Leader-follower relationship behaviors: Who is a gatekeeper to leadership outcomes?

Abstract

Classical research on leadership (e.g. Bales, 1950; Stogdill, 1974; Bass, 1998) has not properly engaged with the particular consequences of becoming high-powered and influential or lacking power or influence, the effects it carries on self-perception or the consequences in terms of interpersonal interrelations. This experimental study expose subjects to one of three different descriptions depicting an autocratic leader, who declares necessity of goal setting, a transactional leader, who displays a high level of mutual benefit, and charismatic leader, who invokes leading by example to build relationship behaviors. The paper's findings are focused to indicate of how leaders and followers emphasize relationships in order to achieve desirable leadership outcomes, i.e. satisfaction, activeness, motivation. The paper engages with propositions that focus on how can an understanding of the cognitive and behavioral consequences of goal setting, mutual benefit and leading by example account for a successful exercise of leadership and followership in organization as well as cause expected leadership outcomes.