and
effectively in circumstances that mirror adaptive problems
(e.g., internal group conflict, external threats).
This hypothesis has not been tested explicitly; how -
ever, it is consistent with prior findings. People are more
likely to follow under conditions of threat—for example,
during natural disasters or intergroup conflicts (Baumeister,
Chesner, Senders, & Tice, 1989; Hamblin, 1958). Van
Vugt and De Cremer (1999) showed that leaderless groups
negotiate internal conflicts less effectively in times of cri -
ses. In the famous Robbers’ Cave experiment, when faced
with team competition, the two groups of schoolboys
promptly chose team leaders (Sherif, 1966). Followers also
prefer different leaders depending on the problem they
face. U.S. voters tend to choose hawkish presidents when
threatened by war (McCann, 1992) and to show an in-
creased preference for charismatic leaders and a decreased
preference for participative leaders when reminded of their
mortality (Cohen, Solomon, Maxfield, Pyszczynski, &
Greenberg, 2004). Similarly, CEO charisma is positively
related to organizational effectiveness only under condi -
tions of environmental uncertainty (Waldman, Ramirez,
House, & Puranam, 2001).

139. Another implication of our analysis is that leadership
may be unnecessary and even resented when people face
relatively simple or routine coordination problems. This is
consistent with the literature on substitutes for leadership
(Kerr & Jermier, 1978) and self-managing teams (Morge-
son, 2005); exercising unneeded leadership can actually
undermine team performance (Haslam et al., 1998). Here
lies an important leadership lesson: Except for certain
well-defined situations, people will perform better if they
are left alone.
The leadership literature could benefit by the addition
of studies investigating follower motives in different situ-
ations, the personality correlates of good followers, and the
ways in which followers influence leaders (cf. Altemeyer,
1981; Hollander & Offermann, 1990; Wayne & Ferris,
1990). We predict that followership styles are at least as
variable and differentiated as leadership styles (cf. Bocci -
aletti, 1995). An evolutionary view of leadership empha-
sizes followership and is a promising perspective for theory
and research on followers.
Who Shall Lead?
Our analysis explains why certain individual differences
are consistently associated with leadership. The leader
game predicts that first movers in coordination situations
are most likely to become leaders, and this prediction is
borne out in the literature. A recent meta-analysis indicated
that of the Big Five personality dimensions, extraversion is
the most highly related to leadership emergence and effec-
tiveness ratings (Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002).
Moreover, the ambition component of extraversion, rather
than the sociability component, accounts for this relation-
ship (cf. J. Hogan & Holland, 2003): Primary studies report
correlations between leadership and such narrower band

140. dimensions as assertiveness, boldness, initiative, need for
achievement, proactivity, and risk taking (e.g., Ames &
Flynn, 2007; Bass, 1990; House & Aditya, 1997), which all
189April 2008 ● American Psychologist
increase the propensity to move first. In the cognitive
domain, people who quickly recognize that situations re-
quire coordination are more likely to become leaders. This
might explain the relationship between general intelligence
and leadership (Judge, Ilies, & Colbert, 2004) and why
intelligence is a universally desired characteristic of leaders
(Den Hartog et al., 1999; Lord et al., 1986). We expect that
as coordination tasks become more complex, cognitive
factors will become a better predictor of leadership (cf.
Jacques, 1989).
Our analysis also suggests that an ability to estimate
the payoffs for followers is necessary for leaders to be
influential. This would explain the empirical links between
leadership and social intelligence, political skill, empathy,
perspective taking, and nonverbal sensitivity (R. Hogan &
Hogan, 2002; Kellett, Humphrey, & Sleeth, 2002; Zaccaro,
Gilbert, Thor, & Mumford, 1991). Bass (1990) noted, “The
leader must be able to know what followers want, when
they want it, and what prevents them from getting what
they want” (p. 168). This also suggests that the more
complex the group, the more socially astute the leader
needs to be.
Another implication of our analysis is that good lead-
ers should be perceived as both competent and benevolent
because followers want leaders who can acquire resources
and then are willing to share them. The first claim is

141. supported by research showing that task expertise corre-
lates with leadership (Bass, 1990) and that low expertise
disqualifies individuals from leadership positions (Hol -
lander & Offermann, 1990). Leaders’ willingness to share
is reflected in such traits as trustworthiness, fairness, gen-
erosity, and self-sacrifice— universally desirable leader at-
tributes (Den Hartog et al., 1999; Dirks & Ferrin, 2002;
Epitropaki & Martin, 2004; Hardy & Van Vugt, 2006; Lord
et al., 1984; Nicholson, 2005).
Finally, an evolutionary analysis explains why lead-
ership correlates with such factors as age, height, weight,
and health—something not explained by existing leader-
ship theory. Given the risks associated with following,
people should prefer leaders who can benefit the group. In
ancestral environments, having specialized knowledge—
the location of waterholes during a drought, for instance—
may have been vital (Boehm, 1999). Older individuals are
more likely to have specialized knowledge, and age should
therefore be correlated with leadership. Group movement
in nomadic species—for example, baboons and ele-
phants—is often decided by the older, not the most domi-
nant, troop member (Dunbar, 2004). Today, age and lead-
ership are related in roles that require specialized
knowledge, for example, directors on governing boards of
public corporations (Gandossy & Sonnenfeld, 2004). When
group activities require strength and stamina (group de-
fense in ancestral times, grueling travel schedules in mod-
ern business), physical indices such as energy level and
health should correlate with leadership (D. P. Campbell,
2002; Nicholson, 2000; Van Vugt, 2006). Not surprisingly,
modern voters prefer physically fit political candidates
(Simonton, 1994). It is interesting that seemingly irrelevant
physical factors like height predict leadership status today
(Judge & Cable, 2004). In ancestral times, taller leaders

142. may have been more effective peacekeepers within groups
and more intimidating foes to rival groups.
Situational Accounts of Leadership
Our evolutionary model provides deeper insight into situ-
ational theories of leadership. Although there are individual
differences in leadership propensity (Ilies, Gerhardt, & Le;
2004; Judge et al., 2002), distributed leadership was prob-
ably advantageous in ancestral environments (e.g., the best
hunter leads the hunting party, the wisest elder resolves
internal conflicts, the fiercest warrior leads the fight; see
Boehm, 1999). This suggests that leadership and follower-
ship are flexible strategies elicited by the interaction be-
tween certain evolved decision rules and specific environ-
mental inputs (cf. Gangestad & Simpson, 2000). Consider
the distinction between task- and people-oriented leader-
ship (Bass, 1990; Yukl, 2006). Our model suggests that
task leadership emerges when the interests of leaders and
followers converge, for example, when both parties prefer
Waterhole A and the decision is how to get there. People-
oriented leadership should emerge when interests diverge
and leaders must persuade people to follow them. This
logic provides an explanation for proximate models of
leadership such as Fiedler’s (1967) contingency theory and
House’s (1971) path-goal theory.
Vroom’s prescriptive model of when to apply auto-
cratic (hierarchical) versus more participative (egalitarian)
decision-making styles (Vroom & Jago, 1978) can be sim-
ilarly understood. In emergencies, the interests of leaders
and followers converge, and followers readily defer to the
decisions of a single individual (Guetzkow & Simon, 1955;
Keegan, 1994). However, when the interests of leaders and
followers diverge, leaders must encourage participation to
ensure acceptance of the decision. Consequently, leader-
ship styles can vary somewhat between organizations, na-

143. tions, and cultures depending on the specific challenges of
their physical and social environments (Hofstede, 1980;
Van De Vliert, 2006), and these differences can be trans-
mitted culturally from one generation to the next (Richer-
son & Boyd, 2006). Participative styles prevail in the
Netherlands and Australia, where harsh natural conditions
forced authorities to share power with citizens, creating a
strong egalitarian ethos (cf. Den Hartog et al., 1999). Econ-
omists have recently used game theory to model the origins
of modern democracy versus dictatorship and reached es-
sentially the same conclusion: Democracies emerge when
authorities must make concessions to avoid losing power
(Acemoglu & Robinson, 2006).
The Role of Dominance
Our analysis suggests that there are two forms of group
hierarchies. The first is the dominance hierarchy that results
from competition for scarce resources, in which the stron-
gest and most determined individual prevails and controls
group resources and activities (Schjelderup-Ebbe, 1935;
E. O. Wilson, 1975). The second form of hierarchy
emerges by consensus when hierarchical structures are
perceived to benefit the group. These two forms offer very
190 April 2008 ● American Psychologist
different accounts of leadership. The dominance model
characterizes species in which alpha males control group
activities and others are intimidated or forced to acquiesce.
However, human hierarchies are much flatter and often
based on prestige rather than dominance (Henrich & Gil-
White, 2001). The emergence of prestige-based hierarchies
was pivotal and probably increased our capacity to function
in highly coordinated units.

144. Nonetheless, dominance is part of our primate heri-
tage, and there is always a risk that leaders will try to
coerce followers (Betzig, 1993; Boehm, 1993; Padilla et
al., 2007). This makes leader–follower relations inherently
ambivalent. There are at least two forces reinforcing this
ambivalence. First, many with leadership aspirations do not
become leaders (R. Hogan, 2006, chap. 5). Accession to
leadership is a Darwinian process; through a series of
events influenced by circumstances and luck, one person
prevails. The losers join the ranks of the followers and
scheme to gain power in the future. Second, dominance
facilitates leadership functions such as enforcing rules
within the group and presenting a formidable opposition to
enemies during warfare. Yet dominant leaders can also
bully their own group for personal gain; obviously, follow -
ers do not want to be exploited and must find ways to
protect their interests. Anthropological data show that in
most societies, people fiercely resist domination and often
band together to curb the power of their leaders (Boehm,
1993).
This tension probably created an evolutionary “arms
race” between the strategies of leaders and followers to
gain control. The ethnographic and psychological litera-
tures reveal several decision rules that leaders use to in-
crease power. For instance, leaders can redistribute re-
sources fairly and generously—this is a universally desired
leadership attribute (Brown, 1991; Den Hartog et al., 1999;
Hardy & Van Vugt, 2006; Tyler & Lind, 1992). Leaders
can use an external group threat to consolidate their power
(Cohen et al., 2004; Padilla et al., 2007). Leaders can also
“buy” support through bribery—some followers will col-
lude with authoritarian leaders if the price is right (Alte-
meyer, 1981; Padilla et al., 2007). Nepotism and cronyism
are also common strategies for retaining power in humans

145. (Gandossy & Sonnenfeld, 2004) and chimpanzees (de
Waal, 1982). Finally, leaders can impose ideologies to
justify their privileged position. Throughout history, lead-
ers have used religion to maintain power—for example, the
“divine” right of kings—and turned their rule into a hered-
itary position to benefit their offspring (Betzig, 1993; Di -
amond, 1997; Johnson & Earle, 2000).
Various decision rules may have evolved to enable
individuals to benefit from followership without being ex-
ploited by leaders. Boehm (1993, 1999) described several
such “leveling mechanisms.” One is to accept leadership
only in areas where leaders have expertise. A second mech-
anism is to use gossip, ridicule, elections, and other forms
of public scrutiny to control leaders. In hunter-gatherer
bands, if a chief misbehaves, he is publicly criticized, and
if he tries to give commands, he is often rebuffed (Freeman,
1970, cited in Boehm, 1999). Overbearing leaders can also
simply be disobeyed. Freeman (1970, cited in Boehm,
1999) reported that followers ignore Philippine chiefs who
issue commands rather than suggestions. Disobedience is
effective because leaders are sanctioned without being re-
placed, which could disrupt and weaken the group. Reluc-
tant followers can also ostracize exploitative leaders. Os -
tracism usually has severe consequences for the ostracized
(Bloom, 1997; Williams & Sommer, 1997). Moore (1972,
cited in Boehm, 1999) reported that when an aggressive
tribal leader starts a feud without group support, the other
tribesmen can declare him no longer one of their own and
allow rival groups to kill him with impunity. Followers can
also desert despotic leaders. Van Vugt et al. (2004) found
that attrition rates were four times greater in autocratically
led groups than in democratically led groups. Finally, fol -
lowers can overthrow or even kill an overbearing leader.
These leveling mechanisms are critical for the welfare of

146. followers and groups. Historical evidence suggests that
tyrants and dictators emerge whenever followers are unable
to protect themselves against exploitative leaders (Betzig,
1993; Padilla et al., 2007).
The Mismatch Hypothesis
Climate surveys routinely show that 60%–70% of employ-
ees in most organizations report that the most stressful
aspect of their jobs is their immediate boss (R. Hogan,
2006, chap. 6). Further, the failure rate of managers in
corporate America is 50% (R. Hogan & Kaiser, 2005).
These findings raise the possibility that there may be a
mismatch between the evolved leadership psychology of
humans and the practice of leadership in the modern world
(Van Vugt, Johnson, Kaiser, & O’Gorman, in press).5 Our
leadership psychology evolved over two million plus years,
during which time people lived in small, kin-based egali-
tarian bands in which leadership was informal, consensual,
and situational. This psychology may still affect the way
we respond to leaders. The challenge for modern organi-
zations is either to work with or work around the limita-
tions of this psychology.
Situational versus structural leadership.
Leadership in the ancestral environment was fluid, distrib-
uted, and situational. The individual most qualified for the
task at hand had the greatest influence on collective actions.
Rarely would one individual coordinate all group activity
and make all group decisions. However, with bureaucracy
and formal leadership roles, one individual—the leader—is
responsible for managing all these functions (Weber,
1947). Accordingly, leadership versatility—the ability to
perform multiple, even competing, leadership roles—is
highly associated with executive effectiveness (Kaiser,
Lindberg, & Craig, 2007; Kaplan & Kaiser, 2006). How-
ever, few leaders have the range of skills needed to perform

147. a wide array of such duties (Kaiser & Kaplan, 2007;
5 Mismatch is an evolution-informed concept that refers to the
fact
that traits that were adaptive in ancestral environments might no
longer
produce adaptive behaviors in modern environments, especially
when
these environments dramatically differ, as is the case with those
of modern
humans.
191April 2008 ● American Psychologist
Lombardo & Eichinger, 2000). This may account for the
high failure rate of senior managers. It may also explain
recent interest in the notion of distributed leadership—the
idea that leadership is a process that can be shared (Gronn,
2002; Pearce & Conger, 2003).
Relative power. Boehm’s (1993, 1999) concept
of the reverse dominance hierarchy suggests that the power
of ancestral leaders derived from legitimization from fol -
lowers (cf. Hollander, 1992). In modern industrial and
bureaucratic organizations, however, leaders are appointed
by and accountable to managers senior to them in the
organizational hierarchy, and subordinates have little
power to sanction their bosses. Modern organizational eth-
nographers report that most managers implicitly understand
that pleasing superiors is more important to career success
than is pleasing subordinates (Sayles, 1993). This may be
one source of the alienation and disengagement felt by
today’s workforce. It is noteworthy that executives are
more likely to succeed if subordinates are included in the

148. selection process (Sessa, Kaiser, Taylor, & Campbell,
1998).
In the EEA, there were minimal status distinctions
between leaders and followers (Boehm, 1999; Nicholson,
2005). However, in modern American corporations, aver-
age salaries for CEOs are 179 times the average pay for
workers (“Business Bigwigs,” 2007). Research shows that
power increases the potential for abuse (Kipnis, 1972) and
decreases the ability to empathize with subordinates (Ga-
linski, Magee, Inesi, & Gruenfeld, 2006). The highly asym-
metric payoffs for modern business leaders may encourage
a kind of leadership that followers naturally resent.
Small, homogeneous groups versus large,
heterogeneous groups. The small hunter-gatherer
societies of our ancestral past were essentially extended
families. Members knew each other, understood their in-
terdependencies, and had a genetic investment in one an-
other’s fate (Dunbar, 2004; Hamilton, 1963). These groups
were held together by kinship and norms of reciprocity and
fairness, which require that individuals depend on others
for cooperation and return the favor in kind (Trivers, 1971).
Leaders played a role in enforcing these norms by punish-
ing cheaters and free riders. The need for such leadership
activities is probably greater today, when organizational
members are unrelated and the size of corporations makes
identification with the group difficult. It is interesting that
social identity research indicates that transformational lead-
ership works by influencing followers to identify with the
group and to internalize group aspirations (Shamir, House,
& Arthur, 1993; Van Knippenberg, Van Knippenberg, De
Cremer, & Hogg, 2004; Van Vugt & De Cremer, 1999).
Transformational leaders change the way followers see
themselves—from self-interested individuals to members
of a larger group, almost as if they are kin— by modeling

149. collective commitment, emphasizing the similarity of
group members, and reinforcing collective goals, shared
values, and common interests. However, transformational
leaders are the exception, not the rule, in the modern world
(Bass, 1985; Burns, 1978).
Modern citizens may feel more alienated and discon-
nected from their employers and other social organizations
since the Industrial Revolution (Durkheim, 1897). Arendt
(1951) suggested that these feelings of alienation promote
apathy and make followers feel powerless to influence
social institutions, including leadership. Arendt further ar -
gued that the alienation and indifference felt by citizens
paved the way for the totalitarian regimes that swept into
power in Germany, Russia, and Italy in the early 20th
century.
Effective organizations such as Toyota, GoreTex, and
Virgin are designed and structured in a way that resembles
hunter-gatherer bands. For instance, these companies del-
egate decision making to managers far down the chain of
command so that the size of functional units approximates
that of a hunter-gatherer band (50 –150 individuals; Dun-
bar, 2004; Nicholson, 2000). In addition, decentralized
forms of organizing are associated with greater employee
morale, involvement, and commitment (Likert, 1967),
which in turn are associated with greater productivity,
financial results, and customer satisfaction (Harter,
Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002).
Leadership prototypes. The ancestral envi-
ronment may have shaped our leadership prototypes (Lord
et al., 1984) so that we have a natural preference for
persons who match these implicitly desired characteristics.
Evolved prototypes can be inferred from characteristics

150. that are both prominent among hunter-gatherer Big Men
and endorsed across industrial societies. We have already
discussed the importance of certain physiological traits
such as height. Strong candidates for psychological leader
traits include integrity— good leaders are trustworthy; per-
sistence— good leaders are models of steadiness in the face
of adversity; humility— good leaders are modest and put
the good of the group ahead of personal ambitions; com-
petence— good leaders are resources for their groups; de-
cisiveness— good leaders make timely and defensible de-
cisions, especially under trying conditions; and finally,
vision— good leaders are inspiring (Den Hartog et al.,
1999; Epitropaki & Martin, 2004; Hogan & Kaiser, 2005;
Lord et al., 1984; Nicholson, 2005). It is striking to note
how so-called “derailed” executives— bright, ambitious,
and talented managers who nonetheless fail—are often
described as lacking these very characteristics (cf. Bentz,
1985; McCall & Lombardo, 1983).
Another apparent prototype may provide clues to a
controversial modern social issue, that of leadership and
gender. Male leadership was the norm in ancestral envi-
ronments—although there has always been a niche for
female peacekeepers among primates (de Waal, 1996) and
humans (Van Vugt, 2008)—and male leadership continues
to be the norm today (Eagly & Karau, 2002; Heilman,
2001; Schein, 1973). It remains to be seen how beneficial
the male leadership bias is in a global economy that em-
phasizes interpersonal skills and network building (Eagly
& Carli, 2003). There is evidence that women have better
empathy and communication skills than men (Van Vugt,
2006) and that women are more likely to adopt a demo-
cratic leadership style (Eagly & Johnson, 1990). Nonethe-
less, the male bias may be difficult to overcome. Research
192 April 2008 ● American Psychologist

151. indicates that when women and men work together on
group tasks, the men are quicker to claim leadership
roles— even when the women are better qualified (Mezulis,
Abramson, Hyde, & Hankin, 2004). An intergroup threat
automatically activates a preference for male leadership
(Little, Burriss, Jones, & Roberts, 2007; Van Vugt, 2008).
Regardless of talent, men are also more likely to assume
leadership roles when being observed by women, perhaps
because women prefer status in potential mates (Buss,
2005; Jensen-Campbell, Graziano, & West, 1995). Women
are also penalized for excelling at stereotypically masculine
tasks such as leadership (Eagly & Karau, 2002; Heilman,
2001). Finally, there is consistent but subtle bias in the way
executives—including those who espouse diversity— eval-
uate women leaders (Lyons & McArthur, 2007). It is pos-
sible that the “glass ceiling” is a vestige of our ancestral
past that requires more than sociostructural and policy-
level solutions.
Conclusion
Leadership is a crucial but often misunderstood topic.
Much of the misunderstanding comes from the tendency to
think about leadership only in terms of the people in charge
(R. Hogan et al., 1994; Kaiser et al., 2008). In this article
we have analyzed leadership from an evolutionary perspec-
tive and suggested three conclusions that are not part of the
conventional wisdom. The first is that leadership cannot be
studied apart from followership and that an adequate ac-
count of the leadership process must consider the psychol -
ogy of followers. Second, the goals of leaders and follow -
ers do not always converge, a fact that creates a
fundamental ambivalence in the relationship between lead-
ers and followers. Third, 2.5 million years of living in small

152. egalitarian communities shaped the way we respond to
leadership today. We are often required to defer to people
in leadership roles whose behavior is markedly inconsistent
with qualities important in ancestral leadership. This may
lead to frustration, alienation, and efforts to change leaders,
jobs, or careers. If we want to know why leadership some-
times fails in modern society, we should consult the lessons
from our past.
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The relationship between
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177. Abstract
Purpose – Although leaders and followers are both essential
elements within the leadership process,
there has been limited research regarding followers and their
role in the process. The purpose of this
paper is to answer specific calls for research in the studies of
followership, leadership, and the
follower/leader relationship through the examination of the
relationship between followers’ perception
of quality of relationship with their leaders and followers’
preferred leadership style from their leaders.
Design/methodology/approach – The study utilized a
quantitative, correlational approach using
the LMX-7 questionnaire to measure followers’ perceived
quality of relationship with their leader and
the MLQ-5x to measure followers’ preferred leadership style
from their leader. The test sample was 105
CPA’s working in the USA for companies over 1,000 employees
in size.
Findings – The study determined positive, significant levels of
relationship between follower’s
perceived quality of relationship and follower’s preference for
transformational leadership style.
The study additionally determined that the level of preference
for transactional leadership style, at the
composite scale level, remained relatively consistent, regardless
the quality of relationship.
Research limitations/implications – Because of the specific
characteristic of the chosen research
sample, the research results may not be generalized across other
populations. Recommendations for
future studies across different samples are identified.
Originality/value – This study is unique in that it adds to the
body of knowledge of leadership
studies through the perspective of the follower.

178. Keywords Leadership, Followership, Leadership style
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The Hogg (2001) assertion that “leaders exist because of
followers and followers exist
because of leaders” (p. 185) illustrates the symbiotic nature of
the relationship between
leaders and followers. Most current definitions of leadership
also include both leaders
and followers with the concept that leadership is a process
whereby leaders influence
followers’ thoughts and/or behavior (Northouse, 2007; Yukl,
2002). Although both
leaders and followers are essential to the leadership process,
there has been a division
in research oriented toward understanding leaders and
followers. While there has been
a long running focus on research aimed toward understanding
leaders as evidenced
through the development of leader-centric theories including
trait theory (Stogdill,
1948), skills theory (Katz, 1955), behavioral theory (Blake and
Mouton, 1964; Fleishman,
1953), contingency theory (Fiedler, 1967), and situational
theory (Hersey and Blanchard,
1969), there has been a lesser, separate research focus on
understanding followers
(Baker, 2007; Yukl, 2002). Burns (1978) noted this division
between leader-centric and
follower-centric research focus in his charge that “one of the
most serious failures in the
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is

179. available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0143-7739.htm
Received 6 August 2012
Revised 8 February 2013
30 May 2013
Accepted 31 May 2013
Leadership & Organization
Development Journal
Vol. 35 No. 7, 2014
pp. 605-621
r Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0143-7739
DOI 10.1108/LODJ-08-2012-0096
605
Perceived quality
of relationship
and preferred
leadership style
study of leadership is the bifurcation between the literature on
leadership and the
literature on followership” ( p. 3).
Researchers are increasingly recognizing the need to understand
the role and

180. significance of followers within the leadership process. Kelley
(1988) highlighted the role
of followers with his assertion “not all corporate success is due
to leadership” ( p. 1) in his
argument that organizational success is due in part on “how
well their followers follow”
( p. 2). Hollander (1992) spoke about the “essential
interdependence of leadership and
followership” ( p. 71) in his analysis of leadership as a process
within the contextual
elements of “the qualities and responsiveness of followers, with
their needs, expectations,
and perceptions” ( p. 71). Uhl-Bien (2006) noted that
organizations continue to become
more complex, increasing our need to develop our
understanding of “what are the
relational dynamics by which leadership is formed throughout
the workplace?” ( p. 672).
Leadership theories have progressively included leaders and
followers, as well as
their relationship within the leadership process (Dansereau et
al., 1975; Graen and
Uhl-Bien, 1995; Hollander, 1995, 2008). Leader member
exchange (LMX), a relational
leadership theory, recognizes the elements of leader, follower,
and the quality of their
relationship (Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1995). The relationship-based
approach to leadership
recognizes “a two-way influence relationship between a leader
and a follower aimed
primarily at attaining mutual goals” (Uhl-Bien, 2006, p. 656).
While there is recognition
of a two-way influence, research has predominately been leader-
centric with leadership
as an independent variable with a resulting follower response as

181. a dependent variable
(Dvir and Shamir, 2003).
The focus on leader-centric research has limited the
understanding of both the
follower and the relationship within the leadership process
(Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1995;
Uhl-Bien, 2006). To help overcome that limitation, the
objective of this research was to
test the relationship between the follower’s perception of the
quality of relationship
with their leader (direct supervisor) and the follower’s
preference of leadership style
from that same leader, which had not yet been explored in the
research literature.
2. Theory and hypothesis development
Figure 1 depicts the research design model demonstrating the
relationship between
follower’s perception of quality of relationship with their leader
and the level of follower’s
preference for leadership style of that leader.
In this section, the rationale underlying the model development
and theoretical
arguments supporting the hypothesized relationships is
developed. This section begins
by discussing the concepts of followership and leadership. Next
the concept of the
leader-follower relationship is discussed, followed by
identifying several hypotheses
describing the relationship between the follower’s perception of
quality of relationship
with their leader and the level of follower’s preference for
leadership style of that leader.

182. High Quality
Low Quality
Follower’s perception of quality
of relationship with leader (IV)
Transactional
Style
Transformational
Style
High High
Low
Level of follower’s preference for
leadership style of leader (DV)
LowFigure 1.
Research model
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2.1 Followership theory
Kellerman (2008) provided a current definition of followership
as “the response of those
in subordinate positions (followers) to those in superior ones
(leaders). Followership
implies a relationship between subordinates and superiors, and a
response of the

183. former to the latter” (p. xxi). Kellerman’s definition of
followership includes the three
elements (leader, follower, relationship) that have come to be
common to many current
studies of both leadership and followership (Bass, 1985; Bass
and Avolio, 2004; Burns,
1978; Dansereau et al., 1975; Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1995;
Hollander, 2008; Hollander and
Julian, 1969; Kellerman, 2008).
Passive and active followership. Baker (2007), in her
development of a theoretical
foundation for a contemporar y construct of followership, found
that much of the
leadership studies in the twentieth century were primarily
focussed on leaders and
their active roles with passive followers. This leader -centric
focus may have helped to
perpetuate what Meindl et al. (1985) referred to as the romance
of leadership distorting
“what leaders do, what they are able to accomplish, and the
general effects that they
have on our lives” ( p. 79). Much of the active-leader/passive-
follower research explored
leaders’ traits, behaviors, and responses within situational
contexts (Bass, 1990;
Northouse, 2007; Yukl, 2002).
Other researchers recognized a variety of follower types in more
active roles within
the leader-follower relationship. Burns (1978) identified passive
followers who offered
“undiscriminating support,” participatory followers who offered
selectively “bargained
support,” and close followers who “were in reality subleaders” (
p. 68). Hansen (1987)

184. reinforced the thought that followers were more than passive
elements in his
illustration of the power of followers in their ability to “confer
legitimacy” to the leader
by granting them authority. Kelley (1988) raised the profile of
active followership
in his assertion “organizations stand or fall partly on how well
their leaders lead, but
partly also on the basis of how well their followers follow” ( p.
2). He suggested
leadership and followership are organizational roles by
illustrating that most
managers act as both leaders and followers within their
organizations. He introduced
the idea of effective followership through the identification of
followers that would rate
high in both critical thinking and levels of active followership
and be “distinguished as
enthusiastic, intelligent, and self-reliant in the pursuit of the
organizational goal”
(Kelley, 1988, p. 3).
Need for further research regarding followership. Lord and
Emrich (2001) spoke to
the importance of understanding followers in their words “if
leadership resides, at least
in part, in the minds of followers, then it is imperative to
discover what followers are
thinking” ( p. 551). While the definition of leadership includes
the existence of followers,
studies of leadership have paid little interest to the
characteristics of followers (Dvir
and Shamir, 2003; Marion and Uhl-Bien, 2001; Yukl, 2002).
Yukl addressed the lack of
research aimed toward followership in his analysis, “only a
small amount of research

185. and theory emphasizes characteristics of the follower” ( p. 16).
Dvir and Shamir spoke to
the lack of research using followers’ characteristics as
independent variables with the
propensity for research to typically include followers’
characteristics as “dependent
variables affected by the leader [y] rather on follower
characteristics, predispositions, or
attitudes” ( p. 328). Vecchio and Boatwright (2002) spoke to the
lack of follower-focussed
research, specifically the lack of research aimed toward
understanding follower
preferences of leadership styles in their description of the state
of leadership research:
“[y] there are areas where our knowledge base remains
deficient. One of these areas is
the topic of subordinate preferences for styles of supervision” (
p. 327).
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Perceived quality
of relationship
and preferred
leadership style
2.2 transactional and transformational leadership theories
Burns (1978) continued to build on the concept of leader -
follower relationships through
his assertion “leaders engage with followers on the basis of
shared motives and values
and goals” ( p. 36). Burns introduced his theory of leadership
bounded by the mutually

186. exclusive concepts of transactional leadership and
transformational leadership.
Transactional leaders, in Burns’ perspective, relate to followers
“for the purpose of
and exchange of valued things” ( p. 19). These exchanges,
which could be economic,
political, and psychological in nature, are arrived at through a
bargaining process
in which both leader and follower maintain equal standing. The
bargainers (leaders
and followers) do not have an enduring, binding relationshi p
beyond the bargained
agreement, and may go separate ways after fulfillment of the
bargain. There is not
a continuing, mutual pursuit of a higher purpose.
Transformational leadership, in
Burns’ perspective, transforms the follower by raising the
follower’s level of consciousness
about the importance and value of both outcomes and way of
reaching those outcomes
through engaging with them in ways that “both leader and
follower are raised to higher
levels of motivation and morality” (Burn’s, 1978, p. 20). The
transformational leader is
able to influence the followers to transcend their own self-
interest for the sake of the larger
team or organizational goal.
Bass’s (1985) concept of transactional and transformational
leadership, while built on
Burn’s (1978) work, differs from Burns’ perspective of the
relationship between transactional
and transformational styles. Bass argues that transactional and
transformational leadership
are separate, complimentary concepts (as opposed to Burns’
concept of transactional and

187. transformational leadership being mutually exclusive), and
carries this argument even
further with the claim that the best leaders are both
transformational and transactional in
style (Bass, 1985, 1990, 1995, 1999). Bass (1998) suggests it is
transactional leadership,
through honoring commitments of contingent rewards, creates
trust, dependability,
and perceptions of consistency, which in turn form the basis of
transformational
leadership. Transformational leadership, through its focus of
idealized influence,
inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and
individualized consideration
augments transactional leadership by contributing to the extra
effort and performance
of followers.
Need for further research regarding leadership theories. There
are a number
of researchers across various disciplines calling for movement
toward new ways of
looking at leadership. Maintaining the leadership elements of
leader, follower, and
relationship, researchers are suggesting a need to find new ways
of enabling the
organization. Russell’s (2003) research of leadership within
educational settings as
a relational process, suggests “whilst there is increasing
recognition of relationships in
leadership [y] followers are too frequently treated as a single
group. This suggests
leaders in the field need to be aware of the various followership
groups within their
particular organization, and their relationships and motivations”
( p. 31). Uhl-Bien

188. (2006) declares “relationships – rather than authority,
superiority, or dominance –
appear to be the key to new forms of relationships” ( p. 672)
and suggests we need to
address the question “what are the relational dynamics by which
leadership is
developed throughout the workplace?” ( p. 672). Avolio (2007)
called more integrative
strategies for leadership theory-building in which he asserted
“leadership theory
and research has reached a point in its development of
integration – considering the
dynamic interplay between leaders and followers, taking into
account the prior, current
and emerging context – for continued progress to be made in
advancing both the
science and practice of leadership” ( p. 25).
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2.3 Leader-follower relationship
Foundational work researching leader-follower relationships
includes vertical dyad
leadership theory (Dansereau et al., 1975; Graen and Uhl -Bien,
1995) that recognized
leaders do not use a consistent, average leadership style with all
direct supports,
but rather develop differentiated, dyadic relationships with
subordinates resulting
in a range of exchange processes (Dansereau et al., 1975; Liden
and Graen, 1980). LMX,

189. based on this type of two-way influence relationship, focusses
on how these relationships
develop (Dienesch and Liden, 1986; Graen and Scandura, 1987;
Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1991)
and the benefits these relationships bring (Epitropaki and
Martin, 2005; Graen and
Uhl-Bien, 1995; Gerstner and Day, 1997).
LMX, is considered a relational approach of leadership
(Northouse, 2007; Uhl-Bien,
2006; Yukl, 2002). Relational approach theory is based in part
on the concept that social
behavior is the result of an exchange process between two
parties. Exchange process,
as applied in leadership studies, describes relationships existing
as exchanges of
desirable outcomes between leaders and individual followers
(Blau, 1960, 1986; Cook
and Whitmeyer, 1992; Homans, 1958).
Several models have been proposed to explain the process of
relationship development
between leaders and members. Dienesch and Liden (1986)
proposed a process-oriented
model of LMX development with steps including initial
interaction, leader delegation,
member behavior and attribution, and leader’s attribution for
member’s behaviors. Graen
and Scandura (1987) proposed a three-phase model of LMX
development including
role-taking, role-making, and role-routinization phases.
The leadership making model (Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1991, 1995)
explains the process
of relationship development across a life cycle of relationship
maturity. The LMX life

190. cycle begins with a stranger phase in which leader and follower
relations are mostly
transactional in nature in which leaders provide followers only
what is required to
perform task and followers only perform as required. The
second phase in the cycle is
the acquaintance phase, in which there is a mix of the
transactional relations as well as
the beginnings of more mature social exchanges that include
shared information and
resources. The third and last phase of the maturity cycle is the
mature partnership
phase, in which exchanges between leader and follower are
highly developed
and characterized by mutual loyalty, support, and are both
behavioral and emotional
in nature demonstrating elements of mutual respect, trust, and
obligation. Not all
relationships progress through this life cycle; and those that do
progress do so at
differing speeds (Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1995).
Need for further research regarding LMX. Graen and Uhl-Bien
(1995) acknowledged
the imbalance of research toward the leadership domain and
issued a call for research
in their analysis “in leadership research to date, a plethora of
studies have been
conducted on the leader, but in comparison there has been a
dearth of studies in the
other two areas. Clearly, more research is needed on followers
and the leadership
relationship” ( p. 222). Schriesheim et al. (1999) also issued a
call for research that
extends beyond the leader in their words “this review clearly
indicates the need for

191. improved theorization about LMX and its basic process” ( p.
102). Northouse’s (2007)
criticism that while “it is suggested that leaders should work to
create high-quality
exchanges with all subordinates, the guidelines for this is done
are not clearly spelled
out” ( p. 160) provides the basis for areas of future study to
more fully understand
followers perceptions of quality of relationships with their
leaders. All of these criticisms
and calls for research speak to the need for more understanding
of the follower and
relationship domains within LMX leadership theory.
609
Perceived quality
of relationship
and preferred
leadership style
2.4 Research question – hypotheses rationale and development
This study responded to various calls for research in the areas
of followership,
leadership, and the relationship between leaders and followers.
These calls include the
Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995) declaration that “clearly, more
research is needed on
followers and the leadership relationship” ( p. 222), the Vecchio
and Boatwright (2002)
notice of the lack of follower-focussed research, specifically the
deficiency in “the topic
of subordinate preferences for styles of 47 supervision” ( p.

192. 327) and the Uhl-Bien (2006)
question “what are the relational dynamics by which leadership
is developed
throughout the workplace?” ( p. 672).
There are multiple reasons for integrating both LMX and
transactional/transformational
theories into this study. While LMX and
transactional/transformational leadership
theories are different theories (and clearly have had separate
columns of research),
integrating both theories into research studies provides the
ability to yield new insight
into the concepts of followership. For example, this study
utilized LMX (with its
measurement of the quality of relationship) as a tool that
allowed researchers the
flexibility to construct leadership research with a follower-
perspective focus into
both quality of relationship and leaders’ behaviors, thus helping
to develop a more
robust set of follower-centric findings in the study of
followership.
There is also a level of intersection between LMX and
transactional/transformational
theories that allow a natural combination of them into this
study. They are both
modern theories that address leadership as processes between
leaders and followers.
Both Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995), Gerstner and Day (1997), and
Bass (1999) have
compared and contrasted LMX and
transactional/transformational theories. Graen and
Uhl-Bien (1995) assert that “LMX is both transactional and
transformational: it begins

193. as transactional social exchange and evolves into
transformational social exchange”
( p. 238). Gerstner and Day (1997), in their meta-analysis,
found that “Our review
supports the suggestion made by others (Graen and Uhl-Bien,
1995) that LMX should
incorporate both transactional and transformational processes” (
p. 838). Bass (1999)
describes more distinction between LMX and
transactional/transformational in
“the transactional/transformational paradigm is independent
conceptually from the
concept of leader-member-exchange (LMX), although empirical
correlation with them
may be found to some extent” ( p. 13). Although there exists a
level of disagreement
as to the exact areas of intersection between the theories, major
researchers in the field
(Bass, 1999; Gerstner and Day, 1997; Graen and Uhl-Bien,
1995) all propose there is an
intersection between some of the elements within LMX and
transactional/transformational
leadership theories, and that proposed intersection provides an
additional basis for the
inclusion of those leadership theories into this study.
Given the Bass (1999) assertion that “LMX unfolds in several
stages [y] in the first
stage, LMX is transactional. If the last stage is reached, it is
transformational” ( p. 14),
then one could reasonably expect to see some level of correlated
movements of
measurements using the LMX and MLQ instruments. In light of
these issues and calls,
this study proposed the following hypotheses:

194. H1. There is a relationship between the follower’s perceived
quality of relationship
with their leader (direct supervisor) and that follower’s
preference for
transformational leadership style from that same leader.
H2. There is a relationship between the follower’s perceived
quality of relationship
with their leader (direct supervisor) and that follower’s
preference for transactional
leadership style from that same leader.
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2.5 Discussion of independent and dependent variables within
research design
This study’s research design construct used perception as the
independent variable
and preference as the dependent variable. The questionnaire was
designed to first
focus on the perceived quality of relationship (IV) and
subsequently on the preference
of leadership style (DV). This design sequence reflected the
thought that perception
predicates preference between two choices.
Perception is a cognitive process used to interpret and
understand surroundings.
Object perception is focussed on understanding objects, while
social perception is
focussed on the process of “how people make sense of other

195. people and themselves”
(Kreitner and Kinicki, 2013, p. 181). The perception process
can be described in a
four-stage information-processing sequence consisting of
attention through conscious
awareness, interpretation through the use of schema, retention
into memory, and
retrieval for judgment and decision (Lord, 1985). For example,
social perception allows
one to develop an understanding of their relationships with
others within organizational
contexts, and this study utilized perception allowing each
respondent to develop a sense
of the level of quality of relationship with their supervisor.
Vroom (1964) provided a working definition of preference in
his wording “preference,
then, refers to a relationship between the strength of a person’s
desire for, or attraction
toward, two outcomes” ( p. 15). Given that interpretation and
judgments are made in the
latter stages of the perception process, it could be expected that
the preference process
would utilize those social perception judgments for the
development of strength of
attraction toward choices of outcomes. This study used that line
of thought in designing
a research construct to determine the relationship between the
independent variable
(perceived quality of relationship with their leader) and
dependent variable (follower’s
level of preference for leadership style from that same leader).
3. Method
3.1 Participants
All 105 participants in this study were certified public

196. accountants, employed at US
companies 41,000 employees in size, and were members of the
e-Rewards Market
Research Panel. A demographic assessment of the sample
revealed that the respondents
were predominantly female (61.9 percent, n¼65), and between
the ages of 25-49 years
(81.9 percent, n¼86). The respondents all held college degrees,
predominately at the
bachelor’s degree level (58.1 percent), with most (66.7 percent)
having reported to their
current leader for over one year.
3.2 Instrumentation/measures
Three scales were used to gather the data for this study. The
follower’s perceived
quality of their relationship with their direct supervisor was
measured using the
LMX-7 questionnaire, which is the construct recommended by
Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995)
to measure the quality of dyadic relationships. This version of
the LMX questionnaire
uses seven items to measure the overall quality of relationship.
This questionnaire uses
the follower as the referent to assess the quality of the
relationship from their perspective
by rating the seven items using a five-point Likert scale ranging
from a low level (1)
to a high level (5). The scoring reflects the perceived quality of
the relationship along
a continuum within the following ranges: very high ¼30-35,
high¼25-29,
moderate¼20-24, low¼15-19, and very low¼7-14 (Graen and
Uhl-Bien, 1995).
The follower’s preference for the use of transactional leadership

197. behavior from their
leader was measured using the transactional leadership scale
from the MLQ (Form 5X)
611
Perceived quality
of relationship
and preferred
leadership style
questionnaire, and the follower’s preference for the use of
transformational leadership
behavior from their leader was measured using the
transformational leadership
scale from the MLQ (Form 5X) questionnaire. This study used
32 items from the MLQ
(Form 5X) to measure eight leadership behavioral factors
categorized across
transformational and transactional groupings. This
questionnaire’s 32 items are rated
using a five-point Likert scale with anchors labeled 0¼not at
all, 1¼once in a while,
2¼sometimes, 3¼ fairly often, 4¼ frequently, if not always
(Bass and Avolio, 2004).
3.3 Data collection
The LMX-7 instrument and the MLQ (Form 5X) transactional
and transformational
scales were combined into a single research instrument and
administered through
an online survey tool via e-Rewardss Market Research. e-
Rewards Inc. provides

198. permission-based digital data collection and reporting services.
It offers online
sampling and survey data collection services ranging from
programming and hosting
to sample delivery and scripting to online reporting for research
projects; and operates
various panels that can be designed to fulfill prescriptive
research sample requirements.
The survey tool included qualifying questions to ensure final
participants met the study’s
requirements and accepted the first 105 completed surveys,
representing 55.6 percent
of the qualified participants.
3.4 Sample size considerations
This study considered the values of significance level, effect
size, and power to
determine adequate sample size (n). Using Cohen’s (1992)
recommendations regarding
significance level (a¼0.05), effect size (moderate¼0.30), and
power (0.80) along with
Cohen’s (1988) suggestions regarding sample size, the specified
minimum sample size
for this study is 85 pairs of observations (Table I). The 105
usable questionnaires received
was a greater number than the required minimum of 85,
allowing the ability to discard
unusable questionnaires and still be able to maintain the
minimum sample size of 85
pairs of observations. Subsequent data screening using boxplots
of the variable
distributions were examined, using the definition of outlier as
“extending more than
1.5 box-lengths from the edge of the boxplot” (Pallant, 2006, p.
61), and three cases were
identified as outliers (two cases for the LMX-7 scale data, one

199. case for the transformational
scale data, and no cases for the transactional scale data). The
distribution of outliers,
coupled with the fact that no one case contains more than one
(scale) outlier suggests the
legitimacy of the data. Comparison of the mean vs 5 percent
trimmed mean of the variables
indicated little impact to the mean from outliers and the
decision was made to include all
105 cases in the data set. Including all 105 questionnaires in the
study, rather than 85 as
Power Power Power
0.70 0.80 0.90
Effect 0.20 0.30 0.40 0.20 0.30 0.40 0.20 0.30 0.40
a1¼0.01 201 88 48 247 108 59 320 139 76
a1¼0.05 117 52 28 153 68 37 211 92 50
a1¼0.10 82 36 20 113 49 27 163 72 39
a2¼0.01 237 103 56 287 125 68 365 158 86
a2¼0.05 153 67 37 194 85 46 259 113 62
Source: Cohen (1988)
Table I.
Sample size
planning table
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per the research design, affected the study by lowering the

200. allowable Type 2 error from 0.20
to 0.15, thus improving the power to 0.85 (Cohen, 1988).
3.5 Data analysis
The Research Questionnaire’s questions 1 through 7 contain
questions relating to the
respondent’s perception of the quality of their relationship with
their leader. The
researcher summed the scores for questions 1 through 7 within
the Research Questionnaire
for each respondent. The sum of a respondent’s scores can range
from 7 to 35. Although
the scoring is on a continuum, the questionnaire total score may
be associated with
the following groupings, indicating the perceived quality of
relationship: very high¼
30-35, high¼25-29, moderate¼20-24, low¼15-19, and very
low¼7-14 (Graen and
Uhl-Bien, 1995).
The Research Questionnaire’s questions 8 through 39 contain
questions relating
to the respondents level of preference for transactional and
transformational leadership
behaviors from their leader. The researcher summed the scores
for both the transactional
leadership scale and transformational leadership scale for each
respondent. The sum of
each respondent’s scores can range from 0 to 48 for the
transactional leadership scale
(with higher scores indicating a greater preference for
transactional leadership behaviors
from their leader) and range from 0 to 80 for the
transformational leadership scale (with
higher scores indicating a greater preference for
transformational leadership behaviors

201. from their leader) (Bass and Avolio, 2004).
This study utilized Pearson product-moment correlation
coefficient r to determine
direction and strength of all correlations between variables.
Strength of relationships
were determined using the following guidelines suggested by
Cohen (1988): r¼0.10-0.29
or r¼�0.10-�0.29 (small strength); r¼0.30-0.49 or r¼�0.30-
�0.49 (medium strength);
r¼0.50-1.0 or r¼�0.50-�1.0 (large strength). This study used
two-tailed t-tests to test
the significance of the sample correlation coefficient (Bluman,
2004).
4. Results
4.1 Hypothesis tests
Table II presents the sample size, Chronbach’s a reliability
coefficient (a) for each scale,
means, standard deviation, and correlations (r) for the study
variables. As shown in the
table, several of the correlations were significantly correlated at
the small (i.e.
0.10oro0.290) and medium strength level (i.e. 0.250oro0.490).
The strongest
correlation (0.358) was between the variables perceived quality
of relationship and
preference for contingent reward.
H1 predicts there is a relationship between the follower’s
perceived quality of
relationship with their leader (direct supervisor) and that
follower’s preference for
transformational leadership style from that same leader. As
shown in Table I, this
study found a positive, significant relationship between

202. follower’s perceived quality
of relationship with their leader (direct supervisor) and
follower’s preference for
a transformational leadership style from that same leader. This
was true at both
the transformational composite scale level (0.268) and at each
of the individual
transformational subscale levels (0.190, 268, 295, 240, 268).
These findings provide
support for H1.
H2 predicts a relationship between the follower’s perceived
quality of relationship
with their leader (direct supervisor) and that follower’s
preference for transactional
leadership style from that same leader. As shown in Table II,
this study, using the
transactional composite scale, found no significant relationship
between follower’s
613
Perceived quality
of relationship
and preferred
leadership style
perceived quality of relationship with their leader (direct
supervisor) and follower’s
preference for an overall transactional leadership style from that
same leader
(0.037). However, in reviewing the individual subscale scores, a
positive, significant

203. relationship was determined between the follower’s perception
of quality of
relationship with their leader and the transactional leadership
subscale dimension
of contingent reward (0.352), and a negative, significant
relationship was determined
between the follower’s perception of quality of relationship
with their leader and the
transactional leadership subscale dimension of management by
exception, passive
(�0.229). Bass and Riggio (2006) acknowledge “the
transactional factors tend to be
more independent of each other” ( p. 25), and this study’s
differing strengths and
direction between transactional subscales support their
assertion.
4.2 Supplemental analysis
The correlational analysis described the data from the entire
sample perspective. The
follower’s perceived quality of relationship can be grouped
within five ranges from
very low to very high (Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1995). These
groupings allow us to subgroup
our data and view it using a methodology that explains the
data’s relationship within
each grouping as opposed to an overall correlation.
This study provides comparison of the results using the
transformational,
transactional, contingent reward, and management-by-exception
(passive) scales via
transforming the results into relative data. Using a ratio
methodology, the relative
strength of preference for leadership style can be determined by
the ratio actual

204. score/highest available score. This ratio determines the
percentage of actual level of
preference as compared to the highest available level of
preference. Using this ratio,
questionnaire results using different scales (and subscales) can
be compared and
conclusions as to follower’s relative strength of preference for
leadership styles can
be made.
The scores for the follower’s preference for transformational
leadership style,
transactional leadership style, contingent reward, and
management-by-exception (passive)
leadership behaviors were determined and the means calculated
for each perceived quality
of relationship range.
Table III illustrates the relative strength of follower’s
preference for transformational,
transactional, contingent reward leadership, and management-
by-exception (passive)
Perceived quality of relationship
Variable (scales/sub-scale) n Reliability (a) Mean SD (IV) r
Perceived quality of relationship (IV) 105 0.899 25.08 5.44
Preference for transformational style (DV) 105 0.930 54.72
12.85 0.268**
Idealized influence (attributed) 105 0.790 11.49 3.14 0.190**
Idealized influence (behavioral) 105 0.679 10.21 2.87 0.268**
Inspirational motivation 105 0.769 11.52 2.64 0.295**
Intellectual stimulation 105 0.707 10.42 2.85 0.240*
Individualized consideration 105 0.692 11.08 3.03 0.268*
Preference for Transactional style (DV) 105 0.617 22.20 5.69
0.037

205. Contingent reward 105 0.774 10.98 3.15 0.352**
Management by exception (active) 105 0.604 6.31 2.91 �0.064
Management by exception (passive) 105 0.598 10.98 3.10
�0.229*
Notes: *,**Correlation is significant at 0.05 and 0.01 level
respectively (two-tailed)
Table II.
Descriptive statistics and
correlation of variables
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35,7
styles within ranges of follower’s perceived quality of
relationship with their leader.
Transformational and contingent reward leadership styles,
which have both been
found to have a correlational relationship with quality of
relationship, are also very
similar in their relative strength of preference profiles. The
results indicate that the
relative strength of follower’s preference for transactional
leadership (at the composite
level) remains consistent (42.92-48.60 percent) across all levels
of quality of relationship.
However, this consistency at the composite level is further
explained by the relative
strength of follower’s preference for contingent reward (45.00-
76.50 percent) and
management-by-exception passive (42.50-26.44 percent). Both

206. contingent reward and
management-by-exception are subscales of the composite
transactional leadership
scale, but their relative strength calculations are moving in
opposite directions (Table III),
thus allowing the transactional composite strength calculation to
remain consistent.
Analysis of the relative strength of the subscale data provides
more insight into how
the preference for contingent reward behaviors increases and
the preference for
management-by-exception (passive) behaviors decreases as the
perceived quality of
relationship increases.
5. Discussion
5.1 Summary of results
In answer to multiple calls for more research with the goal of
gaining a greater
understanding of followers within the leadership process
(Avolio, 2007; Graen and
Uhl-Bien, 1995; Russell, 2003; Uhl-Bien, 2006), this study
utilized LMX theory,
transformational leadership theory, and transactional leadership
theory to explore the
relationship between a follower’s perceived quality of
relationship with their leader
(direct supervisor) and that follower’s preferred leadership style
from that same leader.
This study found a positive, significant relationship between
follower’s perceived
quality of relationship with their leader (direct supervisor) and
follower’s preference for
a transformational leadership style from that same leader. This
study also found

207. positive, significant relationships between follower’s perceived
quality of relationship
with their leader and preference for transformational leadership
subscale factors of
idealized influence (attributed and behavioral), inspirational
motivation, intellectual
stimulation, and idealized consideration.
No significant relationship was found between follower’s
perceived quality of
relationship with their leader (direct supervisor) and follower’s
preference for an overall
transactional leadership style from that same leader as measured
at the composite
level. However, a positive, significant relationship was
determined between the
follower’s perception of quality of relationship with their leader
and the transactional
Follower preference for leadership style (DV)
Transformational Transactional Contingent reward M.B.E.
(passive)
Mean Strength Mean Strength Mean Strength Mean Strength
Range of quality
of relationship (IV) n
(scale range:
0-80)
(scale range:
0-48)
(subscale range:
0-16)

208. (subscale range:
0-16)
Very high 21 60.33 75.41% 23.00 47.92% 12.24 76.50% 4.23
26.44%
High 43 53.90 67.38% 21.51 44.81% 11.18 69.88% 4.40 27.50%
Moderate 27 53.30 66.63% 22.59 47.06% 10.37 64.81% 5.92
37.03%
Low 9 55.33 69.16% 23.33 48.60% 11.00 68.75% 4.77 29.81%
Very low 5 44.60 55.75% 20.60 42.92% 7.20 45.00% 6.80
42.50%
Table III.
Mean scores of preference
for leadership behaviors
by range of quality
of relationship
615
Perceived quality
of relationship
and preferred
leadership style
leadership subscale dimension of contingent reward, and a
negative, significant
relationship was determined between the follower’s perception
of quality of
relationship with their leader and the transactional leadership
subscale dimension of

209. management by exception (passive).
The findings suggest that follower’s preferences for
transformational leadership
behaviors, which involve building trust, inspiring a shared
vision, encouraging creativity,
and recognizing accomplishments, are correlated to the
follower’s perception of the
quality of relationship with their direct supervisor. The highest
correlation,
r(103)¼0.295, po0.05 (Table II) is with the leadership factor
inspirational motivation,
which includes the behaviors of talking optimistically about the
future, talking
enthusiastically about what needs to be accomplished,
articulating a compelling vision of
the future, and expressing confidence that goals will be
achieved (Bass and Avolio, 2004).
The leadership behaviors within the contingent reward subscale
include: first,
provides assistance in exchange for efforts; second, discusses in
specific terms who is
responsible for achieving performance targets; third, makes
clear what one can expect
to receive when performance goals are achieved; and fourth,
expresses satisfaction
when follower meets expectations (Bass and Avolio, 2004). The
study results for
contingent reward r(103)¼0.352, po0.05 (Table II) suggests that
supporting and
clarifying behaviors supporting achievement and/or rewards are
the type of behaviors
most correlated with the follower’s perceived quality of
relationship.

210. The findings also suggest that follower’s preferences for
management-by-exception
(passive) leadership behaviors, which involve waiting until
there are significant
problems before interfering, are inversely correlated,
r(103)¼�229, po0.05 (Table II),
with the follower’s perception of the quality of relationship
with their direct supervisor.
LMX quality can be viewed within ranges from very low to very
high (Graen and
Uhl-Bien, 1995). This study indicates followers in very low
quality relationships have
the lowest preference (mean¼44.6) (Table III) for
transformational leadership styles;
followers in the mid-range levels (low, moderate, and high
ranges) all have a very
similar level of preference (mean¼54.9-55.33) (Table III) for
transformational leadership
behaviors; and followers within very high quality of
relationships have the highest
preference (mean¼60.33) (Table III) preference for
transformational leadership
behaviors. These findings suggest that the followers’
preferences for transformational
leadership behaviors are more tiered rather than simply
following a continuously
upward sloping line.
This study indicates that follower’s preference for transactional
leadership subscale
contingent reward behaviors follows a similar three-tiered
scoring as demonstrated
for preference for transformational leadership. The study
indicates followers within
very low-quality relationships have the lowest preference

211. (mean¼7.2) (Table III) for
contingent reward behaviors; followers in the mid-range levels
(low, moderate, and high
ranges) all have a very similar level of preference
(mean¼10.37-11.18) (Table III) for
contingent reward behaviors; and followers within very high
quality of relationships
have the highest preference (mean¼12.24) (Table III) for
contingent reward behaviors.
5.2 Managerial implications
The study found that the follower’s preference for
transformational leadership
behavior was positively correlated, r(103)¼0.268, po0.05 (Table
II) with the follower’s
perception of quality of relationship. These findings suggest
followers’ levels of
preference for transformational leadership varies and leaders
desiring to reflect
follower’s preference for leadership styles may wish to include
less transformational
616
LODJ
35,7
behaviors in lower quality relationships and more
transformational behaviors in higher
quality relationships.
The study’s findings that the follower’s preference for
transactional leadership
behavioral factor contingent reward, with its supporting and

212. clarifying behaviors, had
the highest positive correlation, r(103)¼0.352, po0.05 (Table II)
with the follower’s
perception of quality of leadership. These findings suggest that
contingent reward
behaviors are more strongly correlated to follower’s perceived
quality of relationship
than transformational leadership behaviors are, and leaders
desiring to reflect follower’s
preference for leadership styles may wish to include less
contingent reward behaviors in
lower quality relationships and more contingent reward
behaviors in higher quality
relationships.
The study found that the follower’s preference for management-
by-exception
(passive) leadership behavior was negative correlated, r(103)
¼�0.229, po0.05
(Table II) with the follower’s perception of quality of
relationship. These findings
suggest followers’ levels of preference for management-by-
exception (passive)
leadership varies and leaders desiring to reflect follower’s
preference for leadership
styles may wish to include more management-by-exception
(passive) behaviors in
lower quality relationships and less management by exception,
passive behaviors in higher
quality relationships.
The study’s findings in support of a relationship between
follower’s perception of
quality of relationship and preference for certain leadership
behaviors
(transformational, contingent reward) may be interpreted in

213. terms of expectancy
theory. House (1971), in his analysis of expectancy theories of
motivation, identified
the common central concept as “a person will engage in certain
behaviors because of
his expectancy that satisfaction will follow” ( p. 322). The
finding of a preference for
specific behaviors may be explained by: first, the expectation of
the follower that these
behaviors will have certain outcomes (expectancy); and second,
the level of desirability
of these outcomes to the follower (valence). It is the interaction
of expectancy and
valence that yields force, the follower’s level of effort for a
specific endeavor (Vroom,
1964). Leaders may view this study’s findings through the lens
of expectancy theory as
a strategy to understand and react to the follower’s factors of
expectancy and valence
in order to impact the follower’s level of effort.
5.3 Limitations and future research directions
Several limitations of this study pertain to the population,
sample, and the statistical
test used to examine the relationship between variables. The
sample consists of
Certified Public Accountants that are physically located in the
USA, working for US
organizations with more than 1,000 employees, and are
members of e-Rewards
Research Panel. One limitation of this study is the inability to
generalize the results
across other work groups due to the unique requirements of the
professional group
(CPA’s) used as the test population and sample. One
recommendation is to construct a

214. similar study, using a different population type to explore the
research question across
different types of work groups.
One limitation of this study is the inability to generalize the
results across cultures
due to the uniquely western culture of the group used as the test
population and
sample. One recommendation is to construct a similar study,
using a different
population and sample to explore the research question across
different cultures.
Studies can be constructed using both congruent and
noncongruent cultures of the
leaders and followers.
617
Perceived quality
of relationship
and preferred
leadership style
One finding of the study was that follower’s level of preference
for transformational
leadership varies in correlation with follower’s perceived
quality of relationship.
One recommendation is to construct a study to examine
individual and organizational
consequences resulting from followers having or not having
their level of preference for
transformational leadership behaviors met.

215. One implication of the study is that the finding of a preference
for specific behaviors
may be explained by the expectancy theory factors of: first, the
expectation of the
follower that these behaviors will have certain outcomes
(expectancy); and second, the
level of desirability of these outcomes to the follower (valence).
One recommendation is
to construct a study to explore the follower’s expected outcomes
of leadership
behaviors leading to their preference of transformational and
contingent reward leadership
behaviors.
These limitations notwithstanding, the present study makes two
important
contributions.
First, this study is significant in that it addressed identified
gaps in the existing
literature and responded to calls for research. The study’s focus
from the perspective of
the follower addressed researchers’ assessments that research in
leadership studies has
been predominately leader-centric and there exists a need for
research aimed toward
followers (Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1995; Uhl-Bien, 2006; Vecchio
and Boatwright, 2002).
The use of the follower’s perception of their relationship with
their leader as the
independent variable addressed Dvir and Shamir (2003) concern
about the lack of
research using follower’s characteristics as independent
variables. The study’s research
question and findings directly addressed the Vecchio and
Boatwright (2002) assessment

216. that our knowledge is deficient in the topic of subordinate
preferences for styles of
leadership, and this study expanded the knowledge in the topic.
The study’s research
design, in its use of follower’s perceptions as the independent
variables, follower’s
preferences as the dependent variable, and the employment of
the LMX-7 to measure the
quality of relationship directly responded to the Graen and Uhl -
Bien (1995) call for more
research on followers and the leadership relationship.
Second, these findings are significant to researchers in that they
demonstrate the
relationship between that followers’ perception of quality of
relationship with their
leader and the follower’ preferences for transformational and
transactional behaviors,
which had not been previously addressed in research. These two
contributions provide
a pathway for future research toward gaining a greater
understanding of followers,
leaders, and their relationship.
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About the author
Dr David Notgrass (PhD, Dallas Baptist University) is an
Assistant Professor of Management in
the College of Business Administration at the Tarleton State
University. He has previously
served as Assistant Professor of Management and Associate
Dean for the College of Business
at the Dallas Baptist University. His research interests include
leadership studies from the
perspective of the follower. Teaching specialties include
leadership studies, organizational
development and change, and organizational behavior. Prior to
entering academia, he spent 24
years with TXU including various management capacities in
customer care and information
technology. Dr David Notgrass can be contacted at:
[email protected]
To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail:
[email protected]
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621
Perceived quality
of relationship
and preferred
leadership style

225. Respond to at two (2) of colleagues' postings listed below in the
following ways:
Respond to at least two (2) of your colleagues' postings in one
or more of the following ways:
· Share an insight about what you learned from having read your
colleagues’ postings about his or her experiences with co-
creative relationships and discuss how and why your colleague’s
posting resonated with you professionally and personally.
· Seek additional clarity or ask your colleague a question, with
accompanying context, which will help your colleague to think
more critically, or consider related strategies, to promote co-
creative relationships within organizations.
· Offer another example, from your experience or observation,
which validates or differs from what your colleague discussed
related to co-creative relationships.
· Offer specific suggestions that will help your colleague build
upon his or her leadership skills within an organizational
culture.
· Offer further assessment from having read your colleague’s
post that could impact a leader’s effectiveness within an
organizational culture.
· Share how something your colleague discussed changed the
way you consider your own leadership qualities.
· No plagiarism
· APA citing

226. Bottom of Form
1st Colleagues – Natasha MillsTop of Form
Discussion 1 - Week 4
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According to (Joseph, 2016),leaders play a significant role in
promoting organizational performance and optimality. Leaders
influence their followers’ commitment, trust, and effectiveness
in job performance, hence success. Healthy exchanges between
the leader and followers enhance high-quality relationships that
promote efficiency in job performance through employee
satisfaction, loyalty, trust, and commitment. Therefore, leader -
follower relationships are essential for improved performance
and ultimate success. The paper describes a scenario where
leader/follower roles were exchanged under various
circumstances. A description of the situation, outcome, effects
on organizational culture, and overall impact on leadership
effectiveness are outlined in the paper.
Leaders play a fundamental role in shaping organizational
culture and success by motivating, training, and guiding
followers towards attaining set goals and targets. Followers
assume that the role of the leader is quite simple, leading. In
fact, from experience, followership is relatively straightforward
than leading. I can recall this from my previous job in a project

227. management team. The team leader, who was the supervisor and
manager, was very committed to leading the team. The leader
used transformational leadership to mentor, train, and improve
his leadership style. Resultantly, after a series of training and
mentorship, he randomly chose a follower to lead the team for a
given period.
I lead the team through the planning phase of the project. The
leader took over the back seat and followed my guidelines.
Although the shift in roles was structural and planned, the task
was quite engaging. I undertook all the managerial duties while
the leader acted as a follower. I developed plans, directed my
followers, and ensured an efficient supply of the required
resources. For a moment, it felt nice to lead, especially when
the tasks were executable and in my areas of expertise. On the
other hand, the experience was unpleasant, particularly when
faced with difficult and complex situations. According to my
leader, the shift in roles was not only a form of delegation. In
fact, he cited that it was part of his leadership goal to nurture
leaders and motivate his followers. Thus, he referred to his type
of leadership as the people development process, where
followers are motivated to lead.
According to (Joseph, 2016), leaders create quality leader-
follower relationships governed by trust, loyalty, and
commitment, informing organizational success. This implies
that empowered followers exhibit high levels of commitment
and efficiency. Organizational success is also evidenced by the
availability of leaders and followers to collaborate and develop
shared relationships, where work-related issues and problems
are solved (Joseph, 2016). The outcomes of the shift in roles
impacted the organizational culture. For example, the leader
understood the need to nurture, mentor, and train his followers
in various aspects, informing performance effectiveness.
Resultantly, the overall organizational culture shifted
positively. For example, as a follower, I understood the

228. technicality that leaders encounter, influencing my loyalty,
trust, respect, and commitment to the leaders and organization.
In turn, this informs quality leader-follower relationships,
promoting performance and success.
A study by Notgrass (2014) reveals that the relationship
between leaders and their followers influences the nature of
interactions and type of leadership style adopted to lead such
and other groups. This is a practical observation, as leaders
understand their followers and adopt effective strategies to
manage this resource. The shift in organizational roles is pivotal
in informing organizational culture. For instance, a leader-
follower relationship scan identifies issues, strengths, and
weaknesses of the leadership, informing change in the
organizational culture, hence efficiency.
Van Vugt t al. (2008)defined situational leadership and leader -
follower relations as critically important facets in shaping
organizational success. As a leader, I will pioneer developing
such relations to foster trust, loyalty, followers’ commitment,
and overall organizational success. Second, I will use this tool
to promote the availability and shared relationships to improve
leadership styles and solve leader-follower relationships to
mitigate imminent organizational issues.
Joseph, T. (2016). Developing the leader-follower relationship:
Perceptions of leaders and followers. Journal of Leadership,
Accountability and Ethics, 13(1), 132.
Notgrass, D. (2014). The relationship between followers’
perceived quality of relationship and preferred leadership
style. Leadership & Organization Development Journal.
Van Vugt, M., Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R. B. (2008). Leadership,
followership, and evolution: some lessons from the
past. American Psychologist, 63(3), 182.
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229. Bottom of Form
2nd Colleagues – Ryan SharrattTop of Form
Discussion 1 - Week 4
Top of Form
In the emergency response world leadership roles change, shift,
invert and rarely remain consistent. In nearly all responses
leaders arrive onsite only to be relieved from a higher command
staff or a subject matter expert. In this changing leadership-
followership role there is rarely transitional issues due to the
adherent risks involved in scene stabilization or remedial
efforts. Scene stabilization requires rapid though, adaptation to
a quickly changing environment and some level of advanced
knowledge in the response efforts. Due to the knowledge
required in the vast space of Hazardous Materials, leaders and
followers are fluidly interchangeable based upon the skill sets
needed in each scenario. However, to get an employee to this
point, it takes a great deal of time and energy from the
leadership team. Joseph (2016) illustrates leaders play a
significant role in the way their followers devote their time,
efforts, and commitment to, first of all, their job and secondly,
how they extend their support to achieving organizational
objectives (Joseph, 2016 p.132).
One of the struggles is building adaptable employees that can
pivot between leadership and followership. As leadership and
followership can be taught, to those willing, understanding the
situation only comes with time. Understanding a situation is
also an employee’s ability to perceive the scenario. Notgrass
(2014) describes perception as a cognitive process used to
interpret and understanding surroundings (Notgrass, 2014 p.
611). Although many people learn over time, some hazard types
need immediate, exact attention, which govern who can lead and
who needs to follow.

230. When the wrong leader steps in for a hazard, this is a true life
or death situation. Communication and checking egos for
limitations is critical to ensure scene stability and ensure
employee safety. This is achieved by the non-emergency culture
and enhancement of the leader-follower transparent
relationship. As the results of Joseph (2016) illustrate, leaders
and followers value working toward goals and objectives, a
critical partnership between leader and follower and an
engaging two-way communication exchange (Joseph, 2016 p.
137).
References
Joseph, T. (2016). Developing the leader-follower relationship:
Perceptions of leaders and followers. Journal of Leadership,
Accountability and Ethics, 13(1), 132-144. Retrieved
from https://ezp.waldenulibrary.org/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%
2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Fdeveloping-
leader-follower-
relationship%2Fdocview%2F1791040214%2Fse-
2%3Faccountid%3D14872
Notgrass, D. (2014), "The relationship between followers’
perceived quality of relationship and preferred leadership
style", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol.
35 No. 7, pp. 605-621. https://doi-
org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1108/LODJ-08-2012-0096
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