News Release

Leadership Skills Make A Difference On The Line, Not Just In The Office

Peer-Reviewed Publication

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Corporations spend a lot of money on leadership training for their executives and middle managers, and research has proven the benefits.

But similar benefits can be had at the production and service levels, suggests a study by a University of Illinois professor, if companies provided similar training for front-line supervisors.

"Normally, we think that supervisors just need to know the job, they don't need to have a whole lot of interpersonal skills, let alone leadership skills. We think that leadership is something for upper levels of the organization," says K. Peter Kuchinke, a professor of human resource education at the U. of I. "But now we're finding that these skills are highly effective at all levels of the organization."

Kuchinke conducted a survey at three manufacturing sites -- two in the United States and one in Germany -- of a multinational telecommunications company. He administered the survey to two-thirds of the plants' 5,400 employees, including managers, engineers and production workers; 53 percent of those surveyed, or about 1,900 employees, responded.

As part of the survey, he looked for signs of "transformational leadership" -- where managers and supervisors set examples for their subordinates, reward them for thinking creatively about how work can be improved, plan for their individual development, and inspire them to put the good of their work group and organization above their self-interest.

At all three sites, he found that transformational leadership techniques "were much less practiced at the production level," Kuchinke said. "At the same time, we found that where transformational leadership techniques are practiced at the production level, they lead to good outcomes. And these outcomes are that employees are more satisfied, they perceive their supervisors as more effective, and, most importantly, they're willing to put in extra effort."

Previous research had shown the benefits of this "progressive" style of leadership, Kuchinke said, "but very little or no research had been done in looking at production-level employees."

His findings were published in the December issue of the journal Human Resource Development International; another article from the same study will be published this summer in Human Resource Development Quarterly.

Kuchinke said his results take on added importance with recent trends. "With the change that's taking place in organizations -- the downsizing, the flattening of organizations, the increased responsibility that front-line employees have, both vis-a-vis the customer and vis-a-vis other tasks effective leadership becomes more important than ever at lower levels," he said.

"We're used to thinking of production employees as putting in an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. You still need an honest day's pay in order to get an honest day's work, but you need something more if you are interested in superior performance and a higher quality of worklife."

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