Are Listeners Perceived as Leaders?

Abstract

Listening is known to strongly correlate with leadership perception. As leadership theories distinguish between people-oriented (consideration) and task-oriented (initiating structure) leaders, we sought to identify parallel listening behaviors: person-oriented listening versus fact-oriented listening. A survey of employees from multiple organizations (N = 238) suggested that both person-oriented listening and considerate leadership are better measured with subscales differentiating constructive and destructive listening and considerate and inconsiderate leadership. Second, results suggested that the highest correlations for each leadership scale were (a) leadership consideration with person-oriented listening (r = .71), (b) leadership inconsideration with destructive listening (r = .67), and (c) initiating-structure leadership with fact-oriented listening (r = .23). The pattern of relationships was further explored with a path analysis. Based on the data, it appears that measuring listening could benefit from using separate scales for constructive versus destructive listening, and that key aspects of leadership perception are highly correlated with listening behaviors.

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