The Effect of a Leader's Extraversion on Empowering Leadership and Follower Performance

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2019 in the subject Leadership and Human Resources - Management Styles, grade: 7.5 (NDL-System), University of Amsterdam, language: English, abstract: Past research has shown that an empowering leadership style can be effective in improving follower performance, but it is unclear how individual personality traits influence that relationship. This research paper specifically looks at how the extraversion of the leader has an influence on the effectiveness of an empowering leadership on follower performance. The research hypothesizes that a leader using an empowering leadership has a positive influence on follower performance, and that the follower performance is higher when the leader has a high level of extraversion, compared to a low level of extraversion. The hypotheses are tested with a sample of 100 employees and their direct managers. Neither of the two hypotheses have found support, suggesting that there is no relationship between empowering leadership and follower performance, and that the relationship is not influenced by the leader’s level of extraversion.