Leadership Impact and Effectiveness

"How does the impact of Australian Leaders compare to other leaders around the world?" Dr Rob Cooke and Dr Janet Szumal will address this question by presenting at the 5th Australian Conference on Culture and Leadership the results of an international study that examined the leadership tendencies of approximately 5000 managers in at least six countries.

The essence of leadership is the impact that executives and senior managers have on the culture of their organisations and the behaviour and performance of those around them. Optimally, leaders have a constructive impact-enabling and encouraging adaptability, cooperation and achievement-oriented behaviours on the part of others. Many leaders, however, have a more defensive impact and inadvertently create an unnecessarily competitive, rigid and constraining work environment.

Rob and Janet will describe how effective leaders promote a constructive and high-performance culture. Moreover, they will compare the leadership tendencies of managers from different countries. These comparisons will be made in light of several aspects of leadership, including the managers'

• ideal impact (as described by the managers)
• actual impact (as rated by 32,470 direct reports)
• leadership effectiveness.

Additionally, Rob and Janet will present results on the strategies and techniques used by leaders that account for their impact. In particular, they will focus on two types of strategies used to carry out various leadership responsibilities. Prescriptive strategies are those that guide or direct the activities and behaviour of others toward goals, opportunities and methods. Restrictive strategies are those that constrain or prohibit activities and behaviours on the part of others. While most leaders rely on a combination of these strategies, the results demonstrate that an emphasis on prescriptive approaches to leadership consistently have a constructive impact across cultures.

The results are based on Leadership/Impact (L/I). L/I is a 360-degree feedback tool designed to provide executives, managers and others in leadership positions with information regarding their impact on others as well as the strategies and techniques that account for that impact.