Leadership Development Impact (LDI) Framework

There is abundant evidence that leadership development leads to positive impact. But how do we define impact, and what factors should be considered when assessing the results of leadership development? Our comprehensive framework is specifically relevant to leadership development and defines four levels of impact (individual, group, organizational, and societal) as well as three factors that contribute to its effectiveness (leader characteristics, leadership solution, and context). Understanding the four levels will enable organizations to clarify the goals and purpose of their development initiatives and know where to focus measurement. Attending to the contributing factors can help organizations understand the results they are getting and take appropriate steps to maximize the impact of their development initiatives.

The Secret of Successful Leadership—The Critical Match Between the Characteristics of Leaders, the Attributes of Subordinates, and the Circumstances of the Situation

Seldom has so much been written on such an important topic that has produced so little agreement and so much controversy. It starts with “what is leadership and how does it differ from managership?” It continues with the development of competing big, mid-range, and small leadership theories (Muczyk & Adler, 2002). Most recently, scholars are preoccupied with attempting to develop a leadership theory or model by creating a critical match between leader characteristics, subordinate attributes, and the circumstances of the situation. More and more, the influence of national cultures in this global economic village is taken into consideration. This effort is also an attempt at creating such a match in a cultural context that is perceived to be useful by practitioners, is based on reason, and factors in important variables identified in the accepted leadership theories or models.

How Do Populist Voters Rate Their Political Leaders? Comparing Citizen Assessments in Three Jurisdictions

Drawing from the field of management studies, we explore how a sample of voters in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom use a leader character framework to judge political leadership. We ask, how do voters actually assess the character of their current leaders? And, in light of the populist zeitgeist, do people who hold a populist attitude differ markedly in how they judge the character of political leaders? Our results show that voters generally consider character important. However, voters who lean toward populism believe character matters less in political leadership than individuals who scored low on the populism indicator. This durable difference merits more exploration in a political context marked by populism. Our findings about the factors that influence vote choice contribute to this conversation and to extant research that reports that some voters pay greater attention to leader characteristics than do others.

Educational Leadership Effectiveness. Is it a Matter of a Leader’s Characteristics, Behaviors, or Leadership Style?

Leadership in education has been examined in depth until nowadays regarding among others the most common models of leadership, the personal characteristics and profile of charismatic leaders, the principal leadership style and behavior. Notwithstanding, to the best of our knowledge so far, there is space for additional examination as far as for educational leadership effectiveness regarding these factors. This study aims to investigate the outcomes of educational leadership considering the most important components of leadership which are the leader characteristics’, behaviors’ and the most common exercised styles. Furthermore, a purpose of this study is to explore interconnections and correlations among leader characteristics’, behaviors, leadership styles and effectiveness. According to literature review, there is no clear answer in the question of which one component among leadership styles’, personal characteristics’ and behaviors’ is more significant and contribute more to leadership effectiveness. Research has shown that all these elements are fundamental and are considered all important for educational effectiveness. It is also argued that there is a strong interconnection between them as individual parts in an integrated system, which each one separately has its relative influence in educational leadership effectiveness. Also, there is a broad tendency for agreement according to which educational leadership effectiveness depends on many other factors apart from characteristics’, styles and behaviors’, such as timing, special conditions, legislation, personnel qualifications, expected outcomes’ importance, facilities and many others. Apart from these independent factors it is worth to mention that different leadership styles have different positive or negative outcomes to different stake holders. Therefore, it is hard to isolate and to define which of those components are more significant for leadership effectiveness.