Self–Other Rating Accuracy and Leadership Emergence: Does Rating Accuracy Influence Who Emerges as a Leader?

Abstract

The current study investigated how individual differences in self–other rating agreement (SOA) were related to leadership emergence. A sample of 4,524 students from MBA programs in the United States and Canada completed a leaderless group task as part of an assessment center. The results revealed that emergence varied by SOA, with underraters exhibiting the highest levels of emergence, followed by self-aware (i.e., accurate), and then overraters. One of the intriguing results is that underraters were more likely to display emergent behaviors than accurate raters, raising questions about the widely held belief regarding the use of accurate self-assessments as an indicator of leadership effectiveness. Overall, the results indicate that SOA is an antecedent of leadership emergence behaviors. While prior research has examined the effect of SOA on performance, commitment, and leadership perceptions, the study contributes to the literature by examining whether SOA influences actual emergence behavior.