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Leadership is a reciprocal process: Considering line managers’

3.4 Bridging Implementation Science and Leadership Research

3.4.5 Leadership is a reciprocal process: Considering line managers’

The leadership research emphasizes the importance of both managers’ and employees’ perspectives in leadership evaluation. This is because considering only of these sources may not provide an accurate picture of a manager’s leadership (Atwater et al., 1998; Fleenor et al., 2010; Lee and Carpenter, 2017). If managers expect to understand whether they succeed as leaders and whether they are perceived as effective (active leadership) or ineffective (passive leadership), they need to ask others, for instance their employees, to rate them. Asking employees to rate their managers’ leadership is the most common approach in evaluating leadership. This is because managers have been argued as poor judges of their own leadership and how others perceive them (Atwater et al., 1998; Fleenor et al., 2010; Mabe and West, 1982). However, relying solely on employees’ ratings may not result in a representative picture of a managers’ current leadership (Fleenor et al., 1996; Lee and Carpenter, 2017; Ostroff et al., 2004). The reason is that managers’ self-ratings can still provide meaningful information about

their leadership, especially in comparisons with other ratings’. Comparisons between managers’ and employees’ provides an opportunity for managers’ to reflect on their levels of self-awareness, which is vital for managers’ seeking to improve their leadership (Fleenor et al., 2010; Smither et al., 2005; Tekleab et al., 2008; Yammarino and Atwater, 1997). This observation has resulted in a leadership research field called “self-other agreement”.

The research on self-other agreement shows that when a manager agrees with the employees on the manager’s leadership behaviours, more positive organizational outcomes are obtained. For instance, agreement between managers and their employees is associated with a more positive work climate (Aarons et al., 2017a), and with more positive employee outcomes, including job satisfaction (Amundsen and Martinsen, 2014) and work engagement (Kopperud et al., 2013). However, some research shows that disagreements between managers and their employees on leadership are common (Lee and Carpenter, 2017; Mabe and West, 1982; Ostroff et al., 2004). This is problematic because managers who view their leadership differently than their employees tend to be less effective leaders associated with poorer organizational outcomes (Atwater et al., 2007; Johnson and Ferstl, 1999; Smither et al., 2005).

Yammarino and Atwater (1993) developed a model of self-perception accuracy that grouped comparisons between managers and employees ratings into the following three major categories:

1) in agreement (managers and employees rate the managers similarly)

2) over-raters (managers rate themselves higher than their employees do), and 3) under-raters (managers rate themselves lower than their employees do).

Managers in agreement with their employees on their leadership are more open to feedback and setting appropriate improvement goals (Atwater et al., 1998; Tekleab et al., 2008), and are related to higher performance ratings (Bass and Yammarino, 1991; Ostroff et al., 2004). Managers who over-rate their leadership are often associated with the most negative organizational and employee outcomes (Aarons et al., 2017a; Van Velsor et al., 1993). A possible explanation is that they ignore negative feedback, which may prevent them from developing their leadership (Bass and Yammarino, 1991; Yammarino and Atwater, 1997). Managers who over-rate have been associated with passive leadership behaviours since they may lack understanding of what support their employees need (Bashshur et al., 2011; Berson and Sosik, 2007). However, the research on managers who under-rate their leadership have been associated with two mixed performance patterns. One the one hand, these managers may not improve their performance based on feedback to the same extent as other managers (London and Smither, 1995; Tekleab et al., 2008). On the other hand, these managers may compensate for their self-perceived weaknesses by hard work that may lead to positive outcomes (Atwater et al., 1998; Yammarino and Atwater, 1997). Managers who under-rate

their leadership have also been associated as modest leaders who are generally perceived as more effective leaders than over-raters.

A previous study shows that disagreements between managers and employees about transformational leadership is related to a negative organizational culture (Aarons et al., 2017a). Another study shows when teams agree on the level of organizational learning, the level of such learning at their unit improves (Hasson et al., 2013). Yet another study focuses on manager-employee agreement specifically related to implementation leadership (Aarons et al., 2017b). This study surprisingly indicated that managers who under-rated their leadership compared to their employees was associated with a more positive involvement and performance feedback climate than those managers who agreed or over-rated their leadership. These studies indicate that the degree to which managers and employees agree in an organization may have an impact on shaping an organization’s culture and climate. Moreover, the relationship between disagreement and less favourable outcomes appears to be more complex than just agreement or disagreement (Fleenor et al., 2010; Lee and Carpenter, 2017). For instance, managers who over-rate their leadership influence their employees differently than managers who under-rate their leadership.

From this follows that it is evident that managers and employees do not always agree on how the manager leads. This tends to be problematic. Thus, considering self-other agreement is essential because it appears that not only the mean values of leadership ratings are important. However, also recognizing the relationship between these sources (i.e., their ratings), whether managers and employees agree or disagree, seem to matter, and may influence the organizational context as well as impact implementation processes. At present, it is unclear how managers’ and their employees can become more in agreement on leadership. More specifically, we lack knowledge of how leadership interventions, and the feedback provided during these interventions, influence agreement. Gaining more knowledge on manager- employee agreement are valuable because disagreements are negatively associated with organizational context.

The importance of context for effective implementation is a common theme in all implementation frameworks and is highlighted in the empirical research. Hence, although managers have a pivotal role in realizing implementation efforts, considerations of the context in which they operate is crucial.