ABSTRACT
We began this book by arguing that, despite extensive research, the scientific understanding of leadership was incomplete because leadership researchers, like most naive observers, focused on the perceived qualities of leaders, especially the behavior of leaders. The problem with that approach is that leaders are thought to affect organizational outcomes largely through their impact on subordinates. Thus, leaders may initiate the leadership process, but they do not complete it. Subordinates do! Because leadership effects are largely mediated by follower self-regulatory processes, we maintained that it made sense to focus on subordinate self-regulation as the source of a second-order, scientifically grounded theory of leadership processes and then work backwards, by using reverse engineering, to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of leadership processes. In simpler terms, understanding leadership demands more than understanding leadership traits or behavior; it also requires an understanding of how followers perceive those behaviors; how these perceptions make followers feel and think about themselves; and, ultimately, what these thoughts and feelings make followers want to do.
