This studied the level of agreement between leaders & their teams on the perception of leaders’ safety behaviours pre & post-leadership training, & the impact training had on changing leadership behaviours & followers’ safety self-efficacy; 48 leaders & 211 followers completed surveys.
When leaders & followers agreed, leaders’ leadership behaviours & followers’ self-efficacy to give safety-related feedback improved. Disagreements were found to reduce followers` self-efficacy in intervening in unsafe work conditions.
Leaders who overrated their leadership behaviours compared with their followers impacted post-training improvements in leadership behaviours. Overestimation was also found to negatively impact follower outcomes in self-efficacy.
The authors note that leaders that overrate their capabilities “not only hurts employee performance but also leaders’ development during leadership training” (p.30).
Finally, the authors suggest 360-degree feedback, as commonly used, may not be sufficient for motivating leaders to change their behaviours; & those that rate themselves highly may prefer to rely on their own feedback rather than followers.
Authors: Susanne Tafvelin, Karina Nielsen, Johan Simonsen Abildgaard, Anne Richter, Ulrica von Thiele Schwarz, Henna Hasson, 2019, Safety Science.
Study link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2019.06.019
Link to the LinkedIn article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/leader-team-perceptual-distance-affects-outcomes-ben-hutchinson
SafetyInsights.org 