Abstract
Leadership theory has evolved from viewing leaders as extraordinary and followers as submissive to viewing both leaders and followers as vital contributors to the leadership process. As part of this evolution, an implicit assumption has emerged that anyone can lead. We begin to test this assumption by comparing leader and follower role expectations reported by 139 supervisor-subordinate dyads. We assess role expectations as a basis for understanding whether individuals are capable of leading and following because when an individual’s expectations for a given role differ from others’ expectations for that same role, the individual will be unlikely to meet the role expectations set by others. Measurement equivalence results show supervisors and subordinates conceptualize leader and follower role expectations in a similar manner. Findings also show non-significant differences between those sampled from supervisor and subordinate positions in reported follower role expectations but significant differences in reported leader role expectations, even after controlling for individual and dyadic-level variables indicative of role expectation refinement. Post hoc analyses show supervisor reports of leader role expectations to be more similar to low performing subordinates than to high performing subordinates. Follow-up analyses also show relatively stable leader role expectations when those originally sampled from supervisor positions were resampled from the subordinate position 18 months later. Together, these findings suggest that not anyone can lead. Findings have implications for leadership development and aptitude.
Published Version
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