V I RT U A L C O M M U N I C AT I O N ,

T R A N S F O R M AT I O N A L
L E A D E R S H I P, A N D I M P L I C I T
LEADERSHIP

CHARLES SALTER, MARK GREEN, PHYLLIS DUNCAN, ANNE BERRE,

AND CHARLES TORTI

This research was designed to test the theoretical relationship among personality, implicit leadership,
and transformational leadership in a setting devoid of face-to-face communication, which we enti-
tled virtual communication. Specifically, the study was designed to link, by using the International
Personality Item Pool (IPIP), traits from the 5-factor model of personality (the Big 5) to followers’ per-
ception of the leadership style of a virtual leader on the basis of Bass and Avolio’s MLQ-5X (1994).
A voluntary sample consisted of undergraduate and graduate students from two universities in the
south Texas area (N ⫽ 306). Respondents to the virtual communication rated Leader 1’s communi-
cation, which used previously identified transformational language (Salter, Carmody-Bubb, Duncan, &
Green, 2007), as significantly more transformational than Leader 2’s communication, using words
not associated with transformational leaders. Participants who scored high in the Big 5 personality
traits of agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and extraversion rated the leader as
more transformational while those high in neuroticism rated the leader as less transformational.

Nelson and Quick (2009) estimate that currently 28 million
Americans are working in virtual settings or telecom-
muting from home; the San Antonio Business Journal
(2008) states that 42% of all companies nationwide offer
telecommuting as an alternative form of full-time em-
ployment. Additionally, an article by E-learning Yellow
Pages (2008) suggests that two-thirds of all traditional
universities currently offer online degree programs.
Given these high numbers and the rising costs of energy,
one would speculate that these trends will increase in the
future. Therefore, we took this opportunity to begin
the study of leadership from a leader–follower distance

JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES, Volume 4, Number 2, 2010

©2010 University of Phoenix
6 View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com • DOI:10.1002/jls.20164
perspective. We were concerned with the question,
“What methods or leadership styles can leaders use to
motivate followers with whom they will never have face-
to-face communication, or in a virtual setting?”
There has been little research on how virtual com-
munications affect the individual leader–follower rela-
tionship. However, researchers Sosik, Avolio, Kahai, and
Jung (1998) and Hoyt and Blascovich (2003) studied
transformational leadership in groups and virtual envi-
ronments. Their findings indicate that a higher level of
transformational leadership leads to group effectiveness.
Cassell, Huffaker, Tversky, and Ferriman (2006) found
that teenagers emerge as leaders in virtual online email
communications by using language that referred to
group goals rather than themselves.
Early leadership researchers acknowledged that effec-
tive leadership is dependent on the characteristics of the
leader and the situation (Jones & George, 2009). Unques-
tionably, communication technologies have drastically
changed the work environment (situation) and presented
new challenges for effective leadership. The virtual work
environment is one of the many situations forever changed
by the technology evolution. It is essential that the virtu-
alization be considered a key social process rather than
mere technological advancement (Diemers, Dolmans, van
Santen, van Luijk, Janssen, & Scherpbier, 2007). Duarte
and Snyder (2001) state that virtual team leaders and mem-
bers need to learn and use facilitation techniques that work
for virtual teams. The authors continue, writing that tech-
nology cannot make up for poor planning or ill-conceived
meetings. Nonetheless, managers still need to manage and
leaders still need to lead, even in a virtual environment.
Perceptibly, transformational leadership and the man-
ner in which we work together are also changing. Most
agree that transformational leaders are charismatic indi-
viduals who arouse others’ enthusiasm, loyalty, and trust
in themselves (Schermerhorn, 2002). Traditionally,
charismatic leaders have built trust through face-to-face
environments. Distance workers tend to believe that no
news is bad news, and consequently the lack of interac-
tion erodes trust (Fisher & Fisher, 2001). Others rec-
ommend trust be achieved through an open culture that
shares information, cultivates teamwork, and promotes
positive commitment to an organization’s goal (Dess &
Picken, 1999). Conversely, trust-building words or
phrases in a virtual environment are not offered.
JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 4 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls
The virtual work environment triggers enthusiasm at
first because employees are excited about the new
arrangement; however, the fervor fades rapidly as one
experiences the feeling of isolation. To counter these feel-
ings, leadership should keep knowledge transfer alive
(Crandall & Wallace, 1998). Educators generally agree
that students, similar to employees, often experience iso-
lation if there is not a continuous and open communi-
cation link. In presenting education modules via the
Internet, Cree and Macaulay (2000) suggest that
the ability to convey encouragement and enthusiasm
via the written word without supportive nonverbal signals
is a must. Regardless of whether the virtual environment
is a business or educational institute, there is a deficiency
of specific words or phrases to promote enthusiasm.
If transformational leaders are enthusiastic—and there
is indeed minimum research regarding these types of
leadership skills and virtual communications (Agres,
Edberg, & Igbaria, 1998)—then the focus of this study
was to use specific words or phrases previously associ-
ated with charismatic transformational leaders in the
context of virtual environments. This study investigated
leadership communications from a virtual setting and
the relationship of those communications to followers’
rating of the leader based on Bass and Avolio’s Full Range
Leadership Model of transformational leadership (1994)
and the follower’s personality rating with the IPIP.
Transformational Leadership
and Its Outcomes
Avolio, Bass, and Jung (1999) identified the compo-
nents of transformational leadership as (1) idealized in-
fluence (leaders serve as role models for their followers),
(2) inspirational motivation (leaders motivate their fol-
lowers and inspire those around them by giving mean-
ing to followers’ work), (3) intellectual stimulation
(leaders stimulate followers by encouraging them to be
creative and question old beliefs), and (4) individual-
ized consideration (leaders attend to each individual fol-
lower’s needs through two-way communication, as
identified in their Full Range Leadership Model).
Since that time, transformational leadership has been
found to lead to higher employee loyalty, trust, com-
mitment, performance, profitability, and satisfaction
(Dumdum, Lowe, & Avolio, 2002; Elenkov, 2002;
7
Hoyt & Blascovich, 2003; Jung & Sosik, 2002; Kark &
Shamir, 2002; Kark, Shamir, & Chen, 2003; LeBrasseur,
Whissell, & Ojha, 2002; and Ria & Sinha, 2000) to
name a few outcomes.
Personality Traits and
Transformational Leadership
The personality of effective leaders has been well re-
searched. From Raymond Cattell (1944), who studied
personality characteristics in an attempt to connect lead-
ership effectiveness and leader personality, to Tupes and
Christal (1992), who combined Cattell’s 16 taxonomies
into what we know as the Big 5 personality traits of
today, leaders’ personality has been of primary impor-
tance as a guide for leadership researchers. Costa and
McCrae (1988) continued research on the personality
traits of extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to ex-
perience, neuroticism, and agreeableness and concluded
that a significant supply of these Big 5 traits were those
needed by successful individuals in business organiza-
tions. Salgado (1997) found that the Big 5 Personality
Model of traits was present in other cultures around the
world and suggested a universality of these traits.
The research on trait theory was reinvigorated by re-
search on transformational leadership presented by Bass
and Avolio (1994) in their Full Range Leadership Model:
transformational, transactional, management by excep-
tion active, management by exception passive, and lais-
sez-faire leadership led to the continuing study of
follower perceptions of leadership and cognitive proto-
types possessed by perceivers in implicit leadership the-
ories. Avolio and Gibbons (1988) stated that although
transformational leadership is a behavioral theory, this
does not mean these behaviors could not have their ori-
gin in one’s background characteristics or traits. Bass
(1990) suggested that if transformational leadership
could be based on one’s background characteristics or
traits, then these traits were universal to mankind.
Ehrhart and Klein (2001) found that perceptions and
attribution of transformational leadership are influenced
by a follower’s values and needs. Howell and Frost
(1989) stated that personality traits may influence per-
ception and acceptance of the leader. Ehrhart and Klein
further assert that the follower’s personality traits, from
a perceived similarity between the follower and the
8 JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 4 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls
leader, influenced the follower’s preference for transfor-
mational leadership. Felfe and Schyns (2006) examined
the follower’s personality and how it related to percep-
tion of the leader. They found that followers who rated
themselves high in extraversion tended to perceive the
leader as more transformational than did followers with
low extraversion.
Implicit and Transformational
Leadership
Eden and Leviathan (1975), who found that a leader’s
behavior guides a perceiver’s encoding of relevant infor-
mation, began the discussion on followers’ expectancies
of leader behavior or implicit leadership. Further re-
search indicated that the leader’s traits are encoded by a
follower’s cognitive schema, and when the leader has
been positively prototyped by the follower, memory and
communication are enhanced (Carlisle & Phillips, 1984;
Keller, 1992; Lord, Brown, & Freiberg, 1999; Lord,
De Vader, & Alliger, 1986; Lord & Maher, 1991;
Mischel, 1977; Winter & Uleman, 1984).
Kark and Shamir (2002) asserted that transforma-
tional leaders have dual influence on followers. These
authors state that transformational leaders’ influence
over the follower is derived from their ability to change
the personal identity and the social identity of the fol-
lower through communication. The personal identity of
the follower models the leader, and the social identity
forms identification with the work unit. Identities, they
say, are formed by personality traits, quality of relation-
ships, and group norms.
Research by Lord et al. (1999) and Keller (1992) then
intuitively suggests that even small portions of
behavior, perhaps as little as a single-word communica-
tion, in the absence of further communication might
elicit from the follower a prototypical implicit leader-
ship style stored in her or his cognitive schema. As sug-
gested by Eden and Leviathan (1975), if leader
behaviors guide memory of small tasks, then it might
be plausible to suggest that a small prototypical behav-
ior could guide a follower’s assessment of the leader’s
leadership style.
Little research has been done on whether follower
personality affects the prototyping of leader behavior
in a virtual environment, and this is essentially the
purpose of the present study. Stated more plainly,
the purpose of this study was to test the theoretical
proposition that in a virtual environment there is a re-
lationship between follower personality and its effect
on follower assessment of leadership behavioral style
as it aligns with Bass and Avolio’s Full Range Leader-
ship Model (1994). If a follower’s personality predis-
poses her or him to recognize one style of leadership
when the leader is attempting to engage another style,
theoretically this could result in miscommunication,
faulty memory of instructions, and lack of employee
security—all of which may lead to follower underper-
formance.
This correlational research examined the degree to
which the follower’s personality, as measured by the
5-factor model of personality, is related to the follower’s
ratings of the leader as a transformational leader, as as-
sessed by the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire
(MLQ) published by Bass and Avolio (1994), in a vir-
tual environmental setting.
This study was designed to investigate the relation-
ship between follower scores on the IPIP (test for Big 5
personality traits) and the transformational, transac-
tional, and passive leadership ratings followers assigned
to two virtual transformational and transactional lead-
ership communications, when controlling for age, gen-
der, and ethnicity.
Method
OVERVIEW
The current research examined the relationship be-
tween, on the one hand, language previously associated
with transformational and transactional leaders (Salter
et al., 2007) as well as its usage in virtual communica-
tions or communications in the absence of face-to-face
interaction and, on the other hand, followers’ scores on
the IPIP (test for Big 5 personality traits).
The sample for this study consisted of 306 respon-
dents, who were given two surveys, rendering a sam-
ple size of 612 responses. Participants include 156 females
and 150 males, with 92% at 29 years of age or less, 3.9%
between the ages of 30 and 43, and 4.1% between 44
and 51, from two universities. Approximately 22% of
the respondents were working toward a graduate de-
gree, while 78% were undergraduates. The ethnicity of
JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 4 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls
the sample subjects was 219 white, 72 Spanish/
Hispanic/Latino, 12 black/African American/Negro,
and 3 Japanese. Because of the statistical challenges as-
sociated with extremely small sample sizes, for the pur-
poses of this study the independent variable known as
ethnicity has only two components: white and Hispanic
participants.
INSTRUMENTS AND OPERATIONAL
DEFINITIONS
The research questionnaire included the MLQ-5X,
founded on Bass and Avolio’s Full Range Leadership
Model (1994), which was used to rate the dependent
variable known as leadership behavior. The Full Range
Leadership Model consists of five separate styles of lead-
ership: (1) transformational, (2) contingent reward,
(3) management by exception active, (4) management
by exception passive, and (5) laissez-faire. Bass and
Riggio (2006) state that management by exception, active
and passive, are corrective transactions, and these two
leadership styles are rated within the MLQ questionnaire.
Antonakis (2001) found a significant relationship be-
tween management by exception passive and laissez-faire
leadership styles. The dependent variable was assimilated
with two scenarios using transformational and nontrans-
formational language found in a previous study by Salter
et al. (2007), one scenario with transformational words
identified as Leader 1 and one scenario using transac-
tional words identified as Leader 2.
The independent variable of personality of the fol-
lower (participant) was assessed with the IPIP, a self-
assessment instrument based on McCrae and Costa’s Big
5 Personality Scale (1997). The reliability and validity
of these measures have been thoroughly investigated.
The IPIP is the equivalent of the NEO-PI, whose relia-
bility scores range from r ⫽ 0.86 to r ⫽ 0.95 and whose
validity correlates range from 0.77 to 0.92 (Block, 1995;
Costa & McCrae, 1988; Goldberg, 1990; Gough, 1990;
John, 1990). The MLQ-5X has been tested (Avolio,
Bass, & Jung, 1999; Judge, Piccolo, & Ilies, 2004;
Rowold & Herrera, 2003) and found to have reliability
ratings from r ⫽ 0.74 to r ⫽ 0.94, while validity ratings
are between r ⫽ 0.56 and r ⫽ 0.91. Because of low par-
ticipant ethnic variability in the convenience sample, the
independent variable termed ethnicity has only two
components: white and Hispanic.
9
PROCEDURE
The questionnaire was administered to voluntary partic-
ipants from two universities in Texas. The researchers
delivered the anonymous data collection instrument via
computer in person, in a classroom setting, and through
email. Of the 306 completed surveys, approximately
15% were through email solicitation, with the remain-
ing 85% completed through classroom setting; all were
administered through use of computerized technolo-
gies. Each respondent signed a detached informed con-
sent notice prior to participation in the study. The
collection instrument consisted of three parts. The first
was constructed of demographics, the success rating,
and the two leader scenarios; the second was the MLQ-
5X leader rating survey; and the third was the IPIP per-
sonality rating instrument. Each participant was given two
Results
TRANSFORMATIONAL RATINGS
A series of analyses were conducted on the three styles of
leadership in the Full Range Leadership Model (transfor-
mational, transactional, and passive) versus the independ-
ent variables (demographics: gender, age, and ethnicity)
and virtual leadership communications (Virtual Commu-
nication from Leader 1, consisting of words used by lead-
ers scoring above the mean as transformational leaders,
Table 1. Frequency of Word Usage by Leaders
Rated Below the Group Mean as Transformational
Chi2 P (two-tailed)

MLQ-5Xs, one to rate the leadership style of Leader 1, Words Used More Frequently by Leaders Below the Group Mean
the virtual communication consisting of words consid- for Transformational Leadership
ered used more on average by transformational leaders,
Don’t 46.46 0.00
and one to rate the leadership style of Leader 2, words
used less often by transformational leaders. Schedule 26.67 0.00
The virtual communication for Leader 1 consisted of Tell 21.70 0.00
approximately 80 words, 11 taken from Table 1, previ- Time 13.38 0.00
ously identified as words associated with leaders scor-
Focused 13.33 0.00
ing above the group mean as transformational leaders;
the scenario for Leader 2 consisted of 70 words, 8 of Performance 9.34 0.01

which were taken from words previously used on aver- More 8.51 0.01
age more often by leaders rated below the group mean Employee 7.35 0.03
for transformational leadership.
This study was a correlational design, the central Words Used More Frequently by Leaders Above the Group Mean

topic of which was the relationship between the usage of for Transformational Leadership

words by leaders rated above the mean as transforma- Encourage 19.39 0.00
tional leaders and words used by leaders rated below the
Fun 13.50 0.00
mean as transformational leaders (Salter et al., 2007).
The purpose of the study was to extract the influence of Future 10.80 0.01

face-to-face communication in order to rate transfor- Effort 10.00 0.01

mational leadership in a virtual setting. Said in another Expected 10.00 0.01
way, the researchers wanted to measure the impact that
Order 10.00 0.01
single words, in the absence of face-to-face interaction
Plan 10.00 0.01
with the leader, had on participants’ ratings of leaders.
Leadership style ratings were defined operationally by Listen 9.01 0.01

the Full Range Leadership Model, and the respondent’s Teammates 8.10 0.02
personality was defined by the Big 5 personality traits Results 6.41 0.04
in virtual settings, controlling for ethnicity, gender,
Brainstorm 5.40 0.05
and age.

10 JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 4 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls

and Virtual Communication from Leader 2, words used Table 2. Analysis of Variance for
more often by leaders scoring below the mean as trans- Transformational Ratings
formational leaders) and personality type of the follower
Variable Df F Sig.
(participant), as described by the Big 5 personality traits.
Initially a univariate analysis of variance of the two TFSpeech 1 65.187 0.000
virtual communications, as presented in Table 2, indi- Gender 1 0.493 0.483
cated there was a significant difference in the transfor- Ethnicity 3 0.472 0.702
mational leadership ratings of Leader 1 and Leader 2.
TFSpeech * Gender 1 24.916 0.000
A significant interaction also existed for transforma-
tional speech and gender, p ⬍ 0.05, F(1, 610) ⫽ 24.91. TFSpeech * Ethnicity 3 2.184 0.089

Further analysis of the mean scores indicated respon- Gender * Ethnicity 1 1.951 0.163
dents found the virtual communication from Leader 1
to be significantly more transformational (with a mean
Table 3. Scheffe Post Hoc Test for
transformational rating of 3.289 and a mean difference
Transformational Ratings
of 1.048) than the virtual communication from Leader 2
(with a mean rating of 2.241), as shown in Table 3 and Leaders Mean Difference Std. Error Sig.
Figure 1. Leader 1 1.048 0.103 0.000
As presented in Figure 2, a further investigation of
Leader 2 ⫺1.048 0.103 0.000
the mean differences based on gender shows that males
found Leader 1 (the communication using words asso-
ciated with leaders who score above the mean for trans-
formational leadership) to be less transformational than Table 4. Analysis of Variance for Passive Ratings
females did. Noted on the same figure is the result that
males found Leader 2 (the communication using words Variable Df F Sig.

associated with leaders who score below the mean for Gender 1 6.28 0.012
transformational leadership) to be more transforma- Ethnicity 3 4.69 0.003
tional than female participants did.
TFSpeech 1 0.612 0.434

TRANSACTIONAL RATINGS Ethnicity * TFSpeech 3 0.132 0.941

There were no significant relationships found between Gender * Ethnicity 1 0.035 0.851
the virtual communications of Leader 1 and Leader 2 Gender * TFSpeech 1 4.76 0.029
and the transactional ratings of the respondents.

PASSIVE RATINGS significantly less passive (with a mean transformational

An analysis of variance on the passive leadership ratings
of the two virtual communications identified as Leader 1
and Leader 2, as shown in Table 4, revealed that a signif-
icant relationship existed between the passive ratings of re-
spondents and gender and ethnicity, along with a
significant interaction between gender and transforma-
tional speech or the virtual communication, p ⬍ 0.05, F(1,
610) ⫽ 4.76.
Further analysis of the mean scores on the basis of
gender indicated female respondents found the virtual
communication from Leader 1 and Leader 2 to be
rating of 1.207 and a mean difference of 0.630) than
did males who had a mean passive rating of 1.836, as
shown in Table 5 and Figure 3.
As presented in Figure 4, a further investigation of
the mean differences on the basis of gender shows that
males found Leader 1 (the communication using words
associated with leaders who score above the mean for
transformational leadership) to be more passive than fe-
males did. Noted on the same figure is the result that
males found Leader 2 (the communication using words
associated with leaders who score below the mean for

JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 4 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls 11

 Figure 1. Gender DIfferences in Mean Transformational and
Transactional Ratings

4.00
Gender
Male
Estimated Marginal Means
Female
3.50

3.00

2.50

2.00

Speech 1 - More Transformational Speech 2 - Less Transformational

Words Words
Which Transformational Speech

Figure 2. Gender Differences in Mean Ratings of Leader 1

(Transformational Leader)

4.00
Gender
Male
Female
Estimated Marginal Means

3.50

3.00

2.50

2.00

Male Female
Gender

transformational leadership) to also be more passive mean for transformational leadership) revealed a signif-
than female participants did. icant relationship between transformational leadership
ratings and the Big 5 personality traits of agreeableness,
LEADERSHIP RATINGS AND r ⫽ 0.131, n ⫽ 306, p ⬍ 0.05, and openness, r ⫽ 0.115,
PERSONALIT Y
A series of correlations were used to investigate the re-
Table 5. Scheffe Post Hoc Test for Passive Ratings
lationships between the demographic variables, age and
personality type, and the transformational ratings of Leaders Mean Difference Std. Error Sig.
Leader 1 and Leader 2. Leader 1 0.630 0.165 0.000
The correlation for Leader 1 (the communication
Leader 2 ⫺0.630 0.165 0.000
with words used more often by leaders rating above the

12 JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 4 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls

 Figure 3. Gender Differences in the Mean Passive Ratings of the Leaders

Gender
2.00
Male

Estimated Marginal Means

Female
1.80

1.60

1.40

1.20

1.00

Male Female
Gender

Figure 4. Gender Differences in the Mean Passive Ratings for Leader 1

(Transformational Leader)

Gender
2.00 Male
Estimated Marginal Means

Female
1.80

1.60

1.40

1.20

1.00

Speech 1 - More Transformational Speech 2 - Less Transformational

Words Words
Which Transformational Speech

n ⫽ 306, p ⬍ 0.05, two tails. This finding suggests that
the more agreeable the respondent and the more open
to new experiences, the higher he or she perceived
Leader 1 as transformational.
A correlation test with the communication consist-
ing of words more often used by leaders rated below the
mean for transformational leadership, known as Leader 2,
showed a significant relationship between the Big 5 per-
sonality trait known as conscientiousness and respondent’s
transformational ratings, r ⫽ 0.243, n ⫽ 305, p ⬍ 0.01,
two tails. This significant correlation intuitively sug-
gests that those followers who have a high conscientious
personality rating may find transformational leadership
styles even in words not normally associated with those
used by leaders who score above the mean for transfor-
mational leadership.
Discussion
The intent of this study was to discern whether there
was any relationship between the words more readily
used by leaders scoring above or below the mean for
transformational leadership when employed in virtual
communications and respondents’ personality traits, as
measured by the IPIP Big 5 personality traits, and their
ratings of a leader according to Bass and Avolio’s Multi-
Factor Leadership Questionnaire MLQ-5X.

JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 4 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls 13

 The importance of this research to organizational
leaders is relevant to a better understanding of motiva-
tional language, follower’s personality traits, and these
traits’ propensity or lack of propensity to influence fol-
lower perception of a leader’s style. Leaders change styles
to better motivate their followers to higher productivity.
If leaders use language readily recognized by followers as
a style of leadership, then they have a beginning tool of
language to more fully motivate and engage followers.
Also, if follower personality and a follower perception of
leadership effectiveness and styles can be identified, then
leaders could more productively communicate leader-
ship styles to followers of varying personality.
The study’s findings suggest that women react to
word usage more radically than men when assigning
transformational ratings and passive ratings to virtual
leaders or leaders with whom they have no face-to-face
interaction. This study also suggests that individuals
who possess the Big 5 personality traits of agreeableness
and openness to experience are more apt to rate leaders
who use the words of leaders scoring above the mean
as transformational leaders.
Limitations to the Findings
These findings should be limited to the convenience
sample from which they were taken. Convenience sam-
pling consisting of only those seeking a higher education
in a population might not be representative of the pop-
ulation as a whole. Therefore, these findings are not
necessarily similar to the findings of a representative
sample of the entire population. This study should be
repeated with a more representative sample.
Recommendations of Future
Research
Future research should look further into implicit lead-
ership theory and its effect on the behavior of the fol-
lower, the personality traits of followers, and the
relationship between those behaviors and follower mo-
tivation. Full investigation of leadership behavior and
follower perception is an interdisciplinary pursuit in an
attempt to blend the disciplines of psychology, physi-
ology, neurology, verbal and nonverbal communication,
and leadership studies into more encompassing theo-
ries of leadership.
14 JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 4 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls
Lastly, researchers should continue to study the power
of a leader’s words and communications used to moti-
vate followers. Bass (1998) and others point out that
transformational leaders create higher productivity in
organizations than transactional leaders do. Bennis and
Nanus (1997) and others say that transformational lead-
ers use highly emotional language, which creates a
change in the values of themselves and their followers,
but what is this language? Bass and Avolio (1994) as-
sert that transformational leaders use metaphors to elicit
highly emotive reactions from their followers, which
spurs them to higher productivity. The question is,
“What is it about this language that creates the emo-
tion that energizes others to high performance?”
This study suggests that the implicit leadership
schemas are accessible to respondents even if with only
a minimum of communication and in the absence of
face-to-face communication. Furthermore, leaders may
be able to use language that is readily recognized by fol-
lowers to more fully motivate and engage followers.
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Charles Salter is an Assistant Professor of Business Admin-
istration at Schreiner University. He teaches in the Doctor-
ate of Leadership Studies for Our Lady of the Lake
University San Antonio. Charles holds a Bachelor of Jour-
nalism from the University of Georgia, an MBA in Man-
agement from University of Houston, an MBA in Finance
from Western International University, and a Ph.D. from
Our Lady of the Lake University San Antonio. He can be
reached at Salter16@hotmail.com.
Mark Green is a retired military officer with assignments
including the Pentagon and Army Medical Department
Center and School. He is a tenured Professor of Leadership
and a co-founder of the Department of Leadership Stud-
ies’ Bachelors, Masters and Doctoral programs in leader-
ship. He holds a Ph.D. in Educational Administration
and MS in Information Systems from The American Uni-
versity, an MBA from Our Lady of the Lake, an MEd,
from the University of Missouri and is completing his MA
in Theology at Oblate School of Theology. He can be
reached at Greem@lake.ollusa.edu.
Phyllis Duncan is an Assistant Professor in the School of
Business and Leadership at Our Lady of the Lake Univer-
sity where she teaches in the Leadership Studies Doctoral
Program. Phyllis holds a BS from University of the Ozarks,
an MBA from University of Arkansas, an MS in Industrial
Engineering from Southwest University, and a Ph.D. from
University of the Incarnate Word. She can be reached at
paduncan@lake.ollusa.edu.
Anne Berre, has her Ph.D. in Juris Prudence from Emory
University in Atlanta, Georgia. Having been a practic-
ing attorney for a number of years, Anne now teaches
Personal Finance and various Political Science courses at
JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES • Volume 4 • Number 2 • DOI:10.1002/jls
Schreiner University. She can be reached at aberre@
schreiner.edu.
Charles Torti is an Associate Professor and Chair of the
Business Department of Schreiner University. He teaches
entrepreneurship, management, human resources, and busi-
ness strategies in the School of Professional Studies. He
earned an MBA from North Texas State University. Charles
holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Touro
University. He may be reached at cwtorti@schreiner.edu.
17