Gender-role Orientation, Behavioural Flexibility, and Multiple Intelligences as Predictors of Leadership Style in Croatia

Previous research has shown that the most effective leaders are those who combine task attainment with good interpersonal skills and that such leaders are androgynous, behaviourally flexible, and socially and emotionally intelligent. However, in that research, each of these characteristics has been examined independently of one another in separate studies. The exception is one previous study that we carried out with Canadian undergraduate students. It included androgyny, behavioural flexibility, and social and emotional intelligence together in the same study as predictors of initiating structure (i.e., task-oriented) and consideration (i.e., person-oriented) leadership styles. The purpose of the present study was to use a sample of 270 graduate and undergraduate students and 210 employees from Croatia to replicate the results of our previous research. Participants were administered a survey in Croatian that had been translated/back translated from English. Using hierarchical multiple regression analyses, we found that, congruent with our past research, men and women did not differ in their leadership styles. Instead, our results indicated that those who reported using both task- and person-oriented styles had gender-role characteristics from both the instrumental and expressive domains (i.e., they were androgynous). An initiating structure leadership style was a function of gender-role instrumentality and social and emotional intelligence, whereas a consideration leadership style was a function of gender-role expressivity, communal behavioral capabilities, and social and emotional intelligence. The findings from Croatia were generally consistent with our past research on Canadian students and indicate that androgynous personality characteristics and social and emotional intelligence contribute to effective leadership.