Don't Be Misled by LEAD

Abstract

Recently, many researchers have used Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard's Leader Effectiveness and Description instrument of self-perception (LEAD-Self) to measure leadership styles. This may be unfortunate because this instrument appears to have certain confounding variables associated with it, variables that can affect the data and thus lead to questionable results. The author hypothesizes that the vast majority of LEAD-Self instrument respondents consistently score in the high task/high relationship leadership style category, and he suspects that this clustering of scores results from self-deception by the respondents. In a study of doctoral students in educational administration training groups in the Northeast and Midwest, a significantly high number of responses -69% -fell into the high task/high relationship category. These respondents apparently "knew" how they should or wanted to score, and they responded accordingly. The results of this study indicate that the LEAD Self instrument is an inappropriate tool for measuring leadership style.

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