Seeing Eye to Eye: Can Leadership Training Align Perceptions of Leadership?

This paper investigates whether and under what conditions leadership training narrows the gap between leaders’ and employees’ perceptions of leadership behaviors. Using a field experiment with several hundred Danish... [ view full abstract ]

This paper investigates whether and under what conditions leadership training narrows the gap between leaders’ and employees’ perceptions of leadership behaviors. Using a field experiment with several hundred Danish managers from public and private organizations over a year, we find that leadership training narrow the gap between leader–employee perceptions of transformational and transactional leadership behaviors in public sector organizations, which are typically characterized by greater goal ambiguity. The findings imply that leadership training can be one way for organizations to align perceptions of leadership.