Kaiser, R.B.  (2008, April). Assessing Flexibility as a “Mastery of Opposites.” Presented in R. B. Kaiser (Chair), The Importance, Assessment, and Development of Flexible Leadership, a symposium presented at the 23rd Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, San Francisco, CA.

There is surprisingly little scientific research on the assessment of leadership flexibility. As one reviewer noted, “adaptability, flexibility, and versatility are elusive concepts that have not been well defined in the psychological literature and are therefore difficult to measure.” This presentation elaborates a definition of leadership flexibility as a mastery of opposing, but complementary, skills and approaches. Further, a new measurement method is described that employs a rating scale that distinguishes when managers do too little or too much of a given behavior. This scale is applied to opposing leadership capabilities—for example, the ability to both take charge and empower, to set direction and execute the plan—thus providing a reading on the extent to which managers make appropriate use of opposing approaches versus rely too much on one approach to the neglect of complementary approaches.

Download presentation: MasteryOpposites_SIOP2008Kaiser.pdf