This study examines the effects of leaders' self-awareness of
their own leadership on followers' satisfaction, self-leadership,
and leader effectiveness. A leader's self-awareness was
conceptualized as the degree of similarity between the leader's
self-description and his or her followers' descriptions of leader
behaviors. Transformational and empowering leadership are measured from
48 leaders and 222 of their followers. Results from confirmatory factor
analyses provide support for two types of leadership: transformational
and empowering. Results from polynomial regression analyses indicate
that self-awareness of transformational leadership is related to leader
effectiveness and followers' supervisory satisfaction. In contrast,
self-awareness of empowering leadership is related to followers'
self-leadership. These effects of leadership self-awareness extend
beyond the direct effect of leadership on the outcome variables.
Keywords: leader effectiveness; transformational leadership;
empowering leadership; polynomial regression; self-awareness; follower
satisfaction; follower self-leadership; emotional intelligence
**********
It is wisdom to know others; It is enlightenment to know one's
self.
Lao-Tzu
How well do we know ourselves? Does it matter? Is self-awareness
somehow connected with our effectiveness as a leader? These are the
fundamental questions that inspired the research reported in this
article.
Self-awareness is related to the notion of self-evaluation. If we
know our self, then our self-evaluation is likely to be more accurate.
According to the literature on self-evaluation, individuals may either
overrate or underrate their own performance when compared with ratings
from other sources (Harris & Schaubroeck, 1988; Mabe & West,
1982). But in addition, another form of self-assessment is related to
the way we view ourselves as a leader. Are we accurate in describing our
own leadership? Is this accuracy related to our effectiveness as a
leader? Past research on leadership has investigated discrepancies
between self-descriptions of leadership and descriptions provided by
others (e.g., Atwater, Roush, & Fischthal, 1995; Atwater &
Yammarino, 1997; Felfe & Schyns, 2004; Thornton, 1980). These
discrepancies can be interpreted as a leader's lack of
self-awareness about his or her own leadership.
In the research reported here, we investigated the influence of
leader self-awareness on outcomes such as leader effectiveness, follower
satisfaction, and follower self-leadership. To some degree, we were
inspired by the notion of emotional intelligence, which suggests that
emotional self-awareness is an important part of one's life and
work effectiveness (Bar-On, 2000; Gross, 1998). According to this
viewpoint, if one is aware of one's own emotions, then life and
work experiences are likely to be more effective and satisfying (Cote
& Miners, 2006; Jordan & Ashkanasy, 2006; Sosik & Megerian,
1999). Extrapolating from this viewpoint, we suggest that self-awareness
about one's own leadership is likely to produce enhanced
effectiveness and satisfaction at work.
In general, research on leader self-awareness is relatively rare in
the leadership literature. Interesting exceptions are the works of
Atwater and Yammarino (1992); Atwater, Ostroff, Yammarino, and Fleenor
(1998); Bass and Yammarino (1991); Fleenor, McCauley, and Brutus (1996),
Felfe and Schyns (2004); Riggio and Cole (1992); and Sosik and Megerian
(1999). Overall, this previous research found that a leader's
agreement with followers (or self-awareness) about his or her own
transformational leadership was associated with leader effectiveness.
Yet self-awareness may be related to other outcomes, including follower
affective responses and self-leadership. Atwater et al. (1998) stated,
"self-other agreement is most relevant to outcomes that involve
human perceptions [emphasis added] and less relevant to more objective
measures such as sales volume or meeting productivity goals" (p.
595). Therefore, in this study, we extend the investigation of leader
self-awareness by exploring the effect of leader self-awareness on
affective and behavioral outcomes, such as satisfaction with supervisor
and self-leadership, in addition to the more usual outcome of leader
effectiveness.
Furthermore, we extend previous work by investigating
self-awareness of empowering leadership in addition to transformational
leadership. In recent decades, we have certainly seen an increasing
interest among organizations to promote autonomy, especially with
self-managing teams. Parallel to this interest has been the emergence of
empowering leadership as a new focus of leadership. This form of
leadership concentrates on the notion of a leader who enhances follower
serf-leadership (e.g., Arnold, Arad, Rhoades, & Drasgow, 2000;
Cohen, Chang, & Ledford, 1997; Manz & Sims, 1987; Salam, Cox,
& Sims, 1997; Stewart & Manz, 1995). Several recent studies
(Ahearne, Mathieu, & Rapp, 2005; Cohen et al., 1997; Ensley,
Hmieleski, & Pearce, 2006; Houghton & Yoho, 2005; Manz &
Sims, 1987; Pearce & Sims, 2002; Pearce, Yoo, & Alavi, 2004;
Yun, Cox, & Sims, 2006; Yun, Faraj, & Sims, 2005) have
recognized empowering leadership as distinct from transformational
leadership.
Although empowering leadership behavior has received relatively
less attention in the leadership literature when compared to
transformational leadership, results have consistently found linkages to
follower self-leadership and team performance. Therefore, an important
part of this research is our extension of prior studies by examining
leaders' self-awareness of their own empowering leadership. Our
research not only compared the results of self-awareness of
transformational leadership with past studies but also investigated
whether the findings are similar for empowering leadership. In summary,
the main contribution of this study is to extend prior research about
self-awareness of one's own leadership by investigating (a) both
empowering leadership and transformational leadership and (b) additional
outcomes such as follower satisfaction and self-leadership.
Hypotheses
Leadership
Over the years, the literature has developed many perspectives and
viewpoints of leadership. For an extensive review, we refer the reader
to the encyclopedic work of Bass (1990) and the ongoing review and
synthesis of the leadership literature presented by Yukl (2002, 2006).
Here, we briefly review perspectives represented by the labels of
transformational and empowering leadership.
Transformational leadership is defined as the process of
cultivating followers' commitment to organizational objectives and
shaping the culture in ways consistent with the organizational strategy
(Yukl, 2002). Transformational leadership is directed toward inspiring
followers to share and pursue the leader's vision (Yammarino &
Bass, 1990) and motivating followers to go beyond acting in their own
self-interest of exchanging effort and compliance for rewards (Hater
& Bass, 1988) and to work for the good of the group (Yammarino &
Bass, 1990). Transformational leadership, then, helps concentrate
followers' efforts on long-term goals (Howell & Avolio, 1993).
To meet these goals, transformational leaders focus on developing vision
and inspiring followers' pursuit of the vision. Furthermore, they
stimulate changes or alignment of systems in service of a new vision
rather than working within existing systems to sustain the status quo
(Howell & Avolio, 1993).
In comparison, empowering leadership involves a different set of
leader behaviors that are directed more toward developing the
self-influence capabilities, including: self-control, self-regulation,
self-management, and self-leadership of followers (see Manz & Sims,
1987, for the first appearance of empowering leader behaviors). To
achieve this goal, empowering leaders delegate extensive responsibility
to followers and create an environment that enables followers to satisfy
needs for growth and autonomy by exercising effective self-control and
self-direction toward organizational objectives (Cohen et al., 1997;
Manz & Sims, 1987, 1991, 1995; Sims & Manz, 1996; Yun et al.,
2006; Yun et al., 2005). That is, they provide opportunities for their
followers to make decisions and carry them out.
Empowering leadership is different from transformational
leadership. In general, transformational leadership is centered largely
on the vision of the leader. In contrast, empowering leadership is
targeted at developing the self-leadership capabilities among followers.
Indeed, Pearce et al. (2003) have empirically supported the distinction
between empowering and transformational leadership behaviors.
Furthermore, Arnold et al. (2000), Cohen et al. (1997), and Pearce and
Sims (2002) provided support for empowering leadership as encompassing a
different set of leader behaviors from those of transformational
leadership. Recently, Houghton and Yoho (2005) also recognized
empowering leadership as a separate type of leadership and included it
in their contingency model of leadership and psychological empowerment.
Following these endeavors, we conceptualize and operationalize
empowering leadership as distinct from transformational leadership.
Because there has been relatively little research that has directly
compared empowering and transformation leadership, as a preliminary
analysis, we will first empirically examine this distinction; thus, we
hypothesize the following:
Hypothesis 1a: Transformational and empowering leadership are two
separate constructs.
Hypothesis 1b: Controlling for empowering leadership,
transformational leadership will explain additional variance only on
follower ratings of leader effectiveness and follower supervisory
satisfaction.
Hypothesis 1c: Controlling for transformational leadership,
empowering leadership will explain additional variance on follower
ratings of leader effectiveness, follower supervisory satisfaction, and
follower self-leadership.
Self-Awareness and Leadership
Our main focus is on the accuracy of leaders' views of their
own leadership. Considering the importance of leadership to
organizations and the extent to which a leader's influence may
depend on the perceptions of followers, an important question is the
extent to which leaders and their followers agree in their descriptions
of the leaders' behaviors.. For example, perceptual disagreement
between leaders and followers may imply leaders' miscommunication
or failure to respond to the demands of followers, leading to unexpected
outcomes. In this research, we conceptualize leader self-awareness as
the degree of similarity between leaders' descriptions of their own
leadership when compared to descriptions of leadership through the eyes
of their followers.
Moreover, we follow the terminology previously used in the
literature (Atwater et al., 1998; Atwater & Yammarino, 1997; Fleenor
et al., 1996; Sosik & Megerian, 1999) to denote various types of
disagreement: underestimation, in agreement and good estimation, in
agreement but poor estimation, and overestimation. Leaders whose
self-ratings are below followers' ratings are referred to as
underestimators. Leaders whose self-ratings are high and similar to the
followers' rating are referred to as in-agreement-good estimators.
Leaders whose self-ratings are low and similar to their followers'
rating are referred to as in-agreement/poor estimators. And leaders
whose self-ratings are greater than their followers' ratings are
referred to as overestimators.
In the following section, we present the main arguments and primary
hypotheses in our study. We first present the effect of leader
self-awareness of their leadership on leader effectiveness. Note that,
for the most part, these hypotheses that refer to transformational
leadership are generally consistent with prior research. However,
hypotheses that refer to empowering leadership are examined here for the
first time. Furthermore, we also extrapolate the arguments to
follower-related outcomes--satisfaction with supervision and
self-leadership.
Self-Awareness and Leader Effectiveness
An abundance of studies and reviews, including meta-analyses, have
demonstrated that transformational leadership directly predicts leader
effectiveness (e.g., Felfe & Schyns, 2004; Judge & Bono, 2000;
Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996). Furthermore, research on
leadership has documented a relationship between self-awareness of
transformational leadership, operationalized in terms of self-other
agreement, and leader performance. For example, Atwater and Yammarino
(1997) proposed that overestimators of transformational leadership may
dramatically misdiagnose theft leadership strengths and weaknesses. As a
result, they may limit their own effectiveness by failing to set
self-improvement goals. In-agreement/poor estimators of transformational
leadership may accurately diagnose their strengths and weakness as
leaders but may take relatively few actions to improve their performance
due to low self-efficacy regarding their leadership capabilities.
Conversely, in-agreement/good estimators of transformational leadership
may accurately diagnose their strengths and weaknesses and set realistic
self-improvement goals, thus motivating improvement and supporting
effectiveness. Although underestimators may misdiagnose their strengths
and weaknesses, they may pursue unchallenging and easy improvement goals
that may imply a low level of effectiveness. In summary, the logic
offered by Atwater and Yammarino (1997) suggests that self-awareness of
transformational leadership is related to leader effectiveness.
Indeed, the relationship between transformational self-awareness
and initial levels of leader performance has received empirical support
(Atwater et al., 1995; Atwater & Yammarino, 1992; Johnson &
Ferstl, 1999). For example, Atwater et al. (1995) found that
underestimators had the highest performance, followed by leaders who
were in agreement with followers. Finally, overestimators had the lowest
performance as leaders. Similarly, Bass and Yammarino (1991) reported
that leaders who overestimated their transformational leadership
performed more poorly than those who agreed with followers or who were
underestimators.
In a further study, and consistent with the logic above, Atwater et
al. (1998) reported that leaders' effectiveness was greater for
in-agreement/good than in-agreement/poor transformational leaders. In
addition, they reported that underestimators were more effective than
overestimators. It seems, therefore, that accuracy in self-assessment of
leadership is related to leader effectiveness. Following Atwater et al.
(1998), we expect that in-agreement/good leaders will have the highest
level of effectiveness, followed by underestimators. Furthermore, we
expect the lowest level of effectiveness for overestimators due to a
tendency to ignore criticism and discount failure (cf. Atwater et al.,
1998; Atwater & Yammarino, 1997; Taylor & Brown, 1988).
As predicted by Atwater and Yammarino (1997) and supported by
Atwater et al. (1998), we expect the effectiveness of in-agreement/poor
transformational leaders to be lower than underestimators because the
former take relatively fewer actions to improve their leadership. On the
other hand, we expect the effectiveness of in-agreement/poor leaders to
be higher than overestimators to the extent that overestimators inflate
assessment of their strengths but deflate their weaknesses that hinder
behavioral changes (Ashford, 1989). In contrast, in-agreement/poor
leaders may have more realistic self-perceptions of their own leadership
behavior. This may motivate them to work toward self-improvement.
In-agreement/poor leaders may also be perceived as modest, thus leading
their followers to evaluate the leaders' effectiveness more
favorably.
Although nearly all of the previously mentioned work is in
reference to transformational leadership, we also expect the arguments
to be similar for leaders' self-awareness of their empowering
leadership, mainly because empowering leadership has also been
demonstrated to influence leaders' effectiveness or team
effectiveness (e.g., Cohen et al., 1997; Pearce & Sims, 2002).
Unlike underestimators and in-agreement/good empowering leaders, those
who overestimate their empowering leadership are less likely to respond
to feedback from their followers. However, in-agreement/poor empowering
leaders may not set sufficiently high standards to improve their
effectiveness due to factors such as a lack of self-efficacy in their
own ability to effectively function as empowering leaders. Therefore, we
hypothesize the following:
Hypothesis 2: Follower ratings of leader effectiveness will be the
highest for in-agreement/good leaders, the second highest for
underestimators, the third highest for in-agreement/poor leaders, and
the lowest for overestimators of their (a) transformational leadership
and (b) empowering leadership.
Self-Awareness and Follower Satisfaction With Supervision
Locke (1976) defined satisfaction as "a pleasurable or
positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job
or job experience" (p. 1300). One of the main sources of one's
job experience is the interaction with the leader. Empirical studies
have indicated that followers' experiences with their leaders can
enhance satisfaction with supervision (e.g., Felfe & Schyns, 2004;
Jaussi & Dionne, 2004; Judge & Bono, 2000) as wel