The Impact of Self-Focused versus Other-Focused Leaders

The best work relationships are partnerships. They require collaboration between both the leader and the direct report in regard to communication, working style, feedback, direction, and support. Given a choice, most of us would probably agree that we would prefer to work for a leader who has our best interests at heart, is invested in our growth and development, and is focused on meeting our needs as opposed to one who is focused on his or her own professional agenda. And we could probably also make the assumption that a self-serving leader would be less effective than one who was focused on helping his or her people grow. But what’s the real impact a self- versus other-focused leader has on his or her people? And how does that impact play out in regard to employee work intentions like turnover, endorsement, discretionary effort, and organizational citizenship? New research from Blanchard^® answers these questions and reveals the true impact of self- and other-focused leader behaviors on the people they lead and the correlation to employee work intentions.