Doug MacKie
Positive leadership development (PLD) offers access to a range of new theoretical and evidence‐based approaches that have the potential to refine and enhance how leaders and leadership are developed in organizations. To date there is no grand unifying theory of leadership, studies on leadership development vary significantly in their efficacy (Avolio, Reichard, Hannah, Walumbwa, & Chan, 2009), and the evidence base continues to lag behind practitioner applications (Aguinis & Cascio, 2008). Leadership development consumes an estimated $50 billion annually (Bolden, 2007) in the USA alone and yet many programs lack a substantial evidence base or coherent theoretical rationale (Brinner, 2012). This review aims to outline some of the potential contributions that the emerging field of PLD can make to enhancing leadership development effectiveness.
The rationale for this approach is clear and compelling. Firstly, the focus on strengths seeks to redress the traditional deficit reduction focus in leadership development (Luthans & Avolio, 2003). Secondly, meta‐analytic outcome studies show that current leadership models are unable to explain significant amounts of variance, suggesting there are many more critical variables to be discovered in the field of leadership development (Avolio, Reichard et al., 2009). Thirdly, practitioner application of the positive, and especially strength‐based, approaches appears to be significantly ahead of the research evidence making it an opportune time to review the status of the current evidentiary base (Donaldson & Ko, 2010). Finally, applied positive psychology constructs have been successfully translated to other domains, including clinical psychology, suggesting the assessment of their cross‐domain application is warranted and timely (Seligman, Steen, Park, & Petersen, 2005).
The chapter is divided into four broad and interconnected areas considered foundational to the development of the construct and evidence base for positive leadership development. Firstly, existing positive leadership theories will be reviewed, including theories of readiness for development and change as well as positive theories like authentic leadership that have evolved under the positive leadership domain. Theories can be either implicit (e.g., mindsets) or explicit, and both are relevant and formative in the PLD field. Secondly, the areas of positive leadership assessment will reviewed, as the reliable and valid assessment of positive models and constructs is a common and necessary precursor to PLD (McCauley & Wakefield, 2006). Positive constructs related to leadership have traditionally been evaluated and categorized across the state–trait continuum from positive emotions to psychological capital and character strengths. The concept of strengths in particular will be reviewed, as this is one of the more developed criteria in positive leadership assessment.
Thirdly, the evidence for the effectiveness of PLD will be reviewed. There are broadly two competing methodologies that place differential emphasis on both the constructs to be developed and whether the development is conducted in a traditional group training format or a more individualized coaching design. As coaching is increasingly becoming a key delivery mechanism for executive and leadership development (Day, 2001), its alignment with positive organizational psychology is potentially critical to applying these concepts in practice. Finally, the limitations of PLD will be discussed along with suggestions for future research. Thus the aim of the review is to survey the landscape of PLD and articulate both the strengths and the limitations of this developing approach to enhancing leadership effectiveness.
Despite the focus on positive organizational psychology found in the work of humanistic psychologists (Maslow, 1954), including the attention to peak experiences and human potential, this approach failed to gain traction in organizations partly due to the lack of empiricism and development of a supportive evidence base (Wright & Quick, 2009). Positive constructs resurfaced again as part of the positive psychology movement pioneered by Martin Seligman as part of his presidency of the American Psychological Association. The resurgence of interest in positive leadership development can, in part, be traced to the paradigm shift that occurred in applied psychology at the start of the new millennium (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Positive psychology originally called for a radical change in perspective away from the reduction of psychological distress and disease and toward the identification and enhancement of what made life engaging and meaningful (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Positive psychology focused on three pillars of inquiry including positive subjective experiences, trait‐like character strengths, and positive institutions. Originally aimed at redressing the negative bias in clinical psychology, some have argued that the positive psychology paradigm has been slower to influence organizational issues (Wright & Quick, 2009). However, it may be that with its focus toward optimizing performance, industrial psychology has always adopted a more positive approach to individuals than other aspects of psychology and lacked the overtly negative bias that prevailed in the disease models of clinical psychology (Hackman, 2009) and its uneasy alignment with biological psychiatry. As well as the success of the positivist paradigm in other areas of applied psychology, a related but independent shift in the field of talent management provided additional support for PLD. Specifically beliefs about the origin of talent in general and of leadership capability in particular began to shift from being trait‐like and infrequent to state‐like and much more commonly found in individuals within organizations (Meyers & Van Woerkom, 2014; Meyers, Van Woerkom, & Dries, 2013). This prompted a more inclusive perspective on leadership development where the focus on developable states would lead to the unlocking of as yet unrealised leadership potential. Positive and strengths‐based approaches to leadership development offered an immediate conceptual verification and coherent methodology to assist organizations in exploiting this unrealized leadership resource (MacKie, 2014).
Positive organizational psychology (POP) has been slow to evolve as a distinct research paradigm for a number of reasons. Firstly, the three pillars of positive psychology did not align that well with organizational psychology’s need for the identification of developable constructs that had explicit links to organizational effectiveness (Money, Hillenbrand, & da Camara, 2009). Secondly, evidence emerged that many individuals were unaware of their strengths (Kaplan & Kaiser, 2010), removing one of the key potential foci of positive organizational interventions. Thirdly, much of the positively orientated research conducted in organizations was cross‐sectional and heavily reliant on self‐report data (Mills, Fleck, & Kozikowski, 2013), limiting conclusions to correlational inferences and promoting a focus on individual well‐being over organizational performance.
There are other, more enduring, reasons for the resilience of the deficit focus in organizations. There is strong and converging evidence for an evolutionary preparedness toward negativity that means it is much easier to learn to be fearful and acquire aversions than it is to develop positive associations (Rozin & Royzman, 2001). This evolutionary perspective, which explains the adaptive nature of negative emotions to deal with threat and loss and their necessary over‐estimation, suggests a functional adaptation to identify and focus on the negative and over‐estimate its probability. This unifying model explains a number of otherwise disconnected observations, including the lopsided taxonomy of emotional descriptors and the ease with which we learn to fear and avoid ancestral challenges (Nesse, 2005). Developing a positive focus in organizations requires overcoming these significant, adaptive, and enduring biases.
However, POP has progressed in terms of taxonomy to the point where two distinct research approaches have emerged in the field. Positive organizational behavior (POB) is construed as a research‐based, measurable, and state‐like approach whose constructs could consequently be targeted for further development (Luthans & Youssef, 2007). A contrasting approach to this has been defined as positive organizational scholarship (POS), which focuses on positive behavior from a more trait‐like perspective. The POS focus on the classification and identification of virtues like compassion and gratitude (Boyatzis, Smith, & Blaize, 2006) in organizations lends itself more to selection than development processes. The POB approach has supported the development of research on positive psychological states, such as “PsyCap” where positive states like confidence, hope, optimism, and resilience are seen as essential prerequisites to developing a positive leadership style (Avolio & Luthans, 2006). PLD is the logical extension of this trend in POB.
Psychological capital (PsyCap) has developed as a model of the underlying positive psychological states that can be developed in followers as a result of positive leadership behaviors (Luthans, Avolio, Avey, & Norman, 2007). There is evidence that suggests that PsyCap mediates the impact of transformational leadership on follower performance (Gooty, Gavin, Johnson, Frazier, & Snow, 2009), building their capacities in motivation and goal perseverance. The PsyCap model differs from other strengths models in that it is much more circumscribed, with only one domain and four constructs, demonstrates good reliability and validity, is explicitly state‐like, and has been found to be easily developed with specific interventions (Luthans, Avey, Avolio, Norman, & Combs, 2006).
The separation of POP into these two separate and conceptually distinct research domains –those that chose to focus on positive organizational behavior (POB) and those that preferred to focus on positive institutions (Positive Organizational Scholarship or POS) – has caused some challenges in the development of positive models in organizations. The distinction may appear somewhat arbitrary and more reflective of research group interests than a useful taxonomic divide (Hackman, 2009). Nonetheless, it matters as the assumptions, level of analysis, and models behind each approach are significantly different and have led to different research programs that have contrasting models for organizational, including leadership, development.
Despite these taxonomic challenges, several strands of research have emerged and are developing significant empirical support. These include the investigation of psychological capital, and its links with emotional contagion, follower positivity, and performance, (Meyers, van Woerkom, & Bakker, 2013; Meyers, Van Woerkom, de Reuver, Bakk, & Oberski, 2015). Research on strengths identification and development has resulted in novel taxonomies of strengths and virtues being developed, as well as methodologies for developing them (Biswas‐Diener, Kashdan, & Minhas, 2011; Petersen & Seligman, 2004). Research on positive organizations has included the identification and development of high‐performing teams (Cohn & Fredrickson, 2010). In addition, the identification and development of positive leadership, including authentic, transformational, altruistic, and servant leadership, appears to be generating significant interest and research impact (Donaldson & Ko, 2010). In terms of operationalizing these constructs into a leadership development methodology, POB is increasingly aligned with leadership coaching as an individualized methodology to deliver the positive interventions to leaders and their organizations (Linley, Woolston, & Biswas‐Diener, 2009).
Although there are many leadership theories, to be categorized as truly positive leadership theories, three elements must be included. Firstly, a positive leadership theory should focus on the strengths (both situational and dispositional) of the leader (Linley et al., 2009). When are they at their best and why is it so? Secondly, positive leadership needs to have a positive impact on followers, proximately in the form of greater confidence and discretionary effort and distally in the form of superior individual and organizational performance (Avey, Avolio, & Luthans, 2011). Thirdly, the purpose of the positive leadership theory is to enable the pursuit of goals and objectives that are self‐transcendent and not complicit in the manipulation of others for personal benefit (Fambrough & Hart, 2008). Authenticity has been suggested as the core construct on which positive models of leadership like transformational, ethical, and servant leadership are based (Avolio & Gardner, 2005). There are now a variety of theoretical domains that are providing support for PLD. These can be classified as theories or models (e.g., authentic leadership; Avolio, Walumba, & Weber, 2009), or underlying psychological constructs (e.g., psychological capital; Luthans et al., 2007). In addition, models of PLD can be moderated by implicit leadership theories (ILTs); that is, what are the underlying assumptions about leadership and its development in an organization. Implicit leadership models such as developmental readiness and mindsets are of interest in PLD as they contain within them elements of both motivation and capability that signal a readiness and belief in successful leadership development that are seen as essential precursors of a successful positive leadership development process (Avolio, 2011).
Implicit models of leadership have been implicated in the veracity of managers’ perceptions of the performance of their reports and beliefs about the malleability of behaviors, ability, and personality (Heslin & VandeWalle, 2008). Growth or incremental mindsets are those conducive to development, as they assume an inherent capacity in self and others for developing and enhancing abilities (Dweck, 2006). In contrast, fixed managerial mindsets assume abilities are relatively stable over time and do not support investment in developing the capability of others (Heslin & VandeWalle, 2008). The concept of developmental readiness as a precursor to successful PLD has emerged from this focus on the leader’s underlying assumptions of the malleability of leadership competence (Avolio & Hannah, 2008).
Developmental readiness is a potentially key precursor of successful leadership development that seeks to identify key positive states and traits in the individual that are suggestive of a readiness to constructively engage in enhancing leadership capacity. Developmental readiness has been defined as “both the ability and the motivation to focus on, make meaning of and develop new and more complex ways of thinking that position you to more effectively assume leadership roles” (Avolio & Hannah, 2008). Emerging from the clinical literature on change readiness (Prochaska & DiClemente, 1983), the construct was supported by empirical evidence that suggested both the low heritability of leadership (Ilies, Gerhardt, & Lee, 2004) and meta‐analytic studies on leadership effectiveness that suggested significant levels of the variance in predicting leadership effectiveness were still unaccounted for (Avolio, Reichard, et al., 2009).
Developmental readiness sits squarely within the POB tradition in that it assumes readiness is a state‐like construct that can be positively inflated with the right intervention (Hannah & Avolio, 2010). The construct was conceptualized as having both a motivational and ability higher‐order construct with supporting subdomains nesting underneath. Motivation was comprised of interest and goals, goal orientation, and developmental efficacy, whereas the ability factor was comprised of self‐awareness and self‐concept clarity, leader complexity, and metacognitive ability. The supporting subdomains of both the ability and the motivational readiness factors were not new but instead drawn from pre‐existing theories of change. Goal orientation drew on the implicit theories of self (Dweck & Leggett, 1988) that proposed that leaders could either adopt an incremental view of their own development where their growth mindset encouraged exploration and assimilation of new experiences, or an entity model where a relatively fixed mindset encouraged self‐limiting beliefs about their potential to develop. Developmental efficacy too had a long history and is conceptualized as the level of confidence the leader possesses in the development and application of new knowledge, skills, and abilities (Luthans, Luthans, Hodgetts, & Luthans, 2001).
The ability to develop was also predicated on existing theoretical constructs including self‐awareness, self‐concept clarity, and the complexity of the leader’s self‐image and the capacity to reflect on one’s own thinking (metacognitive ability). Much of the evidence comes from studies on the individual subdomains including goal‐setting (Locke & Latham, 1990), mindsets (Dweck, 2006), metacognitive ability (Hannah, 2006), and self‐awareness (Avolio, Wernsing, Chan, & Griffeth, 2007), but it remains to be seen if the construct of developmental readiness in its totality adds anything more than the sum of its parts to the prediction of who will benefit most from leadership development. Despite the apparent face and concurrent validity of the construct of developmental readiness, the concept remains to be operationalized in the form of a reliable and valid psychometric that will facilitate the demonstration of its incremental validity beyond that of its subdomains.
There is a variety of positive leadership theories that have emerged as a response to the shift to a more positive strengths‐based conceptualization of leaders and leadership. These include authentic leadership (Luthans & Avolio, 2003), servant leadership (Liden, Wayne, Zhao, & Henderson, 2008), and positive global leadership (Youseff & Luthans, 2012). In addition, existing models of leadership – including transformational leadership (Bass, 1999), with its emphasis on the instillation of positive affect in followers, and Greenleaf’s servant leadership model (1977), with its focus on stewardship – qualify to be included in the positive leadership domain. Of the newly emerged theories, it is authentic leadership that has generated the greatest empirical and research evidence base (e.g., Avolio & Gardner, 2005; Gardner et al., 2011).
Authentic leadership is defined by Luthans and Avolio (2003, p. 243) as “a process that draws from both positive psychological capacities and a highly developed organizational context which results in both greater self‐awareness and self‐regulated positive behaviors.” Consequently the development of authentic leaders involves the identification and enhancement of positive psychological states and the integration of a moral element into leadership development to further develop the purpose as well as the process of leadership (Avolio & Gardner, 2005). Authentic leadership arose out of the concept of transformational leadership when a distinction was made between pseudo‐transformational leaders, who manipulated followers for their own ends, and genuine transformational leaders (Avolio, Walumbwa, & Weber, 2009). Transformational leadership emphasized the leader’s impact on followers in terms of inspiring them toward enhancing their performance toward a shared vision for the benefit of the organization and its values (Bass, 1999). Bass integrated the five transformative elements of leadership into his full range leadership model (FRLM) that, in addition, included two transactional elements that focused on rewarding followers’ behaviors and two laissez‐faire elements that described the less functional, passive, and avoidant leadership styles. There have been a variety of attempts to operationalize the transformational leadership construct, the most prolific of those being the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ; Bass & Avolio, 1997). There is now a substantial amount of evidence supporting the construct validity of the FRLM, and the MLQ is one of the most commonly used leadership instruments by both researchers and practitioners in the field (Alban‐Metcalfe & Mead, 2010).
The concept of authentic leadership also capitalized on the increasing influence of positive organizational behavior and offered a way to integrate this into a more strengths‐orientated leader development process (Avolio & Luthans, 2006). Authentic leadership was seen to contain four key elements: balanced processing in decision‐making, an internalized moral perspective, relational transparency with others, and self‐awareness (Walumbwa, Avolio, Gardner, Wernsing, & Peterson, 2008). These four scales appeared to load onto a higher‐order factor of authenticity that was distinguishable from the concept of transformational leadership. Authentic leadership is closely aligned to the concept of psychological capital in that the goal of the authentic expression of beliefs and values is the elevation of trust, hope, and optimism in one’s followers (Hernandez, Eberly, Avolio, & Johnson, 2011).
Mindfulness and the related field of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) have been described as the third wave of cognitive‐behavioral theories that have emerged to manage the epidemic of disorders related to negative moods (Hayes, 2004). Both of these traditions focus less on efforts made to challenge, refute, and eliminate negative experiences, and more on encouraging full awareness and non‐judgmental acceptance of them in order to identify beliefs and actions that are aligned with one’s values. There is a long history of interchange and innovation between clinical and organizational psychology (MacKie, 2007; Smither, 2011), and the wave of mindfulness and acceptance‐based techniques is now lapping at the shores of leadership development. The reason these processes relate to positive leadership is that there is now acknowledgment that these techniques not only assist in the management of negative emotions but also promote positivity, well‐being, and psychological flexibility (Kashdan & Ciarrochi, 2013). Given that positive leadership models like authentic leadership actively promote greater self‐regulation as a pathway to enhanced leadership effectiveness (Avolio & Gardner, 2005), and that both mindfulness and acceptance have been found to enhance self‐regulation (Kinsler, 2014), there is a promising and exploratory link between these techniques and PLD.
Mindfulness has been suggested to mediate leadership development by helping leaders differentiate from their thoughts and beliefs through a process known as cognitive defusion (Atkins, 2008). Cognitive defusion in turn facilitates the taking and holding of multiple perspectives that can be explored in the decision‐making process of the leader. Mindfulness also promotes self‐compassion in the leader and engagement through a focus on present moment attention (Reb, Narayanan, & Ho, 2013). However, the majority of the research on workplace mindfulness is focused on the intrapersonal domain, such as reducing burnout (Narayanan, Chaturvedi, Reb, & Srinivas, 2011), rather than the interpersonal where leaders impact on their followers. Nevertheless, one study that did focus on the interpersonal impact of mindfulness found significant correlations between leader mindfulness and employee performance, employee organizational citizenship behaviors, and job satisfaction (Reb, Narayanan, & Chaturvedi, 2014). Despite these encouraging exploratory findings and their apparent alignment with positive leadership models like authentic leadership, there are no current between‐subject longitudinal studies that demonstrate the added value of mindfulness techniques in PLD.
Whereas mindfulness has a heritage steeped in millennia of spiritual practices, ACT originally developed within the context of clinical therapies. ACT is a set of related techniques that focus on a combination of mindfulness and acceptance processes and values‐based behavioral activation (Flaxman, Bond, & Livheim, 2013). ACT training has been shown to enhance work performance (Bond & Flaxman, 2006) and has been suggested to develop resilience in managers (Moran, 2010) through enhancing psychological flexibility. This decoupling from habitual patterns and reflexive reactions promotes balanced decision‐making, and greater self‐regulation has been shown to positively impact on followers’ well‐being and positivity (Avey et al., 2011). However, ACT has yet to be shown to have an additive and significant empirical impact on PLD in organizations.
Assessment in PLD is intimately related to the underlying theory and philosophy of leadership and in particular whether state‐like or traitlike constructs are the focus of assessment (Biswas‐Diener et al., 2011). Assessment can focus on both the individual’s capacity in the underlying positive leadership model, such as authentic leadership, and the assessment of the underlying positive constructs like strengths that are hypothesized to moderate and even mediate enhanced leadership effectiveness (Gooty et al., 2009; MacKie, 2014). Due to the recency of the strength‐based approach in leadership development, there is yet no consensus on how to define, assess, or develop strengths (Roarty & Toogood, 2014). However, it is apparent that what you assess can significantly determine how you develop positive leaders. Thus a focus on traits can lead to an “identify and use” approach,whilst a focus on states leads to an emphasis on strengths development (Biswas‐Diener et al., 2011).
One of the cornerstones of the applied positive psychology paradigm has been the focus on strengths (Luthans & Youseff, 2007). Understanding how strengths are defined, identified, utilized, and leveraged is key if they are to be successfully applied to positive leadership development. In order to test the effectiveness of a strengths‐based approach, it is necessary both to be consistent in the definitions and classification of strengths, and also to demonstrate that adherence to a strengths‐based leadership development protocol is predictive of enhanced leadership effectiveness (MacKie, 2014).
There have been a number of attempts to define strengths in the context of individual and organizational development. The Gallup StrengthsFinder (Rath & Conchie, 2008) attempts to describe four domains of leadership, namely: executing, influencing, relationship building, and strategic thinking, which are themselves clusters of the 34 strengths identified in the StrengthsFinder instrument. Despite being assessed on all 34 strengths, subjective self‐assessment routinely only produces a list of the participant’s top five relative strengths. The scoring is ipsative rather than normative, limiting its utility as a dependent variable, and Gallup’s own internal research reports reliabilities of the 34 strengths ranging from 0.52 to 0.79 (Asplund, Lopez, Hodges, & Harter, 2007). The model defines strengths as “the ability to consistently produce near‐perfect performance on a specific task” (Rath, 2007), with the performance predicated on a combination of elements of skill, knowledge, and naturally occurring talents that cannot be acquired through development. This trait‐based approach and the focus on identifying underlying talents makes it more aligned with leadership assessment than development.
The Values in Action (VIA) questionnaire (Peterson, Stephens, Park, & Seligman, 2010) was explicit in its intention to develop a model designed to assess and measure strength of character and virtues. A review of the world’s most influential religious and philosophical texts by the authors of the inventory led to the identification of six domains (wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence), all underpinned by specific signature strengths. The VIA then aimed to identify 24 character strengths from these domains, that individuals recognize and apply to achieve fulfillment. Again, like the StrengthsFinder, the VIA depends on the veracity of the self‐assessment to produce a relative ranking of the top five signature strengths. In terms of the construct validity, there is evidence to suggest it more closely fits the big five model of personality than a discrete construct of six independent virtues (MacDonald, Bore, & Munro, 2008). Unlike the Gallup StrengthsFinder, there is no overt connection between the VIA and leadership behavior. However,there are some implicit links to leadership with character strengths like authenticity, teamwork, and leadership identified in the assessment (Money et al., 2009).
The Realise2 model (Linley & Stoker, 2010) attempted to take a broader approach to the process of strengths assessment by including development areas and relative weaknesses in the model. The Realise2 model requires participants to rate 60 attributes according to how energizing they find them, how competently they display them, and how frequently they use them. The model then divides the responses into four quadrants: realized strengths that are known and used, unrealized strengths that are known but underutilized, learned behaviors where performance has been acquired but is not energizing, and weaknesses where both competence and energy are low. Accordingly, the greatest developmental opportunity is found in unrealized strengths as these are underutilzed areas of interest and competence. The mean reliability scores across all 60 attributed item groupings was reported to be 0.82 (Linley & Stoker, 2012).
There is clearly a degree of equivocation about what the construct of strengths encompasses, with significant apparent overlap with personality traits, competencies, and virtues. In addition, the lack of normative comparisons, reliance on subjective assessment, absence of peer‐reviewed publications, and the utilization of opaque proprietary scoring systems makes this domain fraught with difficultly for comparative research. Future research needs to conclusively establish the construct and discriminant validity of this concept (Hackman, 2009).
Using strengths as a mechanism for positive leadership development requires some understanding of how strengths relate to performance. Specifically, data on whether this relationship is curvilinear or linear will inform how strengths are developed in the pursuit of enhanced leadership effectiveness. There is evidence for a curvilinear relationship between assertiveness and leadership effectiveness (Ames & Flynn, 2007), between conscientiousness and emotional stability and job performance (Le et al., 2011), and between ethical leadership and organizational citizenship behavior (Stouten, van Dijke, Mayer, De Cremer, & Euwema, 2013). In addition, the leadership derailment literature suggests that, when overdone, strengths become weaknesses and this can be in the form of excessive leverage or contextual misapplication (Kaiser, 2009). This suggests that the unregulated leverage of strengths, independent of intensity or context, could adversely impact on leadership performance (Kaiser & Overfield, 2010).
Recent reviews of the leadership development literature have provided convincing data that leadership can be developed over time via a variety of methods and processes (Day, 2001; Day, Harrison, & Halpin, 2012). Leadership development occurs and is evaluated in both formal training approaches and, increasingly, in individualized and team coaching contexts (Carey, Philippon, & Cummings, 2011).
There have been several meta‐analyses that have examined the combined effectiveness of leadership development interventions. Collins and Holton (2004) examined 83 formal leadership training studies that looked at enhancing leadership performance at the individual, team, and organizational level. Of these, 19 studies used a longitudinal controlled design to assess objective outcomes at the level of increased leadership expertise and found an overall effect size of 1.01. However the range of effect sizes was from – 0.28 to 1.66, suggesting the significant variation in the efficacy of different leadership development methodologies.
Avolio, Reichard, et al. (2009) reviewed 200 laboratory and field studies of leadership development. They found an overall small effect size of leadership change after the development intervention of 0.65 (versus 0.35 for control groups) and could find no significant difference depending on the theory utilized in the intervention. Despite this relatively small combined effect size, the standard deviation of outcomes was 0.80, suggesting significant variation in the effectiveness of the studies assessed. Overall they concluded that despite the heterogeneous mix of theory, dependent variables, developmental processes, and outcomes, leadership could be enhanced over a short period of time using a variety of methodologies. In this study positive leadership theories were combined with other models, making it impossible to be specific about the relative value of transformational or authentic approaches.
These meta‐analyses provide convincing evidence that leadership ratings can change significantly over time, but tell us little about the impact of those changes on subsequent work performance criteria. However, the performance impacts and outcomes of transformational leadership have been extensively studied. Wang, Oh, Courtright, and Colbert (2011) performed a meta‐analysis of 113 studies investigating the impacts of transformational leadership on task, contextual, and creative performance outcomes. They reported a mean correlation between individual‐level performance and transformational leadership of 0.25 using non‐self‐report measures.
This meta‐analytic evidence suggests that leadership is state‐like and malleable in its ability to be enhanced by specific development interventions and that improved leadership impacts directly on objective performance criteria and beyond the level of self‐report. However, because of a lack of consistency in outcome measurement, the absence of measures of methodological adherence, and an over‐reliance on self‐report measures, the identification of specific active components in leadership development has been problematic (MacKie, 2014). The specific literature on PLD is not as advanced as the generic leadership development literature reviewed above. This is partly a function of the relative recency of the construct and partly a function of the complexity in training leaders in ethical decision‐making and relational transparency, as in the case of authentic leadership development (Cooper, Scandura, & Schriesheim, 2005). However, the literature on the trainability of transformational leadership is substantial and positive (Avolio, Reichard, et al., 2009; Day, Fleenor, Atwater, Sturm, & McKee, 2014; Kelloway & Barling, 2010). In addition, the effects of transformational leadership (TL) on followers have been empirically investigated with evidence that TL builds PsyCap in followers, which in turn positively links to performance (Gooty et al., 2009). Precisely which aspects of transformational leadership build PsyCap in followers is unclear, but one option is that followers are inspired through emotional contagion from the leader (Walumbwa, Peterson & Avolio, & Hartnell, 2010).
There have been a variety of theoretical papers that have laid the groundwork for positive and especially authentic leadership development (Avolio & Gardner, 2005; Cooper et al., 2005; Spreitzer, 2006). However, the performance link between the underlying subscales including relational transparency and an internalized moral perspective have yet to be demonstrated and may prove challenging to develop in leaders (Cooper et al., 2005). There is also the question of how much authenticity is desired in leadership development, given that its relationship is likely to be curvilinear with performance and the potential coercive nature of unregulated self‐disclosure (Tourish, 2013).
Individualized coaching has become an increasingly popular alternative to a standardized training methodology for developing leaders (Carey et al., 2011). Coaching has been used in a leadership development context in a number of ways, including building and transferring skills, raising self‐awareness, and enhancing motivation (Hernez‐Broome & Boyce, 2011; Passmore, 2010). It has been noted that coaching was traditionally content‐neutral in its approach (Grant, Green, & Rynsaardt, 2010). As coaching has developed, specialist coaching models, including leadership coaching, have begun to emerge in the literature (Elliot, 2005). Coaching aligns well as a key methodology for PLD due to their mutual focus on performance enhancement and strengths‐based methodology (Biswas‐Diener & Dean, 2007; Linley & Harrington, 2005; Seligman, 2007).
Recently two meta‐analytic studies of coaching outcomes have provided some support for the effectiveness of coaching as a leadership development methodology. Theeboom, Beersma, and van Vianen (2014) found 18 studies of sufficient rigor to be included in their analysis. Unfortunately, only 4 of these studies were conducted in the workplace, used a between‐subject design and collected data beyond the level of self‐report, and only one study used transformational leadership as the independent variable (Cerni, Curtis, & Colmar, 2010). The average effect size (using Hedges’ g, a more conservative index of change) for these 4 studies was g = 0.08 to 0.36, which would be considered small‐ to medium‐sized effects. A more recent meta‐analysis (Jones, Woods, & Guillaume, 2016) focused specifically on workplace coaching and found 17 studies of sufficient rigor to be included in the analysis. In addition they only looked at outcomes relevant to organizations like skill acquisition and individual performance results. Their analysis found effect sizes of coaching and outcome criteria ranging from d = 0.28 to 1.24 with individual‐level results achieving the biggest impact. However, in terms of measuring outcomes, there was no distinction made between self‐ratings of outcomes and feedback sourced from other raters including managers, peers, and direct reports, so the broader impact of these coaching studies is not known. Interestingly they also reported that coaching without multisource feedback (MSF) had a stronger effect size. This is a concerning finding given the ubiquity of MSF in leadership development programs. While there remains no agreed outcome criterion for executive coaching, it is difficult to compare studies reporting a self‐reported improvement in well‐being after coaching with those that report significant positive multi‐rater changes in leadership behaviors (MacKie, 2014). This is in part due to the tendency of individuals to overestimate their performance when compared to more objective performance criteria (Kruger & Dunning, 1999).
Studies that examine the specific impact of workplace coaching on leadership outcomes remain relatively uncommon. McColl‐Kennedy and Anderson (2002) did examine the link between coaching and leadership and found that frustration and optimism fully mediated the link between leadership style and subordinate performance in a study of 139 sales representatives. However, the study used a survey design with existing performance criteria so the trainability of the optimistic explanatory style and its capacity to predict future performance were not assessed.
Cilliers (2011) used a qualitative methodology to investigate the effects of a positive psychological approach to leadership coaching. Defining positive psychology leadership coaching as a focus on the people aspects of learning, growth, and change in order to positively impact on the intrapersonal and interpersonal aspects of leadership, the study examined the impacts of positive leadership coaching on 11 leaders in a financial organization. Participants engaged in 10 experiential coaching sessions that focused on work engagement, coherence, values, resourcefulness, and locus of control. Using discourse analysis in a series of single‐case designs, 6 emergent themes were identified. These included engagement in the role, role complexity, emotional self‐awareness, self‐authorization, and facilitating the growth of others. No quantitative data were reported and no post‐intervention outcomes evaluated, so the broader impact of this intervention is difficult to ascertain.
Studies have also begun to examine the efficacy of specific strengths‐based leadership development methodologies in a coaching context (MacKie, 2014). Using the MLQ360 as the dependent variable, a between subject non‐randomized design was used with 37 leaders and managers from an international not‐for‐profit (NFP) organization. Strengths were assessed using a combination of interview (peak experiences), psychometric (Realise2 Inventory), and multi‐rater data (the MLQ360). The study used a manualized strengths‐based coaching protocol that focused on developing both fully and partially utilized strengths and addressing weaknesses where relevant. Participants received 6 sessions of strengths‐based coaching over a 3‐month period. The results showed that the coaching cohort experienced highly significant changes in transformational leadership (as rated by all others on the MLQ360).
In addition to the significant changes in transformational leadership after strengths‐based leadership coaching, significant positive changes in leadership outcomes were also reported. Leadership outcomes are what other raters report in terms of extra effort, effectiveness, and satisfaction with the coachee’s leadership style before and after coaching. So after coaching the raters of the coachee were willing to provide additional discretionary effort as a function of positive changes in the coachee’s leadership style. This is another critical finding as positive leadership is ultimately trying to unlock additional resources from others in the organization, including peers and direct reports. Finally, adherence to the strengths‐based coaching manual from both the coach and the coachee perspective was also rated and found to be predictive of positive changes in transformational leadership. This result indicates that it was the strengths‐based component of the program that was influential in achieving positive leadership change in the coachees (MacKie, 2014).
So far we have only discussed PLD as an individual phenomenon, but it also occurs in teams (Zaccaro, Heinen, & Shuffler, 2009). This distinction between leader development, for example enhancing intrapersonal skills like self‐regulation, and leadership development, for example enhancing relational skills like team orientation, is a development predicated on the recognition of the complexity of the interaction between a leader and her or his organizational context (Day, 2001). It has been argued elsewhere that individual theories of leadership, for instance transformational leadership, can form the basis of effective team leadership, but in addition team leadership focuses on integration, interconnectivity, and coherence (Marks, Zaccaro, & Mathieu, 2000). Team leadership models tend to see team leadership as a moderator of team effectiveness and tend to involve more collective or shared models of leadership that involve the harnessing of the synergies of individual leaders’ strengths (Yammarino, Salas, Serban, Shirreffs, & Shuffler, 2012). Promoting leadership development at the group or team level is not new and has been disseminated through concepts like action learning (Day, 2001; Marquardt, 2000). However, team‐based PLD is more explicit in its focus on relational, distributed, and shared models of leadership that support the concept of identifying and leveraging individual leader strengths in the pursuit of facilitating more flexible and adaptive team leadership systems (Gordon & MacKie, 2016). Existing meta‐analytic team research has found a significant correlation between person‐focused transformational leadership behaviors and both team effectiveness and productivity (Burke et al., 2006). In addition, team‐level positivity, especially optimism and efficacy, has been found to be predictive of subsequent team performance (West, Patera, & Carsten, 2009). However, the exact ratio of positive affect in high‐performing teams remains the source of some controversy (Brown, Sokal, & Friedman, 2013).
The positive leadership framework is in its early stages of development and has been challenged by a number of critics on a variety of criteria including the theoretical, conceptual, and political grounds. Conceptual criticisms have included the risk of promoting lopsided leadership (Kaiser & Overfield, 2011), ignoring the benefits of negative emotions (Gilbert, 2006), encouraging an entity or fixed theory of leadership, and ignoring the situational context to positive leadership development (Biswas‐Diener et al., 2011). Building on this theme, Collinson (2012) has cautioned against “Prozac leadership,” where the reluctance to anticipate and prepare for anything other than a positive outcome can result in insufficient risk assessment and poor anticipation of negative consequences of decision‐making.
There are also concerns about one of the core constructs of positive leadership – authentic leadership. In particular, the construct and discriminant validity of authenticity has been challenged (Cooper et al., 2005), suggesting that there has been insufficient qualitative exploration of this construct prior to converging on models of its psychometric measurement and methods of authentic leadership development. Others have challenged the construct from an identity perspective, arguing for the impossibility of knowing the core self (Ford & Harding, 2011) or questioning the assumption that the core authentic self will be universally positive (Tourish, 2013). Clearly this is both a potential limitation and a fruitful area for future research.
In addition, there is also an ongoing concern regarding the application of strengths‐based approaches with the realization that strengths can be overdone and that all strengths, if leveraged without regard to context or impact, will become derailers (Kaiser, 2009; MacKie, 2008). Given that many people already overestimate their competence on a wide variety of tasks (Dunning, Johnson, Ehrlinger, & Kruger, 2003), there is also the risk that an unrelenting focus on the positive further distorts intrapersonal perceptions and reaffirms pre‐existing positive biases. Furthermore, there is the risk that a focus on strengths becomes just another trait‐based approach to developing individuals and organizations, and ignores the complex interplay of personal qualities with team, group, and dyadic and situational variables (Hernandez et al., 2011).
Finally, criticisms emanating from critical leadership studies include the assertion that positive leadership theories including transformational and authentic models over‐attribute agency to leaders and concurrently diminish the contributions that followers make (Collinson, 2011). Thus they can be construed as the continuation of a trend that has focus on leaders, not leadership, and a trend that has yet to fully explore the potential downside of coercive power in leader–follower relationships where power is so clearly imbalanced (Tourish, 2013). There is also the concern of the promotion of excessive positivity where low mood or a less effusive style can be construed as misaligned with the prevailing organizational culture and even pathological (Fineman, 2006). This individualization of the responsibility for well‐being at work has been challenged by those emphasizing more social explanations for positive mood and well‐being (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009), but this tension between individual and social attributions has yet to be fully explored in positive organizational research.
These criticisms in their totality clearly argue for a balanced and considered approach to the application of positive organizational behavioral constructs to the leadership development domain where the limitations of a blinkered and partial approach to positivity are clearly recognized and avoided.
This purpose of this review was to identify the advances made in the field of positive leadership development since its emergence around 2000. Despite the significant advances made in the conceptualization of positive leadership theories and their application to leader and leadership development, there remain several areas of research that require the application of scholarly rigor if the movement is to advance. Firstly, there needs to be greater homogeneity of organizationally relevant outcome variables to allow cross study comparisons, (Day et al., 2014). Following on from this there is a need to investigate outcomes beyond the level of self‐report so that the data of followers, in particular, is included in outcome analysis. In terms of further investigating the efficacy of positive leadership studies, it is necessary to employ active comparison studies where authentic leadership development, for example, is contrasted with a strengths development approach (Barling, 2014). To augment this approach, there needs to be greater transparency in positive leadership coaching with manualization one option to test adherence to the protocol. Research also needs to continue into the concept of strengths, clarifying whether the discriminant validity is sufficient to justify their status as a stand‐alone construct. Finally, it is time to close the gap on the research–practitioner divide and subject some well‐developed practitioner approaches (e.g,. Zenger, Folkman, & Edinger, 2011) to independent empirical substantiation.
In terms of developing the organizational research base in the emergent theories like mindfulness and ACT, consideration needs to be given as to how these constructs may mediate or moderate PLD. ACT, for example, promotes the pursuit of valued goals despite the potential presence of negative emotions, so measuring subsequent changes in well‐being or positive affect may not be a fair test of the model. However, the enhancement of psychological flexibility following ACT‐based leadership development would be a critical finding as leadership flexibility has been identified as a predictor of leader emergence and effectiveness (Good & Sharma, 2010). Equally, longitudinal studies on the impact of leaders’ mindfulness on follower engagement, positivity, and performance would be foundational in the support of the integration of this construct into the PLD process (Kinsler, 2014). Research on leader mindfulness is a priority, as it is yet another domain in which practice is significantly ahead of the evidence and there are emerging methodological concerns about existing mindfulness research including the unreliability of self‐reports of practice, challenges to construct validity of mindfulness inventories, and a lack of convergent validity around different mindfulness scales (Grossman, 2011).
There are also opportunities for cultural extensions of PLD, given that the vast majority of research to date has been conducted in the USA and UK and is imbued with the values of positive individualism (Collinson, 2011). Does the individual identity focus implicit in authentic leadership have meaning in more collective cultures that favor social responsibility over individual attainment (Wong, 2011) or in societies that advocate restraint and temperance over personal advancement and gratification (Hofstede, 1991)?
Finally, at the team level of analysis there are opportunities to examine the moderating role of strengths and their development on team effectiveness as well the effects of a positive team process on task and process outcomes. There is also preliminary evidence to suggest that team stage or maturity also moderates the effectiveness of PLD interventions, (Burke et al., 2006). Identifying the stages of team development, and the concomitant evolution of positive leadership behaviors within, would be a significant addition to the literature.
The positive approach to leadership development is both a process of the identification of positive states and traits and a method of aligning the individual’s strengths and weaknesses against the challenges of the organization. Strengths development is a complicated and nuanced process that requires taking a systemic view of strengths profiles in the context of the environment in which they are applied (Zenger & Folkman, 2011). Given the current challenges in enhancing the discriminant validity of strengths as a construct, it seems likely that progress in integrating strengths into PLD will depend on the refinement and testing of strengths‐development methodologies. Leadership coaching offers the natural vehicle for the delivery of PLD, but exactly how to integrate a strengths‐based process into a coaching methodology, with its multiplicity of variables, processes and models, can only be clarified by further research. Longitudinal controlled studies with alternative positive leadership coaching methodologies that target malleable positive constructs are most suited to answering this comparative question (Mills et al., 2013).
Existing models of positive leadership including authentic and developmental readiness are insightful additions that offer the opportunity to streamline delivery and enhance effectiveness to those most ready to engage in the leadership development process. However, these need to be incorporated alongside the existing multifactor full‐range models such as transformational leadership (Bass & Bass, 2008) to avoid repeating the bias in perspective and partial focus that they were designed to redress. Finally, PLD needs to move beyond the trait‐based approach and consider under what situations and in what contexts the considered and mindful application of positive states, mindsets, and strengths are able to facilitate optimal leader and leadership development.