Versatility and Effectiveness

Seventy-nine of the executives who were rated on forceful and enabling leadership were also evaluated on effectiveness. The executives and their co-workers provided ratings of overall effectiveness on a scale from 1 to 10, with 5 being “adequate” and 10 being “outstanding.” For each executive, we calculated an overall effectiveness score by computing the average rating across all co-workers.

We then tested the prediction that leadership effectiveness is closely linked to versatility. We used ratings on forceful and enabling leadership to create a versatility index, which reflects the extent to which leaders make appropriate use of both styles (see sidebar). Our prediction was supported by a highly significant correlation of r = .57 between the versatility index and the overall effectiveness score based on coworkers' ratings. Thus, although few executives in our sample were clearly versatile, the results indicated that the more closely a leader's style approximates a balanced mix of both forceful and enabling, the more effective the leader is regarded to be by co-workers.

Interestingly, when we analyzed the executives' self-ratings, we did not find a relationship between versatility and effectiveness. Here the correlation was a nonsignificant r = .09. This is consistent with the idea that most leaders tend to view their preferred style as the most effective. This finding also highlights the importance of developmental feedback: these executives did not see the link between their lopsidedness and the ineffectiveness that was so clearly apparent to their co-workers.