Tell us about your leadership style: A structured interview approach for assessing leadership behavior constructs

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

It is widely recognized that leadership behaviors drive leaders' success. But despite the importance of assessing leadership behavior for selection and development, current measurement practices are limited. This study contributes to the literature by examining the structured interview method as a potential approach to assess leadership behavior. To this end, we developed a structured interview measuring constructs from Yukl's (2012) leadership taxonomy. Supervisors in diverse positions participated in the interview as part of a leadership assessment program. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the assumption that leadership constructs could be assessed as distinct interview dimensions. Results further showed that interview ratings predicted a variety of leadership outcomes (supervisors' annual income, ratings of situational leader effectiveness, subordinates' well-being and affective organizational commitment) beyond other relevant predictors. Findings offer implications on how to identify leaders who have a positive impact on their subordinates, and they inform us about conceptual differences between leadership measures.

Original languageEnglish
Article number101364
JournalLeadership Quarterly
Volume31
Issue number4
ISSN1048-9843
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2020
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The study reported in this paper was supported by grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant numbers 146039 and 175827).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 The Authors

    Research areas

  • Affective organizational commitment, Incremental validity, Leadership behavior, Structured interviews, Well-being

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