Effective Leader Behaviors in Regularly Held Staff Meetings

Abstract

In this chapter, we report on two studies that took an exploratory behavioral approach to leaders in regular staff meetings. The goal of both studies, which used a still rarely deployed observation method, was to identify effective behavioral repertoires of leaders in staff meetings; we specifically examined how video-observed instances of effective leader behavior differ from group members' perceptions of effective leader behavior. One study found that members attribute more relation-oriented and fewer task-oriented behaviors to an effective leader while their actual behavioral repertoire is predominantly made up of task-oriented behaviors. Study 2 explored whether followers' ratings of a transformational leadership style can be explained by the coded leader behaviors actually shown in the meetings. We found that this perceived style was significantly explained by both “individualized consideration” and (task-oriented) “delegating” leader behavior. In the discussion we reflect on the findings of both studies and sketch some practical implications. A number of conclusions further aim to contribute to the productivity of meetings in work-unit settings.