Melding the objective and subjective sides of leadership: Communication and social judgments in decision‐making groups

Abstract

This examination tests whether “inferential” models are capable of predicting group members' leadership—relevant judgments and evaluations of one another after a group discussion. Results in samples of both standing and zero‐history groups showed that judgments of communicative behaviors strongly predicted judgments of the communicator's traits and that both behavioral and trait judgments strongly predicted leadership evaluations. However, measures of actual communication were poor predictors of trait judgments and leadership evaluations and were generally unrelated with judgments of these behaviors. These findings imply that leadership‐relevant judgments and evaluations are largely implicit—theory based and only tangentially associated with actual behavioral performances.