Leader-follower congruence and its relationship to follower self-efficacy

Incongruence between leaders and followers has been suggested to lead to conflict and failure (Bass, 1990). Literature on leadership and followership that exists fails to address self-efficacy. As self-efficacy is influenced through mastery, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and social influence (Bandura, 1986) it was hypothesized that leader-follower congruence would have an impact on follower self-efficacy. This hypothesis was tested utilizing the Hartman Value Profile (HVP) assessment (Hartman, 1973) to evaluate leader-follower congruence and the Capabilities Awareness Profile (CAP) assessment (Hayes & Williams, 2000) to measure follower self-efficacy. Utilizing a non-experimental, correlation approach, employees of a mid-sized Midwestern health system were solicited to participate in the web-based research. Congruence between leader and follower responses on the Hartman Value Profile was accomplished utilizing Kendall's tau and ranged from (.6--.87). A Pearson product-moment correlation (R = .505, p = .095) suggested that there was a strong positive relationship between leader-follower congruence and follower self-efficacy. Results from the research findings provided insights into the implications, conclusions, and limitations that derived from the study and recommendations for further research.