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E24: Are leadership styles scientifically valid? · Safe As Podcast

• 0:07
  So we've all been told about the power of positive leadership,
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  authentic ethical servant leadership, or if much of what
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  we believe about these styles is more of an illusion.
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  Today we're diving into research that suggests the evidence for
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  positive leadership styles might be more steeped in how leaders
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  are judged, not just what they do, leading to a reevaluation of
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  how we understand leadership effectiveness.
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  Good, everyone. I'm Ben Hutchinson, This is Safe
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  As podcast dedicated to the thrifty analysis of safety,
• 0:38
  risk, and performance research. Visit safetyinsights.org for
• 0:41
  more research. Today's study is from Fisher ET
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  al 2024, titled A Fatal Flaw. Positive leadership style
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  research creates causal illusions.
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  They tested the idea that leadership styles are more a
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  product of subjective follower evaluations than being some sort
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  of concrete, stable class of leadership behaviours or action.
• 1:04
  Let me emphasise that focusing on leadership styles, not the
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  importance of leadership per SE. Providing background.
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  While valid constructs are necessary in science, they need
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  to be defined, measurable and causally linked to other
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  constructs. However, many behavioural
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  contracts don't meet these criteria. 1 Systematic review of
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  leadership and organisational behaviour research found that
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  just 3% of the variables in these supposedly behavioural
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  sciences capture the endeavourable behaviours of
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  individuals or groups. Rather, they tend to capture
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  perceptions and evaluations. They argue that or in the paper.
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  Ironically then, behavioural scientists rarely study
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  behaviours, which is due to both improper conceptualization and
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  incorrect measurement. A problem with this popular
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  stream of behavioural research is that they conflate leadership
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  behaviour with evaluations of the behaviour and hence leading
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  to causal illusions. Further, they argue that the
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  positive benefits that come from leadership styles might be more
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  of an artefact of conflation rather than a reflection of
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  reality. What they mean is these
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  validated constructs don't actually validate the effects of
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  leaders behaviour, but rather they support or validate A
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  construct that conflates leader behaviours and evaluations of
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  those behaviours. Leadership styles are defined as
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  patterns, characteristics, modes of behaviour, et cetera.
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  Like authentic ethical servant leadership.
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  But the pattern of behaviours isn't the same as the behaviours
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  themselves, but a characteristic of a set of behaviours with a
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  common theme. As such, leadership styles then
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  are more of a characterization or judgement evaluative
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  component. So different behaviours are
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  objective whereas evaluations are subjective.
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  So evaluations rest not just on observed behaviours but other
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  observable leader factors. So, for instance, some research
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  shows that a leader's facial appearance affects the
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  observer's evaluations of that leader, and knowledge about a
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  leader's previous performance also shapes evaluations of
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  leadership style. And hence coring a paper,
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  evaluations of leader behaviours are not merely judgments about
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  these observed behaviours, but holistic assessments of the
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  leader as a person. Anyways, what did they find in
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  the study? Well, some key findings with
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  that positive leadership styles are outcomes that depend on non
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  behavioural evaluative factors such as information about a
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  leader's previous success or value alignment between leaders
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  and followers. Measures of leadership styles
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  create causal illusions or spurious predictions of
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  objective outcomes even when leader behaviours and other
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  leader specific factors are kept constant.
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  Their findings, according to paper, cast serious doubts on
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  previous research claiming that positive leadership styles cause
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  positive outcomes. And furthermore, positive
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  leadership style research is not only wrong in their words, but
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  also practically futile because its constructs and measures are
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  amalgams that did not isolate concrete and learnable
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  behaviours. So, unpacking the findings to
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  highlight that positive leadership styles are conflated
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  constructs that might be partially behavioural but in
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  large part represent positive summary evaluations of leader
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  behaviours and of other leader properties.
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  So I said differently. Leadership styles are likely
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  affected by the leader's behaviours, as you'd expect.
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  But whether leaders having an ethical or servant sort of style
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  is not in itself an objective leader property, but a
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  subjective evaluation through the eye of the beholder.
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  Next, they argue that if leadership is in the eye of the
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  beholder, then evaluating observer ratings is simply the
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  correct measured choice. But they actually disagree with
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  this premise because subjective evaluations of leadership styles
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  are outcomes themselves, and according to paper, using these
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  styles as independent variables to predict other outcomes is a
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  futile exercise that can only produce further causal
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  illusions. The causal illusions are said to
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  stem from misinterpreting leadership styles as purely
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  behavioural constructs, ignoring other variables, for instance
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  information about a leader's past performance or the later
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  follower value alignment. They argue that their findings
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  are somewhat sobering, pointing to fundamental conceptual and
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  methodological weaknesses in past research, thus knocking
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  past wisdom about positive leadership styles off its
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  foundation. Their words Some conclusions
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  from the paper Who positive leadership styles really lack a
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  solid empirical foundation, rendering these claims
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  speculative leadership styles, and not leader behaviours per
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  SE, but rather a mix of what leaders do and how leaders
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  evaluate leadership. These findings warn
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  practitioners that lots of evidence on the effectiveness of
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  positive leadership styles, again not necessarily leadership
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  actions and behaviours and goal setting, is likely driven by
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  causal illusions and thus unwarranted.
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  So the big question, what can we make of these findings?
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  This was another challenging paper for simple practical
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  silver bullets, but maybe shift leadership development to focus
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  more on specific, measurable behaviours more than vague
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  positive styles, perhaps? Remember, behaviour in this
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  sense isn't just sort of your behaviouralism approach, but
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  it's the routines. The things that we do and the
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  logics of why we do them. Clearly distinguish objective
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  leader actions from subjective follower evaluations.
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  Of course, subjective evaluations by followers is
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  itself critical. The authors are more critical
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  around the concept or the construct of a style, perhaps
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  critically evaluate research there has been undertaken on
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  positive leadership styles. The limitations, again, as you
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  expect, there was a few, but they say that there was limited
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  predictive power between actual behaviours versus the subjective
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  evaluations. Also, the causal illusion was
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  only confirmed for three specific leadership styles that
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  I mentioned earlier, but they expect these findings to apply
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  more broadly. That's it on Safe As I'm Ben
• 7:03
  Hutchinson. Please help share, rate and
• 7:05
  review, and check out Safetyinsights org for more
• 7:09
  research. Finally, feel free to support
• 7:12
  Safe AS by shouting a coffee link in the show notes.