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A literature review on effective leadership
qualities for the NLC
Executive summary
The review conducted did not produce evidence for a distinct ‘qualities approach’ drawing on the five identified qualities applied consistently across the literature. This is because the review presented a field of research into leadership that is characterised by fragmentation and conflicting nomenclature. These inconsistencies in the findings prevent us from drawing strong conclusions across the literature. Nevertheless, organising the various strands of debate into clusters that capture shared ways of talking about leadership across different theories in the literature can be helpful. The evidence that the five qualities as defined by the National Leadership Centre (NLC) are the most relevant ones is mixed. We summarise the evidence on this and suggestions on how to potentially adapt the descriptions on the five qualities in Section 2. In Section 3 , we turn to a discussion about the challenges of a ‘qualities approach’ to the study of leadership. We describe three main clusters of theories in the literature (explained in more detail in the glossary in Appendix II ) that challenge the notion that leadership derives exclusively from properties of the individual. These clusters can provide inspiration for an expansion of the NLC understanding of leadership. We then turn to the issue of the outcomes and goals that leadership is measured against in the literature in Section 4. Finally, in Section 5 we report the questions that emerged from this literature review and suggest ways in which the NLC could explore these, including co-productive and qualitative research methods.
Table of contents
- Our approach to this literature review
- The evidence of the five qualities in the literature
- Critiques of a ‘qualities approach’ to leadership
- Measuring leadership impact
- Conclusions and recommendations for future research
- Appendix I: Search terms and key results
- Appendix II: Glossary
- Appendix III: Bibliography
of leadership to discussions specific to particular professions). In our review of the abstracts we summarised key themes and findings emerging from the literature, including findings relevant to specific qualities, additional ways of talking about leadership present in the literature, ideals and outcomes, methodological approaches, and theoretical models of leadership. The results of each search presented in the Abstract Search documents include an overall summary, collected themes, referenced papers, and a full list of abstracts. The process revealed a number of trends in the literature, notably a diversity of theoretical perspectives on leadership and a wealth of studies exploring leadership in relation to specific outcomes and goals. The full implications presented by these developments were not apparent through review of the abstracts alone. Therefore, in addition to the abstract review, we conducted deep dives into key papers. We draw out the conclusions from these studies in this paper. In addition, we provide a glossary in Appendix II that defines prominent leadership theories and related concepts featured in the literature.
2. The evidence of the five qualities in the literature
The literature review did not produce evidence for a distinct ‘qualities approach’ drawing on the five identified qualities applied consistently across the literature. The review presented a field of research into leadership that is characterised by fragmentation and conflicting nomenclature. While there was evidence of studies using the same terms outlined in the NLCs discussion of qualities, they were not necessarily writing from a self-consciously 'qualities approach to leadership', and there was a lack of unified understanding underpinning the debate. Many studies would talk about the attributes of leadership in terms of style, traits, skills, and competencies. Furthermore, while studies might be interpreted as interested in the quality of connectedness, they might talk about it and understand it in different ways, for example, talking instead of empathy or emotional intelligence. Additionally, studies may import broader theoretical frameworks in describing leadership attributes. Influential frameworks include ‘transformational leadership’, ‘charismatic leadership’, ‘collaborative leadership’, ‘authentic leadership’, ‘servant leadership’, ‘network leadership’, ‘place-based leadership’, and ‘complex leadership theory’, all of which are described in detail in Appendix II. These approaches frame discussion of qualities, meaning that people may use different words for the same concept, or the same word for different concepts, making it hard to assess
the evidence available on specific qualities.
It does not necessarily follow from these findings that the five NLC qualities are not a helpful way of understanding leadership. Indeed, the review demonstrates that there is a lack of clarity and coherence in the debate on leadership that might be helpfully navigated by organising the various strands of debate into clusters that capture shared ways of talking about what is valued in leadership that cut across different theories and frameworks in the literature. There is mixed evidence that the five qualities might provide such a useful framework. In the case of ethical and adaptive leadership, there is direct evidence for discussion of these qualities, although there is variation in how they are understood. In the case of connected and purposeful, there is more indirect evidence for discussion of these qualities, and perhaps a need to adapt the articulation of these qualities to better reflect the direction of the literature. Discussion of the quality of questioning is arguably the weakest, or at least a case where there is a lot of overlap with other qualities. We discuss the findings of each individual quality in the tables below.
Adaptive NLC definition (^) Adaptive leaders are able to change proactively and constantly learn in a complex, uncertain and volatile world. Number of abstracts reviewed
141
Summary of findings (^) Adaptive leadership and the need to learn in the face of complex challenges featured prominently in the literature. The review revealed a more formalised understanding of ‘adaptive leadership’ presented in Appendix II. It should be noted that the discussions of this quality often encouraged a less individualistic understanding of adaptation, in some cases talking of adaptive organisations, relationships and cultures, and organisational agility.
In order to build on this the NLCs definition, it may be helpful to further explore the more specific understandings of adaptive leadership, as well as the relationship between
professional context in which it is applied, and how leadership presents ethical dilemmas and potential tensions between the professional and ethical norms of leadership and what might be commonly perceived to be good.
Given the multi-faceted nature of ethical leadership, there may be a case for crafting a more specific definition, with thought given to how abstract-level definitions of ethical leadership interact with context-specific understandings of ethics.
Trends in the literature (^) ● Ethical leadership was by far the most discussed quality of
leadership, often in relation to frameworks of ‘servant leadership’ and ‘spiritual leadership’. It should be noted that ethics represents a much broader set of concerns than we might reasonably expect from the other qualities. ● Abstract-level discussions of the good leader can be contrasted with more context-specific discussions of leadership, including ethical frameworks, norms, and dilemmas encountered by specific professions such as nursing. ● Within the literature, there is a lot of focus on ‘building trust’ as outlined in the NLC definition with a focus on supporting others. There was some discussion around ‘sustainable’, ‘long-term’, and ‘public service ethos’, which is similar to public service mission. ● Some concepts that were mentioned in the literature that are not in the NLC definition include ‘integrity’, ‘credible leadership’, ‘authentic leadership’, ‘values’, and ‘self-efficacy’. ● Ethical leadership is also contrasted with administrative evil, mistrust, and narcissism.
Connected NLC definition (^) Connected leaders are empathic, collaborative thinkers who consistently work across organisational boundaries to build strategic relationships across the public service. Number of abstracts reviewed
127
Summary of findings Connected was not frequently discussed in the literature, however the elements of this quality described in the NLC definition were heavily discussed in relation to leadership. It was more common to talk of this quality in term of empathy, while emotional intelligence can be interpreted as a related concept that features prominently in the research
The results of the review present two general questions. The first is whether the NLC definition of connectedness is too rich as it encompasses both notions of empathy and collaboration. The second question is whether the notion of ‘collaborative thinkers’ captures the way in which the literature is talking about collaborative approaches as it potentially challenges the qualities approach (discussed in more depth in Section 3 of this paper). This is an area that would be helpful to explore further.
Trends in the literature (^) ● Although connected leaders might be a helpful, more holistic way of talking about this quality of leadership, it was more common for this quality to be discussed in other terms including those listed such as ‘empathetic leadership’, but also through concepts such as ‘emotional intelligence’ (although this term obviously related to a much more specific and contested concept). ● The description of ‘collaborative leaders’ who build strategic relationships is potentially relevant to a significant portion of the literature that deals with collaborative approaches and relational understandings of leadership (see
3. Critiques of a 'qualities approach' to leadership
‘transformational leadership’ and ‘public service motivation’ (See Appendix II for more details)
Questioning NLC definition (^) Questioning leaders are open minded and seek to understand the views and experiences of others. Number of abstracts reviewed
42
Summary of findings (^) There was little evidence to support ‘questioning’ as a distinct quality of leadership within the literature. It may be helpful to consider the purpose of distinguishing this quality from the ideas of ‘adaptive’ and ‘connected’ and what might be lost by merging it to these other attributes. Trends in the literature (^) ● Compared to the other searches, such as ‘adaptive’ and ‘ethical’, ‘questioning’ leadership did not return many results. Those that it produced, emphasised the importance of ‘curiosity’ and the use of questions (rather than the quality per se) as a means of building trust, respect, constructing authority, and developing and building relationships. ‘Vigilance’ also appeared as a related concept. ● The concept description shares similarities to the description of ‘connected’ and ‘adapted’. For example, a person who is open minded and seeks to understand the views and experiences of others might be described as ‘empathetic’ in some contexts or perhaps receptive to change and capable of learning and adapting in other contexts. In this sense it may be that the literature tends to discuss these features in ways more aligned with that language.
Stepping beyond the discussion of the evidence of individual qualities, the literature reviewed presented a number of challenges to taking a 'qualities approach' to the study of leadership altogether. Recent trends in the literature tend to depart from an understanding of leadership as deriving exclusively from properties of the individual. Based on deeper exploration of the key papers in this area, we explain the evolution of leadership studies towards less individualistic theories and the implications of these developments for a ‘qualities approach’ in the section below.
3.1 The evolution of leadership studies
Over the past fifty years, the understanding of public administration and governance in the literature has become increasingly nuanced and complex (Bussu and Galanti 2018, Horwath and Morrison 2007, Heifetz et al 2009). Many recent studies observe a shift from hierarchical, command and control mechanisms to coproduction and/or collaborative action across sectors, organisations and disciplines (Silvia 2011, Avolio et al 2009). In parallel to this, the study of leadership also evolved and branched out in this direction. Heroic, great-man theories that focused on traits and qualities unique to the leader used to be predominant, while now the literature presents more expansive understandings of leadership and its challenges that attend to the relational, situational, and context-specific elements (Bass and Bass 2008).
The shift to this more nuanced understanding of leadership is also a response to criticism of exclusively leader-centred approaches. Accounts of ‘charismatic’, and later ‘transformational leadership’, which emphasise the capacity of leaders to inspire and motivate followers to excel in their work and enhance performance (see Appendix II for more details), have been criticised for being too individualistic in their understanding of leadership. Stogdill (1948 in Bass and Bass 2008) argues that the qualities, characteristics, and skills required of a leader are determined to a large extent by the demands of the situation. Therefore, analysis of leadership cannot be abstracted from the context in which it occurs.
3.2 Three challenges to the qualities approach
As a result of these criticisms, there have been efforts to move beyond an individualistic
approaches are criticised in the literature for stretching the concept of leadership beyond any natural sense of the word, undermining the explanatory value of the term, and inviting one to consider whether such theories are meaningfully talking about leadership at all (Morrison 2010).
Finally, the third cluster of the literature departs entirely from grand theory of leadership altogether, focusing instead on specific types of challenges and barriers leaders face , as well as more specific goals and outcomes (Heifetz et al 2009, Ekstrom and Idvall 2015, Corazzini et al 2014). A prominent approach that belongs to this strand is ‘adaptive leadership theory’ (see Appendix II for more details). This is described not as a theory of leadership per se, but as a practice that mobilises people to tackle tough challenges and thrive (Heifetz et al 2009). The theory is oriented around specific types of challenges that have no ready answers and cannot be addressed with existing procedures and expertise. The activities recommended in the adaptive leadership theory literature may not be necessary or even desirable in other contexts. This approach draws our attention to the possibility that general theories of leadership may be too abstract to be helpful in understanding what is required in response to challenges that leaders face. A general leadership theory narrows our focus to a particular set of challenges anticipated by the theory, and this may neglect other barriers that might be experienced in practice.
An example of where this literature identifies challenges that might not be captured by general leadership theories is highlighted by Ekstrom and Idvall (2015). They discuss leadership challenges experienced by nursing staff, and the implications this has for retention of staff. A challenge the study highlights is the issue of nurses disassociating from their leadership role, concerned that they may appear lazy or bossy, and feeling uncomfortable in their role and therefore job. The discussion presents a specific challenge (the experience of disassociation) and its consequences for a specific outcome (staff retention). While this could be reinterpreted using the language of ‘transformational leadership’ or ‘leader member exchange’, it is not clear this would give us a better understanding of the problem or its potential solutions, rather it might obscure and over-complicate the issue. Intuitively this level of analysis is more helpful to understanding leadership in the context of nursing than the broader understanding introduced by general leadership theories. Further literature highlights
the particular ethical dilemmas and frameworks for understanding ethics of leadership within particular professions, as these might present context-specific features (Storch et al 2013, Broussine and Miller 2005, Curtis and Hodge 1995). These discussions suggest a need to pay further attention to what is usefully gained, and also what is lost, by moving from the specific context to much more general understandings of leadership and leadership qualities.
3.3 Implications for the NLC’s qualities approach
To conclude, there is certainly a push from the literature to look beyond individual qualities of leaders and acknowledge the importance of the context and systems within which they operate. This doesn’t reject the validity of a 'qualities approach' but it calls for an expansive understanding of the qualities, which acknowledges that these may manifest in various ways and emerge from different sources other than the traditional leader. In this sense, in addition to thinking of adaptive qualities of individuals, the NLC could also consider how cultures or organisations demonstrate these qualities. Additionally, the literature would also suggest that attention needs to be paid to the situation in which leaders operate, including the specific challenges and barriers experienced by members of a system, and the specific goals or outcomes that would be desirable in a given professional context.
4. Measuring leadership impact
The discussion in the previous section considered sources of variety in how leadership is conceptualised and different approaches to understanding the challenges that leaders encounter. It is important to also reflect on variety in how good leadership is measured, and more specifically, the intended purpose of leadership — the goals and outcomes that leadership is judged against. The literature talks about leadership in the context of various outcomes, from the abstract to the context-specific, from outcomes relating to work output to satisfaction amongst employees or the wider public. The findings suggest a need to consider the compatibility and potential tensions between different goals and outcomes and therefore the need to understand the priorities of leadership in a given context, and the nature of the relationship between leadership style and particular outcomes.
This overview shows that the literature has explored leadership in relation to various outcomes. The measures of outcomes can vary; for example, Kotze and Venter (2011) measure an individual’s effectiveness by asking the individual and four colleagues to rate them, while Uster et al (2018) link effectiveness to external measures of performance. Some of the measures are easily verifiable (such as staff retention rates) to other outcomes such as trust or creativity that are more intangible and thus rely on more contested measures and indicators. Outcomes such as trust can be treated as a dependent variable by some studies (Agote et al 2016) and an independent variable by others (Lee et al 2010).
Finally, outcomes are measured within different theoretical perspectives. For example, retention of staff has been explored from different theoretical frameworks, notably ‘leader member exchange’ and ‘transformational leadership’ (See Appendix II for more details). Joo (2010) and Joo (2012) both find a correlation between high-quality relationships between leaders and followers and staff retention in studies that utilise leader member exchange theory. Additionally, Wang et al (2018) explore the impact of transformational leadership and emotional intelligence on the retention of nursing staff, finding that transformational leadership and emotional intelligence were significant predictors of nurse intent to stay, with emotional intelligence found to partially mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and intent to stay.
In order to judge the significance of these findings, we would need to be able to establish the validity of the individual studies and the comparability of measures applied across studies to allow for meaningful comparisons, which is beyond the scope of this paper. An important consideration for the purpose of strengthening our understanding of leadership qualities is the extent to which the findings support a causal relationship between a given attribute of leadership and a given outcome, or whether they only establish correlation.
Performance [14][97][ 37]
[48!][49!] [32][39][79] [37] [29] [75]
Efficiency [17] [103] [88]
4.2 Implications for the NLC’s qualities approach
These examples from the literature illustrate multiple layers of variety in the research, from how leadership is understood and measured, to the variety of outcomes that are understood to be the desired goals of good leadership. It is beyond the scope of this paper to analyse the strength and validity of individual methodological approaches, the extent to which these studies establish a causal link between a given quality of leadership and a given outcome, or the most effective route to developing these qualities in leaders. Nevertheless, these questions are of importance to our understanding of a 'qualities approach' to leadership. For example, is the key to understanding how connected leaders are able to retain staff or enhance creativity emotional intelligence? If so, discussion on leadership development that focus specifically on enhancing emotional intelligence would be an important direction for further exploration. The developments in the literature suggest a need to think about the desired outcomes for leadership and the extent to which these are shared by different leaders, for example, whether particular outcomes are more relevant for particular fields, or specific challenges. Once there is a clearer sense of the desired outcomes and goals of leadership, it is possible to explore leadership attributes relevant to those outcomes and the strength of that research and potential for leader development.
5. Conclusions and recommendations for future research
The review undertaken here provides a wide ranging overview of leadership (with elements similar to a scoping review approach to the literature) through the lens of the NLC five qualities using the academic literature as its basis. Its strength is the breadth of the review and the broad grounding of the five qualities in relation to academic knowledge. The obvious weakness is the depth to which this review has been able to go into the details of the theoretical linkage of the literature with each quality. Another weakness is the limit of the academic literature generally — the context and contemporaneity — which are comparative strengths of the ‘grey’ literature. Literature reviews by their nature are prone to degrees of imprecision, particularly in an area as ambiguous as leadership and a context as complex as the public sector. Different approaches to reviews will always be prone to exaggerating aspects of a phenomenon and occluding others. Given these inevitable constraints, the key
leaders and gain primary insights into the challenges and attributes of leadership. It has the opportunity to genuinely co-produce with leaders the generation of insights into the way they operate in public service contexts and bring about better outcomes. This could be achieved through introducing co-production into the delivery of its programme or through using qualitative/participatory research methods. Using these methods would build the findings of this and other reviews and connect what is a rich but fragmented literature with the practice of leadership in a complex and ambiguous reality.
Appendix I: Search terms and key results
General search SEARCH TERMS: leadership AND (“public administration” OR government OR “public service”) AND (complexity OR “systems leadership” OR collaborative OR wicked problems OR effective) Database Results Added SAGE 51 13 Social Science Citation Index 266 43 Social Service Abstracts 16 6 Wiley Online 78 23 Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
Total results 510 106
‘Adaptive’ search SEARCH TERMS: (leadership AND qualit AND (adaptive OR learning)) Database Results Added* SAGE 727 43 Social Science Citation Index 945 50 Social Service Abstracts 50 11 Wiley Online 1608 31 Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
Total results 3358 141
‘Connected’ search SEARCH CRITERIA: leadership AND (Connected OR empathetic OR emotional intelligence) Database Results Added SAGE 134 32 Social Science Citation Index 467 52 Social Service Abstracts 31 3 Wiley Online 258 33 Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
Total results 1010 127
‘Questioning’ search SEARCH CRITERIA: leadership AND (Questioning OR curious) Database Results Added
