Engaging Leadership

Lindberg, J. T., & Kaiser, R. B. (2006, May). Engaging leadership: A qualitative study of how leaders impact team engagement. In J. T. Lindberg & S. B. Craig (Co-chairs), The Qualitative Study of Leadership: Research Methods and Substantive Findings. Symposium presented at the 21st annual meeting of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Dallas, TX.

The purpose of this qualitative, inductive study was to identify leader behaviors that affect engagement in a medium-sized construction firm. Our research sought to address several questions. First, what is it that leaders do to promote the engagement of individuals and teams? Is this different from how they inhibit engagement? And finally, do engaging leader behaviors vary with level in the organizational hierarchy? Analyses of transcripts from structured interviews of employees from both high- and low-engagement teams at three distinct levels of management (i.e., supervisory, middle management, and general management) yielded two important findings: (1) there was a distinction between the behaviors that promote engagement versus lead to dis-engagement and (2) the leader behaviors related to employee engagement differed across the managerial hierarchy.

Filed under: Conference Presentations

→