Leadership Survey Results and Interventions for Organizations

Survey Overview and Research Questions

The survey was sent to 87 managers in two organizations, and there were 32 responses. The survey focused on four main questions, all of which were open-ended in nature and therefore not lending themselves to statistical analysis. This section covers the responses to those four questions.

The first research question was: "What does leadership and progress mean to employees at these companies, and are they different from other companies?" There are two components to this question. The first component concerns what leadership means to the employees at these companies. The surveys indicated that the managers at these two companies felt that leadership was important — this was the view of 31 out of the 32 managers who responded. Not surprisingly, those in leadership positions felt that they were contributing something positive to the organization and that employees responded well to their leadership. Most respondents indicated that leadership was either "important" or "very important." At this point in the survey, there was no discussion of leadership style, so no links can be made from this data as to whether the perceived importance of leadership relates to any particular leadership style.

The second part of this question is whether these two companies are different from other companies in this respect. The study did not include any data from other companies, so no direct comparison of results could be made. Studies on the importance of leadership tend to focus on specific roles that leadership plays, such as leading through merger and acquisition activity (Sitkin & Pablo, 2005) or in shaping business values (Ciulla, 1999). This means that there is no way to determine whether leadership is more important at these two companies than at any other company. There is no intuitive reason why it should be, but the research design did not test this hypothesis.

The second research question was: "Which models of leadership best fit the leadership profiles that are present within the organizations?" The respondents were provided with a brief primer on leadership styles, but that did not prevent many of them from going off-topic in their answers. Most respondents did not fully understand the concepts that were presented to them. The most common answer drawn from established leadership theories was transformational leadership, which six leaders felt best described the leadership found within their organization. Five responded positively to transactional leadership, suggesting a possible schism between the different leadership styles present in the organizations. Two responded positively to the Great Man Theory, and one to Trait Theory. The remaining respondents offered a fairly wide range of theories, ranging from those with some basis in the literature — such as ethical leadership — to responses such as "good leadership" and "incompetent leadership" that have no grounding in the academic literature. These responses illustrated that many managers, even those in leadership positions, may not have formally studied leadership and were not sufficiently familiar with the concepts to provide a meaningful answer.

There was weak support for the first clause of the first research question. The managers surveyed indicated that leadership was important in their companies. However, their positions as leaders may have biased the responses. Moreover, the overwhelming positivity of the responses does not yield much that is actionable. If leadership is always considered important, that certainly means that steps can be taken to improve the quality of leadership at a company — but determining what sort of improvements are needed would require a deeper understanding of leadership than was revealed by the subsequent research questions.

Leadership Importance and Model Identification

There was no real support for any single leadership type. The responses offered a mix of types, and many indicated that respondents had a considerably lower level of familiarity with formal leadership theory than the survey author had assumed. In hindsight, this makes sense. Some respondents would have studied leadership formally, but others may have come from different professional backgrounds and not had the benefit of formal leadership studies. The supplemental primer materials were clearly insufficient to generate stronger or more consistent responses.

The third question was: "How has gender and diversity affected the leadership profiles in these companies?" This open-ended question was one that respondents did not actually manage to answer effectively. It was probably written poorly. The main issue is that the respondents did not understand what was meant by "leadership profiles." The objective of the question was to determine whether increasing diversity in leadership had an effect on the styles leaders used most commonly. Many managers did not understand the leadership styles concept, and a few others indicated that they did not have sufficient experience at the company to comment on how things were in the past. Only five responses were of meaningful value. Three indicated no change, while two indicated a shift toward transformative leadership styles. The latter would be expected, given a general societal and organizational shift toward that type of leadership. In many cases, it would also be expected that leadership styles would not change — particularly in situations where the leader has not changed or where promotions are strongly based on tenure, meaning more progressive thinkers do not receive promotions.

Others who had not understood the concepts also indicated that there was no change, but since they had not understood the ideas in Question 2, they would also not have understood the ideas in Question 3. Some respondents indicated that there were more women and minorities in leadership positions now, but since this was the baseline assumption of the question, they were in essence not answering what was actually being asked.

Diversity, Gender, and Leadership Development

The fourth question was: "How can the lessons learned from the above questions be translated into action that will result in leadership development and the grooming of future leaders?" This very open-ended question yielded 32 essentially different responses, ranging from "No idea" to long paragraphs explaining what needed to be done. Conceptually, the question sought to draw connections between the present understanding of leadership and future actions on leadership training. Only a handful of responses demonstrated genuine understanding of this goal.

The better responses reflected thoughtfulness. One respondent noted that the company should have a target leadership style for different departments or positions, and would benefit from training programs focused on finding and developing people to fit specific leadership roles. This respondent further noted that some departments are strongly transactional in nature while others rely heavily on innovation — and that such departments would therefore require entirely different leadership styles.

Overall, there were several issues with the responses. The questions were framed in an open-ended manner and relied on respondents having some base conceptual knowledge. In hindsight, many respondents did not possess this knowledge and did not acquire it from the information that was provided. A more structured set of survey questions might have been more valuable, either by generating results amenable to statistical analysis or by making it clearer that respondents and the survey writer shared a common understanding of the questions' intent. Such challenges are a learning experience, but unfortunately leave the study as a mixed bag in terms of its results.