Predicting Follower Perceptions of Leadership 1 Running head : Predicting Follower Perceptions of Leadership The Influence of Follower Personality and Affect on Their Perceptions of Transformational Leadership

The concept of leadership implies an interactive process between a leader and her followers. Historically, scholarly efforts in the field of leadership have focused primarily on the leader. Recent calls to explicate the influence mechanisms used by leaders and suggestions of reciprocity of influence between leaders and followers only adds to the importance of a greater understanding regarding follower perceptions and behaviors. However, researchers have only begun to explore followers’ perspectives in regards to this relationship. Therefore, this study examined the role of two sets of follower characteristics on perceptions of leadership behavior; personality and dispositional affect. Utilizing a sample of approximately 150 NROTC Midshipmen, this study found that elements of both individual personality and affect predicted followers’ perceptions of transformational leadership behavior. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and suggestions for future research are provided. Predicting Follower Perceptions of Leadership 3 Predicting Follower Perceptions of Transformational Leadership The study of leadership is one of the most heavily researched areas of organizational behavior and management. Effective leadership is commonly believed to be an essential element to organizational success. Among the list of positive outcomes, effective leadership has been linked to higher levels of performance, commitment, effort, motivation, and organizational citizenship behaviors, to name a few (e.g. Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996; Masi, 2000). Consequently, leadership is often the focus of a significant amount of organizational resources with respect to attracting, retaining, and developing this important resource at all levels of the organization. This premium on the value of leadership exists in organizational contexts ranging from businesses to government to the military and across many, if not all cultural boundaries. Historically, the study of leadership has focused on the leader (Felfe & Schyns, 2006). While the field has moved away from the “great man” theories of its origins (Yukl, 2006), the leader has largely remained the center of attention for both scholars and practitioners. Researchers have examined how a variety of factors such as cognitive ability (e.g. Judge, Ilies, & Colbert, 2004), emotion and mood (e.g. Bono & Ilies, 2006; George, 2000; Sosik & Megerian, 1999), personality (e.g. Bono & Judge, 2004; de Hoogh, den Hartog, & Koopman, 2005; Judge, Ilies, Bono, & Gerhardt, 2002), and values (e.g. Burkgren, 2004; Lord & Brown, 2001; Sosik, 2005) relate to leadership behaviors. While this interest in the leader is understandable, the concept of leadership implies that someone is actually following the leader. Though theories such as leader-member exchange (Dansereau, Cashman, & Graen, 1973; Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995) have focused on the leaderfollower relationship, emphasizing this dynamic within other leadership paradigms such as Predicting Follower Perceptions of Leadership 4 transformational leadership is a more recent development. For example, transformational leadership scholars have only recently begun to explore how constructs such as self-concordance (Bono & Judge, 2003), personal and social identification (Kark, Shamir, & Chen, 2003), psychological empowerment (Avolio, Zhu, Koh, & Bhatia, 2004), collective efficacy (Walumbwa, Wang, Lawler, & Kan, 2004), leader-member exchange (Wang, Law, Hackett, Wang, & Chen, 2005), value congruence (Brown & Trevino, 2006), and job characteristics (Piccolo & Colquitt, 2006) might begin to explain the mechanisms through which leaders affect followers. Still, attention explicitly directed towards understanding the nature and disposition of followers and their unique perspective in the leader-follower relationship has remained a rare occurrence (Conger, 1999). Nevertheless, a nascent stream of empirical research suggests that follower characteristics such as values (Ehrhart & Klein, 2001), personality (Felfe & Schyns, 2006), and affect (Brown & Keeping, 2005) influence their individual perceptions of leaders and leader behaviors. The purpose of this study is to extend this initial research by examining the relationships among follower personality, affect, and perceptions of transformational leadership. Transformational Leadership Despite decades of research, leadership remains a controversial topic. Over the past 50 years alone, the field has produced, on average, more than one new leadership classification framework or typology per year (Fleishman et al., 1991). Of the numerous leadership theories that have been developed, transformational leadership has arguably attracted the greatest amount of attention in recent years (Avolio & Bass, 1999) and is currently the most widely accepted leadership paradigm (Tejeda, 2001). This theory stems from Burns’ (1978) seminal work Predicting Follower Perceptions of Leadership 5 attempting to better understand the linkages between leaders and followers, and to integrate some of the more promising elements of prior leadership theories. Essentially, transformational leadership focuses on how a leader influences and motivates followers and is similarly motivated in return. It involves a form of influence that motivates followers to achieve more than what is expected of them. This type of leadership “transforms” both the leader and the follower by motivating each to achieve his or her full potential. Thus, the reciprocal nature of this relationship necessitates an understanding of how both leader and follower characteristics influence this dynamic. In research contexts, transformational leadership is often operationalized using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, also known simply as the MLQ (Bass & Avolio, 1995). The most recent and frequently used version of this questionnaire (MLQ-5x short form) characterizes transformational leadership as having five dimensions; idealized influenceattributes, idealized influence-behaviors, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. Idealized influence or charisma refers to leaders who are admired, respected, and trusted by their followers and inspire them to embrace the leader’s vision and to identify with the leader. Being able to articulate an appealing vision and to motivate followers to higher levels of performance through optimism, confidence, and enthusiasm are some of the behaviors assessed by the inspirational motivation dimension of the MLQ. Intellectual stimulation is the degree to which a leader engages followers, challenging their assumptions and approaches to tasks in order to encourage innovation and creative problem solving. Finally, individualized consideration refers to the leader’s ability to listen and appropriately respond to each follower’s unique needs for growth and achievement. Follower Characteristics Predicting Follower Perceptions of Leadership 6 Understanding how follower characteristics might influence perceptions of leadership is important for several reasons. From a research perspective, this understanding might help to narrow the efforts of those in the field who are trying to identify key elements in the leaderfollower relationship. Also, considering that the majority of research on transformational leadership is based upon subordinates’ ratings of their leader, understanding the factors that influence these ratings is critical to a thorough understanding and interpretation of any empirical findings. Moreover, such characteristics might be moderators or partial mediators of the leaderfollower relationship (Felfe & Schyns, 2006). From a practitioner perspective, follower ratings of leadership behaviors play an important role in leadership identification, assessment, and development programs within many organizations. Corporate investments in such leadership development efforts have been estimated to be $50 billion a year (Lockwood, 2006). These programs increasingly utilize multirater or “360 degree” feedback instruments to assess subordinate (as well as peer, supervisory, and other) perceptions of a leader (Conger & Toegel, 2003). Therefore, understanding the factors that influence follower ratings is important in developing accurate leader assessments and in properly interpreting follower perceptions of leader performance. One of the few studies examining the influence of follower disposition on leader perceptions focused on the role of select values and personality elements of followers (Ehrhart & Klein, 2001). This research found that follower values and personality were moderately useful in predicting follower preferences among three types of leadership style; charismatic, relationshiporiented, and task-oriented. Though these leadership types share similarities with the concept of transformational leadership, it is unclear how closely each is related to the construct as measured by the MLQ. Further, the follower characteristics selected were specifically chosen by the Predicting Follower Perceptions of Leadership 7 researchers for their presumed likelihood of a hypothesized relationship with charismatic leadership. By not utilizing an established value or personality model from the psychology literature, Ehrhart and Klein have limited the degree to which these results can be compared to future research. As a specific example, the researchers could have employed an established measure of personality such as one based on the so called Big Five personality characteristics (Costa & McCrae, 1992). To their credit, the authors acknowledged this limitation and called for the use of the five factor personality model in future research (Ehrhart & Klein, 2001). Fundamental to Ehrhart and Klein’s (2001) study was the assumption that preferences for and reactions to certain types of leaders are at least partially driven by a follower’s attraction to the perceived similarity of characteristics inferred from