Griffin Dugan

PSYCH 449

Paper Assignment #7: Rough Draft

Abstract: Effective leadership can have a variety of positive impacts on followers, just as

abusive supervision can have equally detrimental impacts. This paper provides an overview of

the leadership behaviors that result in the best outcomes for employees in terms of job

satisfaction, psychological well-being, and job performance. Additionally, it addresses the

prevalent issues of abusive supervision as highlighted with infamous “leader” Elizabeth Holmes,

the founder of the fraudulent blood works company, Theranos. Overall, this paper emphasizes

the importance of leadership behaviors versus fixed traits, ultimately asserting that both good and

bad leaders are made and not born.

 Much like the psychological concept of “intelligence,” leadership is an idea that is

difficult to concretely measure or define. Despite this problem, leadership is easily known when

it is seen, and easily identifiable in the case of its absence. Leaders have been proven to have

strong outcomes, both positive and negative, on worker measures such as job satisfaction,

psychological well-being, organizational commitment, and job performance. Research

surrounding the field of leadership has developed various theories aimed at determining what

makes a successful leader. This paper will start by analyzing the support for a behavioral

interpretation of leadership – that is, the idea that leaders are made and not born. Later, the paper

will discuss how leadership behaviors culminate into overall “styles,” two of the most prevalent

styles being authentic and transformational leadership. Finally, it will end with a discussion of

the “dark sides” of leadership, as people often find it easier to identify toxic leaders as opposed

to effective ones.

Trait vs. Behavioral Leadership

Two approaches exist to define and explain leadership development: the trait approach

and the behavioral approach. The trait approach defines leaders by their inherent qualities, such

as their demographics, task competence, interpersonal qualities, and personality. Under this

view, leaders are traditionally thought of as being “born”. This belief is used to justify the idea

that some people’s inherent traits equip them to be natural leaders. In opposition to this

perspective, the behavioral approach holds that leadership is comprised of skills and tendencies

which can be honed through practice, such as personal consideration of followers, problem

clarification, and establishment of structure. Under this approach, leaders are believed to be

“made,” suggesting that any person can be a leader through the practicing and enactment of

leader behaviors (Muchinsky & Howes, 2019). Derue, Nahrgang, Wellman, and Humphrey
(2011) eloquently summarized these two theoretical approaches used to define leadership

development, and they chose to create an integrative model combining these two approaches in

order to try to predict various aspects of leadership effectiveness. They operationalized

effectiveness using measures of group performance, job satisfaction, and satisfaction towards

one’s leader. The model found that while integrating both traits and behaviors into understanding

leadership resulted in the most predictive power, leadership behaviors accounted for more of the

variance seen in the measures of leadership effectiveness. This suggests that while both a

leader’s traits and behaviors are important for leadership success, behaviors explain more of

what actually makes a good leader.

Authentic and Transformational Leadership

Understanding that leadership behaviors have a significant impact on leadership

effectiveness sets the stage for a discussion about leadership styles, which are essentially

culminations of these behaviors that form a general pattern with a leader. The first of these

leadership styles most often associated with positive outcomes is authentic leadership. This style

emphasizes the importance of a leader being aware of their own strengths and weaknesses,

communicating these openly with followers, making unbiased decisions based on a plethora of

information, and having a strong moral compass that guides their behaviors. All of these

behaviors theoretically should result in more trust between the workers and leader, thus creating

favorable results (Muchinsky & Howes, 2019).

Current research supports the idea of authentic leadership. Nielsen (2013), for example,

found that authentic leadership styles are negatively correlated with exposure to bullying in the

workplace. This relationship was mediated by authentic leadership’s positive correlation with

worker’s perception of a safety in the workplace. This suggests that having a morally strong and
benevolent leader discourages workplace bullying. Additionally, Yan, Bligh, and Kohles (2014)

looked at the effects of different leadership styles on general mindsets towards learning and

error-making. They found that authentic leadership encouraged workers to learn more from their

errors, indicating a superior growth mindset instilled in these employees. Lastly, Olaniyan and

Hystad (2016) observed that authentic leadership is associated with an increase in employee

psychological capital, including feelings of self-efficacy, resilience, and optimism. This boost in

psychological capital was then positively correlated with job satisfaction, and negatively

correlated with feelings of job insecurity and intentions to leave said job. These results together

demonstrate that an authentic leader is effective in improving various facets of work life through

their genuineness and inspiration.

Another positive leadership style supported by the literature is transformational

leadership. This style proposes that a leader is meant to inspire followers to pursue goals and

attain results by being a charismatic, inspirational, and intellectually stimulating role model

willing to devote individualized attention to workers (Muchinsky & Holmes, 2019). Similar to

the authentic style, transformational leadership has been associated with various positive

outcomes in the workplace. Arnold, Turner, Barling, Kelloway, and McKee (2007) conducted

two studies examining how transformational leadership created positive affective well-being in

Canadian health care and service workers. Their findings suggest that meaningfulness assigned

to one’s work mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and psychological

well-being, implying that transformational leadership helps workers to identify why their work is

fulfilling and worthwhile. Furthermore, Nielsen (2013) observed that transformational leadership

had a similar negative correlation with bullying behaviors in the workplace. Lastly, Mullen,

Kelloway, and Teed (2011) found that when leaders display a transformational style in relation
to safety, their followers were more compliant and participative with safety regulations. These

findings all suggest that, similarly to authentic leadership, transformational leadership has

positive outcomes on various worker outcomes.

The Dark Side of Leadership

With a greater appreciation of leadership behaviors and styles that result in positive

outcomes, it is equally important to understand what makes for an ineffective, or even toxic,

leader. As an example, the case study of Elizabeth Holmes is epitomic of bad leadership.

Hartmans and Leskin (2019) describe the rise and fall of the former Theranos executive. A

Stanford dropout, Holmes claimed to have developed instant blood-testing technology that would

have revolutionized the medical industry. Through her charisma, she was able to recruit investors

for this dream, and eventually reached a point where she had a net worth of $9 billion. However,

the technology she claimed to have invented was fictional, and she spent years engaging in

fraudulent leadership to try and maintain her company. Throughout her business dealings,

Holmes engaged in various ethically questionable behaviors, such as withholding information

about Theranos from her investors, forcing employees to work late hours, requiring security

checkpoints in the office, and suing employees who tried to quit or reveal the company’s true

nature. Eventually, Holmes was unable to keep up the charade, lost the devotion of her investors

and followers, and is now being charged with several counts of fraud.

With this clear example of poor leadership in mind, what behaviors and styles are

associated with this “dark side” of leadership? Clearly evidenced in Holmes’ behaviors was

abusive, authoritarian leadership practices. Research done by Pyc, Meltzer, and Liu (2017) found

that this abusive style of leadership results in increased levels of worker anxiety and depression,

which then resulted in lower job performance and satisfaction, and increased levels of exhaustion
and physical symptoms. In line with this finding, Liu, Zhang, Liao, Hao, and Mao (2016)

observed that abusive leadership resulted in decreased levels of psychological safety in workers,

and this deficit accounted for a decrease in overall employee creativity and feelings of belonging

at the organization. When Holmes ruled over her employees with force and threats of legal

action, she made the work environment hostile for her employees, leading to a variety of

negative outcomes.

Along with the abusive characteristics evident in her leadership, Holmes was often cited

as being highly narcissistic. Although this trait initially inspired investors to put their faith and

money in her confidence, when people found out that she only cared about her own image, they

quickly lost respect for her. This pattern is supported by evidence found by Ong, Roberts,

Arthur, Woodman, and Akehurst (2015), who noticed that while narcissistic leaders are initially

well-respected by their followers, this narcissism eventually results in a loss of employee trust

and lowered ratings of leadership effectiveness. Holmes’ actions are the epitome of the “dark

side” of charisma, exemplifying the importance of positive leadership qualities, such as

trustworthiness and empathy, along with influence.

One type of negative leadership that was not embodied by Holmes was passive or laissez-

faire leadership, a style in which the leader essentially leaves the worker to fend for themselves.

This style is often thought of as “a lack of leadership,” and results in highly negative outcomes

for employees (Muchinsky & Howes, 2019). For example, Nielsen’s (2013) study of workplace

bullying noted that the presence of passive leadership within work teams was highly correlated

with exposure to bullying behaviors. This is most likely due to the fact that if a leader does not

take an active stance against such behaviors, then workers are free to engage in such deviance. In

another study, Yan et al. (2014) found that passive leaders tended to not encourage employees to
learn from their mistakes, essentially fostering an environment where mistakes are not treated as

learning experiences. Finally, a recent study found that passive leadership was correlated with

higher levels of role ambiguity and overload in workers (Barling & Frone, 2016). These studies

support the idea that simply choosing to not lead at all can be as hazardous as abusive leadership.

The study conducted by Mullen et al. (2011) on safety behaviors at work noticed that even small

amounts of passive leadership can be hazardous. In their study, they identified that leaders who

engaged in an inconsistent style of leadership, in which they alternated between being passive

and transformational, discouraged workers from following common safety regulations. Although

Holmes was not guilty of this toxic leadership style – and instead often chose to be overbearing

and abusive in her supervision – it is still important to note the dangers of passive leadership.

Conclusion

Current research on leadership emphasizes that in order to develop more effective

leaders, it is important to educate them both on what to do and what not to do in a leadership

position. Firstly, leaders need to understand that outside of inherent traits like extraversion or

charisma, leaders benefit equally if not more from engaging in effective leadership behaviors. In

line with this, leaders that are perceived as authentic, inspirational, and encouraging are

associated with the best results in worker satisfaction, trust, and performance. Conversely,

leaders must make active attempts to avoid being narcissistic, passive, or abusive in their

leading, as these styles are all associated with worse employee outcomes. Future research needs

to form a greater understanding of how the efficacy of various leadership styles changes based

on occupational or cultural context. Furthermore, to better understand how to develop effective

leaders, research needs to be able to better identify the general progression of how leadership

styles and behaviors change as a leader ages within an organization. These research areas will
help refine the focus of leadership promotions, trainings and interventions, resulting in improved

worker performance and satisfaction.

 References

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