Employee political skill influence the perception and success of leader's transformational leadership

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Andreas Wihler
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: from 2017 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 339154438

Tranformational leadership behavior is one of the most studied leader behaviors in management research. However, empirical evidence shows that this behavior does not always lead to the intended success. Research in this area primarily focused on a unidirectional, leader-centered perspective on how supervisors lead employees. In contrast, this project utilizes an interactional approach on leadership and examines whether political skill of employees helps them to correctly recognize the intended leadership behavior of their leader and on this basis increase their job performance. By considering employee political skill in a two-staged moderated mediation model I seek to explain contradictory and counter-intuitive results of previous research on leadership.My first goal is the examination if employee political skill facets "social astuteness" and "networking ability" help them to better understand the transformational leadership behavior of their leader. I expect that the beneficial effect of these facets is especially true for ambiguous behaviors of transformational leadership since these facets allow a more accurate interpretation of the behavior of the leader. In addition, to provide an explanative differentiation this effect should occur above previously established effects of employee personality characteristics.Secondly, the hypothesis is tested that the political skill facet "interpersonal influence" affects how perceived leader behavior is translated into better job performance. Interpersonal influence should be beneficial for this process because it helps employees to easily adapt their behavior to different situations and select the most context-appropriate behavior to be successful. Thirdly, I examine the role of the facets of political skill in the interplay of transformational leadership and different forms of job performance because until now research has only established an effect of transformational leadership on job dedication whereas results for other types of job performance are mixed. Furthermore, the effects on job performance types are tested while considering other forms of leadership behavior to provide an additional explanative differentiation for the effects of political skill on transformational leadership. By providing empirical evidence for this new perspective on the leadership processes and the role of political skill, this project opens new avenues and opportunities for research and improvement of leadership in practice: Instead on focusing solely on supervisors, their employees should also be trained in correctly recognizing and effectively utilizing leadership attempts.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants