Research Fellows & Projects

Funded Project: Peer Coaching Groups as a State-of-the-art Tool for Leadership Development

 

INTRODUCTION

Personal and professional development is a major need and motivating factor for many leaders. Peer coaching groups (PCGs) are used for leadership development and support by hundreds of business communities, such as Young Presidents’ Organization or Entrepreneurs’ Organization. However, existing research on PCGs in professional settings is scarce, with no research on the role of important variables, such as group emotional intelligence, on the outcomes of such groups. This renders PCGs in a precarious position, as popularity and anecdotal evidence suggest PCGs’ effectiveness in purposeful leadership development but provide only theoretical explanations for how positive outcomes occur. Additionally, without an adequate control group for comparison, it is unclear whether respondents’ positive experiences in PCGs are due to the PCG itself, due to other social/team-based factors not exclusive to PCGs, or a mixture of both.

To more thoroughly understand the ways in which[…]

Funded Project: The application of artificial intelligence coaching to improve resilience in organisational middle management.

 

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

The current business landscape adds a level of complexity for organisations and develops pressure for leaders to find innovative approaches of leading change, while developing agile organisations (Groysberg & Abbott, 2020). In addition to the challenges facing all leadership spheres, middle managers particularly have a unique set of challenges. Middle management positions within organizations are purposely meant to be linchpin positions that serve two groups with different expectations (Gjerde & Alvesson, 2020). Amid conflicts between the organisational competing cultures is the persistent demand by top management for middle managers to perform (Hermkens & Romme, 2020). Consequently, middle managers experience workplace stress, which is associated with negative personal outcomes[…]

Funded Project: Transcending the here and now: Examining the impact of leader’s future oriented communication on employee voice

Exploring the role of leader’s use of temporal communication in helping individuals transcend immediate gains and goals

Research Fellow Priyanka Joshi, PhD, presented the outcomes of her research project to our t2pRI Board and Research Community on Weds, January 24, 2024. View Dr. Joshi’s Presentation: Leader Construal Level and Employee Voice: A Future Temporal Focus Perspective.

See also: Research Findings One-Pager & Social Impact Paper (August 2024)

The Research Project

Leaders differ in the extent to which they routinely communicate about the future goals, objectives and larger organizational vision. A leader may choose to focus on immediate pressing issues such as current expectations and job responsibilities, or instead a leader may choose to transcend the immediate present and instead focus on the broad future, or anticipated outcomes, future objectives, and larger purpose. Leaders who effectively transcend the here and now are more likely to propel their followers to consider future gains of prohibitive voice.

Dr. Joshi’s research involves two studies to examine the relationship between leader communication style and follower voice. […]

Impact of Integrated Emotional Self Enhancement (IESE) Program on Emotional Intelligence, Intrinsic Motivation, Self–Compassion and Emotional Labour among staff nurses of a selected hospital at Mangalore: a quasi–experimental study

My research interests are in mental health, organizational psychology, and substance use & abuse. To build myself in the areas of my interest and to contribute towards research in the field of mental health and organizational psychology, I am now working on a project which focuses on staff nurses’ emotional intelligence.

In these times of uncertainty, and huge amount of stress the nurses face, my research team and I believe, that our project and program will work as a window to the emotional and mental health needs of nurses.

Nurses work in an environment that is always emotionally charged. They are in constant contact with human pain, loss and suffering. In such a stressful environment, nurses must […]

Leaders in Limbo: How Can EI-based Coaching Help Leaders Deal with Feelings of “In-betweenness?

Modern careers are marked by long periods of feeling betwixt, or ‘in–between,’ which can have significant impact on people’s well–being and career development. Yet, there is no validated measure of this experience, recognized as subjective liminality.

The present research (1) conducts a systematic review of the literature to operationalize subjective liminality as a second–order latent construct reflected by three dimensions: the feelings of novelty, ambiguity, and reduced social identity commitment; (2) develops a scale to measure subjective liminality and […]

How can leaders create diverse and equitable ventures?

Investigating asset funneling and early leadership decisions in start-ups.

Women and racial minority men are drastically underrepresented as leaders in finance and technology. A key to explaining these trends lies in who has access to capital to become entrepreneurs and investors within these fields. Venture capital and technology startup firms feature striking disparities in who gets leadership opportunities and investor capital. Women hold only 12 percent of the check-writing seats in the venture capital industry […]

How important is character and purpose to driving results?

Use of Self in Leadership: A Core Element in Driving Effectiveness with Character, Purpose, Behavior and Presence

When leaders show up to work it is important that they bring out their best selves and bring out the best in those they lead to engage with customers, peers, team members and leaders. Every situation is another opportunity to act in alignment with our best selves. While technical, business acumen and professional experience are foundational to create sustainable, positive impact, Use of Self in leadership involves seeing more options, knowing one’s intentions and acting in alignment with them, with the understanding that the only person we can control is ourselves […]

How can empathy be used to create greater belonging?

Understanding the Effects of Empathy on Inclusion in Organizations

A substantial amount of sociological research finds that when women and underrepresented racial minority men move into jobs in which white men are the majority, they often report negative experiences related to interpersonal interactions, frequently involving exclusion and feeling invisible at work. Yet, surprisingly little research has studied interpersonal interactions as an obstacle to workplace diversity and inclusion. As a result, we may be missing an important piece of the puzzle […]

What technological and leadership factors contribute to performance of virtual workers?

Leader communication style and coaching behaviors effects on virtual worker’s engagement

The construct of work engagement has received much attention in the literature over the last two decades; however, limited research has been conducted regarding virtual workers and work engagement. Advances in Information Communication Technology (ICT) have provided increased flexibility in working arrangements to employers and workers. Media-rich communications, such as voice/video communications provided by Adobe Connect, are known to be more effective at communicating complex information and ideas while less rich media communications, such as e-mail, have been found to be less effective […]

How can managers further develop their engineering team leaders?

The experience of engineers leading project teams: A case study

This inquiry focuses on the leadership experiences of engineers leading project teams. Ten face-to-face interviews were conducted with current engineers in project leadership roles. These individuals were selected by their organizational leaders and other engineers as effective project leaders. The results indicated that although these leaders do not necessarily use a common leadership style, they lead their project team members by: developing trust-based relationships, committing to the team, perspective taking, learning from experience, and utilizing the engineering mindset […]

How do Millennials describe group loyalty?

Group loyalty: The experiences of the Millennial employee with a transformational leader mentor

The specific topic to be studied is group loyalty, the concept of remaining in a group when members could potentially obtain better outcomes by leaving the group (Vugt & Hart, 2004). Specifically, this qualitative study will focus on understanding millennial group loyalty in the workplace through the personal descriptions by millennial participants. The millennial generation […]