The Role of Personal Risk-Taking in Effective Leadership
三项研究调查了个人冒险行为在有效领导中的作用，发现军事和消防战斗中的有效领导者比无效领导者表现出更多个人勇敢行为，且个人冒险能显著预测领导效能。
Three studies address the role of personal risk-taking in effective leadership. The first study analyzed questionnaire data which detailed behavior of both effective and ineffective military combat leaders. This study indicates that effective combat leaders were judged to demonstrate more personally endangering acts than were ineffective combat leaders. The second study investigated personal risk-taking in leadership within a large urban fire department. Using interview techniques similar to those used in the first study, results obtained indicate that-effective leaders in fire combat were judged to show more personal bravery (i.e., physical risk-taking) than ineffective leaders. Thus, results for fire combat leaders were nearly identical to the results for military combat leaders. The third study included a separate set of data for current fire service leaders' judged fire combat leadership performance and their rated personal risk-taking. Results obtained in this study indicate that leaders judged by their superiors as personally accepting physical risks were also judged as more effective combat leaders. The personal risk-taking factor made a significant contribution towards explaining the variance in leadership effectiveness even when other leadership factors were controlled for statistically. A second analysis, using data collected from the leaders themselves, indicates that time in the role and job satisfaction are significant predictors of personal risk-taking behavior in fire service leaders. It was concluded that the willingness to expose onself to danger is associated with effective leadership in potentially life-threatening situations and that factors found in studies of motivation in organizations may account for such acts of personal bravery by leaders.