Leadership Research Summary:
- In a sample of 70 leader-follower dyads, this study examines the separate and interactive effects of the leaders’ implicit needs for power, achievement, and affiliation on leadership behaviors and outcomes. Results show that whereas the need for achievement was marginally associated with follower-rated passive leadership, the need for affiliation was significantly related to ratings of the leaders’ concern for the needs of their followers. Analyzing motive combinations in terms of interactive effects and accounting for the growing evidence on the value of affiliative concerns in leadership, we assumed the need for affiliation would channel the interplay among the needs for power and achievement in such a way that the leaders would become more effective in leading others.
- As expected, based on high need for achievement, the followers were more satisfied with their jobs and with their leaders and perceived more transformational leadership behavior if power-motivated leaders equally had a high need for affiliation. Moreover, the leaders indicated higher career success when this was the case. However, in indicators of followers’ performance, the three-way interaction among the needs for power, achievement, and affiliation did not account for additional variance.
Leadership Research Implications and Findings:
- Research has been based on the assumption that several implicit motives energize a person’s behavior (McClelland, 1992). In studies on such combined effects, motives have commonly been condensed into typological configurations. Building off of earlier work (Spangler and House, 1991; Steinmann et al., 2015), this study applied a dimensional approach to motive combinations. The results confirm that the needs for power, achievement, and affiliation interactively affect a person’s behavior and substantiate earlier findings on the interaction between implicit motives (Steinmann et al., 2015). Based on research, it has been reasoned that configurations yield personality portraits that differ from those evolving from the sum of single motives (McClelland, 1992).
- The present study shows that also leadership behaviors vary depending on the motives considered just as much as they are dependent on the interplay of these particular motives. Up to now, a modulating impact on the expression of motives has solely been attributed to activity inhibition and explicit personality constructs. Spangler et al. (2014) highlighted AI to also moderate the relation between nAch or nAff and leadership success. Research, however, examined the modulation of nPow only. At times it has been reasoned that, rather than AI, a concern for responsibility would channel the use of power into socially acceptable ways (e.g., Winter, 1991). As high nAff arouses a concern for others and makes leaders more sensitive to them, an interacting nAff may foster the responsibility needed for effective leadership. Responsibility, though, involves morality, legality, and obligation (Winter, 1991), which do not necessarily accompany high nAff. Exceeding the sticking to corporate procedures and the alignment to institutional goals that arise from AI (McClelland and Boyatzis, 1982), nAff rather channels the expression of the interplay between nPow and nAch such that leaders are more confident in their followers’ abilities, individually care for them, promote their personal and vocational development, and create an atmosphere of working toward common goals, but at the same time also energizes behaviors conducive in establishing and maintaining strategic relationships used to maximize one’s advantages. Such behaviors may not be expected given the modulating effect of AI. Therefore, we postulate that while high AI restrains the unfiltered expression of motivational impulses inherent in a person thereby retaining the direction initially energized by that motive, interacting implicit motives rather add a new quality to the manifestation of other motives. Implicit motives and AI modulate the expression of motives so that different behaviors or characteristics evolve.
- Besides these theoretical implications, the study entails initial implications for organizations. While in light of early research leaders would have been selected and promoted based on a social display of power, our results strengthen the importance of the need for affiliation in satisfying followers and advancing one’s career. As a concern with unique accomplishments and excellent performance has likewise developed into a driver of leadership success, practitioners charged with the selection of leaders have to reconsider and adapt HR instruments to do justice to the growing importance of nAch and nAff. When evaluating applicants’ conduct in assessment centers, for example, it is commonly assumed that people are less likely to make good leaders if they (e.g., in a leaderless group discussion) try to maintain harmonious relationships.
- In line with McClelland and Boyatzis (1982) and House et al. (1991), some might reason that such leaders would practice favoritism or refrain from enforcing necessary decisions. However, as current work environments require working with diverse teams in times of vocational uncertainty, considerate leader behaviors are vital in modern leadership (Lim and Ployhart, 2004; Homan and Greer, 2013). Evidence-based leadership competency models that incorporate behaviors energized by all three implicit motives (e.g., the LEaD model; Schmidt-Huber et al., 2014) may guide HR specialists in adjusting behavioral dimensions. Indicators of the behavioral manifestation of implicit motives and their interplay also have to be included in performance appraisal or 360-degree feedback to reveal motive dispositions.
- Although items on the manifestation of independent motives are quite easy to derive and align to the context of leadership, the way their interaction is reflected in a leader’s conduct and attributes deserves further examination to enable their assessment. Research on the interplay of implicit motives and their appearance in leadership has to first be advanced to yield empirical findings based on which reliable practical implications may be derived that evidently contribute to increasing leadership success in corporate settings.