CCAL Funded Study on how Knowing your Leader Helps is Published

Knowledge about others is an important factor in shaping relationships. If these others are in positions of power, such as organizational leaders, employees need to know as much as they can about these individuals to position themselves politically well. Haskayne PhD student Steve Granger and faculty member Nick Turner, as well as Asper School of Business faculty member Lukas Neville, wondered what it meant to have political knowledge at work. Their study, which was co-funded by the Canadian Centre for Advanced Leadership in Business (CCAL) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, was published in the latest issue of the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. The open-access article can be accessed here. 

With a focus on leader-follower relationships, Granger and his colleagues defined political knowledge as “an understanding of the relationships, demands, resources, and preferences of specific influential others at work” 1. Knowing the demands that the leader is under, who he or she would like to work with most or what motivates him or her can be examples of political knowledge. Authors found that political knowledge is associated with high-quality leader-follower relationships. Moreover, participants who reported high levels of political skill also reported engaging in proactive behaviours due to enhanced political knowledge of their leaders. These behaviours include challenging the status quo by making recommendations to improve the workplace (also known as organizational voice) 2 and taking charge. Granger and colleagues also expected to find that employees who have worked with their leaders for a longer amount of time would have better political knowledge of their leaders; however, results showed no significant relationship between relationship duration and political knowledge. 

These findings have direct implications for organizational leaders. Employee silence in the face of organizational threats is undesired in many workplaces. Leaders can encourage followers to act in ways to improve the current standards in the workplace by sharing more about themselves. This way, employees can perceive taking charge less risky. Also, working on improving their relationships with employees can increase political knowledge, which in turn can increase proactivity.
 

References

1. Granger, S., Neville, L., & Turner, N. (2019). Political knowledge at work: Conceptualization, measurement, and applications to follower proactivity. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. DOI:10.1111/joop.12293
    
2. Van Dyne, L., & LePine, J. A. (1998). Helping and voice extra-role behaviors: Evidence of construct and predictive validity. Academy of Management Journal, 41(1), 108-119.

Link to the article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/joop.12293