Executive Leadership training in Geneva · canton of Genève"It's thanks to their leadership": why are team results so quickly attributed to the manager?
A team exceeds its objectives. The comment comes quickly: "It's thanks to their leadership." Perhaps. But what observation allows us to distinguish the manager's contribution from collective skills, available resources or favourable circumstances? The question is not to deny the role of the leader; it is to know what evidence supports the share of the result attributed to them.
1. What the literature establishes
James Meindl, Sanford Ehrlich and Janet Dukerich (1985, Administrative Science Quarterly) study the romance of leadership: the tendency to give leaders a central place in explaining organizational life. Their analyses and experiments show how results can fuel attributions to leadership. This does not mean that leaders have no influence. An association between performance and importance attributed to the leader does not prove that their action caused this performance; the experiments illuminate the formation of judgment, not the actual effectiveness of each manager. Meindl, Ehrlich & Dukerich, 1985 — The Romance of Leadership
2. The neglected distinction: attributing is not explaining
Recognizing a result and identifying its cause are two different operations. A manager may have clarified a priority, resolved a conflict or obtained a decisive resource. It is then necessary to describe this intervention and link it to the observed changes. Saying they possess leadership does not provide this explanatory chain. Conversely, distributing all credit to the team is not proof either. The issue is to distinguish documented contributions from the narrative constructed after the fact, whether the result is favourable or disappointing.
3. What perception research adds
Robert Lord, Roseanne Foti and Christy De Vader (1984, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance) examine the categorization of leadership, particularly information processing and perceptions. Their work highlights the importance of prior representations of what a leader is in understanding how a person is recognized as one. The reception of a behaviour does not depend solely on its content: it also passes through the observer's categories. Recognizing someone as a leader and establishing their contribution to the result remain two distinct questions. Lord, Foti & De Vader, 1984 — A test of leadership categorization theory
4. What data does not allow us to conclude
The laboratory tasks and student samples mobilized in this research stream simplify work relationships, their duration and their stakes. Organizational materials also do not allow all causes of performance to be isolated. An experimental manipulation can support a causal conclusion about a judgment in the studied device; an observed association does not allow it. Transposing this research to an annual evaluation or appointment remains an inference. Neither of the two articles provides a formula for calculating the exact share of the manager in a collective result. (our executive and employee training programmes)
5. Defensible conditions for practice
A more cautious evaluation begins by describing results before naming their supposed author. It then examines the manager's decisions, team contributions, resources and changes in context. For each explanation, one can ask what fact supports it and what fact would weaken it. Applying the same requirements to successes and failures limits opportunistic narratives. This discipline does not eliminate managerial judgment; it makes its reasons debatable. It constitutes a practical proposal arising from research, not a protocol whose effectiveness these articles would have validated.
6. A modest test in Geneva
A team in Geneva could devote a page to the next review: observed result, manager's specific decision, collective contribution and external condition. Before the discussion, everyone notes their explanation and a fact that could contradict it. At the end of the meeting, count the attributions to the manager accompanied by a verifiable example, then repeat the exercise at the next review. This record measures neither the causal effect of the leader nor a certain reduction in bias; it simply verifies whether explanations become more documented. This question can be explored in the SHR Leadership Excellence training To go further: explore the Executive Leadership training in Geneva in the canton of Geneva, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
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