Leaders mentoring others: the effects of implicit followership theory on leader integrity and mentoring

Abstract

How are leaders influenced by their assumptions about human nature? From a social cognitive perspective, this study examines the effects of a leader’s implicit followership theory (IFT) on the leader’s integrity, engagement, and effectiveness as a mentor. Multisource data collected from a diverse sample of CEOs and senior executives of large organizations (N = 331) and their direct reports (N = 1,517) suggest that leaders who hold optimistic IFTs are more likely to be relationally engaged with their direct reports and are more likely to be rated higher on integrity and mentoring effectiveness. Together, these results advance an ethical stewardship and relational mentoring perspective on human resource management.

Keywords:

• Mentoring
• leadership
• integrity
• implicit followership theory
• executives

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Associate Editors Kerstin Alfes and Michal Biron, and our anonymous reviewers for their detailed feedback. We also acknowledge the research fellowship provided by the Think2Perform Research Institute (T2PRI) and in memory of Kate Berman, the Executive Director of the T2PRI, who passed away in 2020. Finally, we would like to thank Michael Campbell and Shannon Muhly Bendixen for their support in the data collection for this study.

Disclosure statement

This work was supported by a research fellowship awarded to the authors by the Think2Perform Research Institute. There are no conflicts of interest.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.