22149: Reciprocal Relationships Between Leadership and Followers’ Personality: A Continuous Time Approach (session 25702)

Organizational research on personality and leadership has long been influenced by the dispositional perspective, which posits that personality, as a relatively stable trait, unidirectionally causes leadership processes and outcomes (i.e., selection effect). With a growing interest in the dynamic perspective, the crucial role of leadership, as a type of experience, in personality development (i.e., socialization effect) is also gradually being emphasized. Building on previous research, our research describes leadership as an interpersonal experience to explore the deeper mutual influence between leadership behaviors and followers’ personality. Specifically, we focus on representative leadership behaviors, empowering and directive, from the two dominant dimensions in leadership research (i.e., initiating structure and consideration). We conducted a continuous time longitudinal study with various time intervals (N = 2,176) to investigate the reciprocal relationship between these leadership behaviors and followers’ big five traits. Our findings revealed significant and positive socialization effects of empowering leadership on subsequent increases of followers’ big five traits, as well as the selection effects of the big five traits on the subsequent enhancement of empowering leadership. We also found positive socialization effects of directive leadership on extraversion and agreeableness, as well as positive selection effects of extraversion, agreeableness and openness on directive leadership. Our research contributes to personality and leadership development literature by highlighting the reciprocal relationship between leadership behaviors and followers’ personality and the critical role of time.

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