Authors remark

In the beginning of January 2015, we received an exciting assignment and finished it in June the
same year. This was the perfect assignment as it deals with leadership, a subject that we both are
very passionate about. Therefore, we would like to show gratitude to the organization and our
supervisor that commissioned the assignment and gave us the honor to execute it. Without their
guidance and help, the study would have been impossible to complete. We would also like to
thank the respondents who took their time and participated in the study and shared insightful
information that was important in order to fulfill the purpose of the study. During the entire
process we had support from our mentor at Uppsala University, Cecilia Strand and co-mentor
Therese Monstad and would like to thank them. Finally, we would like to thank our fellow
students in our seminar group at Uppsala University, who provided us with valuable feedback
and input that allowed us to write a study we are proud of.
Abstract
Employee engagement has become an important factor for organizations, as employees are
invaluable assets in knowledge-intense sectors. In order for organizations to engage employees,
leadership has been pointed out as the key to success. However, there is a gap of how leaders’
practices lead to engagement. Therefore, a global organization commissioned an assignment to
further investigate engaging leadership in their organization. Hence, the purpose of the study is
to identify top leaders’ practices in relation to employee engagement. To fulfill the purpose a
research question was framed as following; how do top leaders’ practices create and maintain
employee engagement? In order to identify top leaders, a previous leadership and engagement
survey by the researched organization was used. The survey revealed which leaders were good
and engaging, according to the organization’s employees. Among the top leaders, 12 respondents
were randomly selected to participate in this study.
This study was conducted using theories related to employee engagement,
transformational leadership and communication. Based on the theories, a conceptual framework
of transformational leadership and its five key components was created. Also, communication
was incorporated into the model as it was considered to impact every component of the
conceptual framework. Three different methods were used to gather empirical data: interviews,
questionnaires and observations. These three methods complemented and provided supportive
evidence for each other.
The results showed how leaders’ practices create and maintain engagement and one
reason is that they are good communicators. To be able to engage employees, leaders were
conscious of the voice of their tone and adopted their communication style to the situation and
whom they were talking to. Furthermore they were good listeners and had an individualized
consideration, in order to reach out to the employee in best possible way. Significantly, leaders
were skilled at conveying organizational messages and adopting them to the context of the
employees that created engagement. The leaders were very supportive and showed recognition to
the employees to keep them motivated in their work tasks.

Key words: Employee engagement, transformational leadership, vision, inspirational

communication, intellectual stimulation, supportive leadership, personal recognition, engaging
leadership practices, and communication.
Table of contents
1.0 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1
1.1. Problem identification  ..............................................................................................................................  2  
1.2 Purpose and research question  ................................................................................................................  3  
1.3 A brief history of the studied organization  ...........................................................................................  3  

2.0 Literature review ..................................................................................................................... 4

2.1 Employee engagement  ................................................................................................................................  4  
2.2 Engaging leadership  ...................................................................................................................................  6  
2.2.1 Transformational leadership  ................................................................................................................................  7  
2.3 The relationship between employee engagement and the key components of transformational
leadership  ..........................................................................................................................................................  11  
2.4 Communication and the five components of transformational leadership  ..................................  13  
2.5 The conceptual framework of transformational leadership  ............................................................  15  

3.0 Method .................................................................................................................................... 17

3.1 Research design  .........................................................................................................................................  17  
3.2 Research process  .......................................................................................................................................  18  
3.2.1 Choice of theory  ...................................................................................................................................................  19  
3.2.2 Empirical data collection  ...................................................................................................................................  20  
3.2.2.1  Interviews  ........................................................................................................................................................................  21  
3.2.2.2  Questionnaire  .................................................................................................................................................................  22  
3.2.2.3  Observations  ...................................................................................................................................................................  23  
3.2.3 Management of empirical data  ........................................................................................................................  24  
3.2.4 Method of analysis  ..............................................................................................................................................  24  
3.3 Validity and reliability  .............................................................................................................................  25  
3.4 Methodological challenges  ......................................................................................................................  26  

4.0 Empirical presentation and analysis .................................................................................... 27

4.1 Vision in practice  ......................................................................................................................................  27  
4.2 Analysis of vision  .......................................................................................................................................  29  
4.3 Inspirational communication in practice  .............................................................................................  30  
4.3.1 The importance of inspirational communication  .......................................................................................  31  
4.3.2 Situations where leaders use inspirational communication  ...................................................................  32  
4.4 Analysis of inspirational communication  ............................................................................................  32  
4.5 Supportive leadership in practice  ..........................................................................................................  35  
4.5.1 How leaders support when employee engagement is low  ......................................................................  36  
4.5.2 Supportive leadership - a time consuming process  ...................................................................................  37  
4.6 Analysis of supportive leadership  ..........................................................................................................  38  
 4.7 Intellectual stimulation in practice  .......................................................................................................  40  
4.8 Analysis of intellectual stimulation  .......................................................................................................  41  
4.9 Personal recognition in practice  ............................................................................................................  43  
4.9.1 How leaders recognize employee’s achievements  ....................................................................................  44  
4.10 Analysis of personal recognition  ..........................................................................................................  45  

5.0 Discussion ............................................................................................................................... 47

5.1 The interrelatedness of the five components of transformational leadership  .............................  47  
5.2 Communication bridging all leadership practices  .............................................................................  48  
5.3 Characteristics of the engaging leader  .................................................................................................  48  

6.0 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 50

6.1 Future research  .........................................................................................................................................  50  

Reference list .................................................................................................................................. I

Appendix 1. Interview questions ............................................................................................ VIII
Appendix 2. Questionnaire template .......................................................................................... X
Appendix 3. Observation template......................................................................................... XIII

List of figures
Figure 1. The figure illustrates the conceptual framework of transformational leadership and its
key components. ………………………………………………………………………………...15
Figure 2. The figure illustrates the research process and the course of actions for the qualitative
and quantitative research approach. …………………………………………………………….19

 
1.0 Introduction
Today’s global organizations find themselves in an unpredictable and complex environment,
filled with competitive opportunities and threats (Ireland & Hitt, 1999). There are also other
challenges such as dealing with different cultures, confusing communication channels, new
technology and managing employees (Gregersen, Morrison & Black, 1998). However, according
to Wiman (2012, 18 October) the greatest challenge for today’s leaders within global
organizations is managing their employees successfully, and getting them engaged in their work.
According to Saks (2006), organizations having disengaged employees has given rise to serious
consequences. He (2006) argues that it leads to loss in productivity and consequently monetary
losses, which demonstrates the importance of employee engagement. Consequently, engaging
employees is crucial for organizations in order to stay competitive. It has been debated for years
how to achieve trust and engagement, and many authors argue that leadership is the key (Shamir,
House & Arthur, 1993; Gregory Stone et al., 2004; Piccolo & Colquitt, 2006). Therefore, leaders
in today’s organizations have to work continuously with creating and maintaining engagement
among their employees. Nothing can, however, be achieved without communication. Therefore,
these leaders need to be good communicators, as it is through communication that leaders
execute their leadership and persuade employees to become engaged and aligned with the
organizations vision and goals (Ireland & Hitt, 2005; Holladay & Combs, 1993; Baldoni, 2004).

Having engaged employees can mean a great deal for organizations regarding what issues
they attend to, how the business grows and how competitive it remains (Saks, 2006; Bakker &
Demerouti, 2008). Further, in recent research, a positive linkage between business performance
and employee engagement has been discovered; when there is willingness among employees to
invest oneself and develop their skills, it automatically leads to a desire to help the organization
succeed. (Macey & Schneider, 2008) However, the numbers of studies about how leaders’
practices result in engaged employees are few (Bakker & Schaufeli, 2008). At the same time,
organizations find employee engagement to be the leaders’ greatest challenge today (Wiman,
2012, 18 October). Hence, there is a gap between organizational and academic interest in
employee engagement, which motivates this study.

  1
1.1. Problem identification
Global organizations face a great deal of challenges and one of them is how to keep employees
satisfied and engaged in their work. The difficulty is that there exists no universal solution that
will magically engage employees (Macey & Schneider, 2008) and no map of how to establish
conditions where they will thrive and exert engaging behaviors. Despite that, employee
engagement has become a great interest for organizations, and a search for employee
engagement yields more than 7 million hits on the web, and many consultancy firms promote
different tools to engage employees (Bakker & Schaufeli, 2008). Another explanation is that
employees’ contribution has become a critical topic in today’s rough business climate, where
organizations try to produce more output with less employees, which leads to the importance of
engaging every single one to perform to their utmost (Bakker & Schaufeli, 2008). On the other
hand, many leaders believe that one advantage to remain on top on the market is to have a vast
reserve of skills, knowledge and experience within the workforce that represent an invaluable
asset (Dewhurst, Harris & Heywood, 2012, June).

In recent research, there is a gap between employees’ engagement and how it correlates
with leadership (Bakker & Schaufeli, 2008). Today there is much written from the perspective of
employees but few studies have been made from leaders’ point of view, of how a leader’s
practices affect employees’ mind-sets and performance (Bakker & Schaufeli, 2008). In order to
fill the gap there is a need of exploring how leaders in global organizations engage their
employees and what they need to do in order to become a great leader. Without knowing the
relationship between leaders’ practices and engaged employees, there will not be a solution for
how to engage the workforce of global organizations.

This study was conducted within a global organization that recently performed a global
leadership and engagement survey, where the employees assessed their leaders. This previous
survey conducted by the organization, identified top leaders who were considered to be good at
engaging employees within the organization. Hence, it provided an opportunity to investigate
leaders’ practices in order to see how these top leaders work to create and maintain engagement.

  2
1.2 Purpose and research question
The purpose of the study is to identify top leaders’ practices in relation to employee engagement.
By studying top leaders it will generate a greater understanding and knowledge of how leaders of
today manage their workforce and how they affect employees’ engagement. Without knowledge
of how leadership influences employees’ commitment, it will be difficult to know what engages
them. Harter, Schmidt and Hays (2002) argue that organizations can learn a great deal about
leaders’ practices that drive business outcomes, when studying their own top leaders. To answer
the purpose of the study, one research question has been framed:

1. How do top leaders’ practices create and maintain employee engagement?

1.3 A brief history of the studied organization

The organization that provided the assignment to investigate how leadership practices create and
maintain engagement, is a global IT organization with over 400 000 employees around the
world, where about 4000 employees are based in Sweden. The organization was founded in the
later part of the 20 century and is one of the largest organizations when it comes to IT-related
st

services and B2B. The organization’s structure consists of nine business units, whereas six of
them are in Sweden and each one has its own internal hierarchy. The units also have different
functions and have their own agenda and goals to achieve. Each business unit is moreover
divided into several different groups and each group has their own leader. This could be
illustrated as seeing the groups a several islands, talking the same language but with different
dialects and cultures.

  3
2.0 Literature review
The purpose of the study is to identify top leaders’ practices in relation to employee engagement.
This chapter starts with defining the fundamental concept of employee engagement, and why it
has become an important factor. After that, leadership will be presented, focusing on
transformational leadership, as it is the key to create and maintain employee engagement.
Finally, the literature review ends with linking the concepts of employee engagement and
transformational leadership together. To conclude, the chapter ends with a presentation of the
conceptual framework of transformational leadership that will be used in this study.

2.1 Employee engagement

Employee engagement is a topic of interest to many global organizations and is being discussed
in many different forums (Saks, 2006). There exist widely different opinions about the definition
of employee engagement and drivers behind this phenomenon. Due to this fact, there also exist
different opinions of how to define employee engagement. One definition of employee
engagement is the measure of an employee’s emotional and intellectual commitment to their
organization and its success. (Witemeyer, Ellen & Straub, 2013)

The definition used in this study is a combination of several academic articles where
employee engagement involves both emotional and rational factors (Witemeyer et al., 2013). The
emotional factors include individuals experiencing personal satisfaction from their work, and
being able to express their true nature and behavior in tasks, which will favor ones connection
and feelings of being part of an organization (Kahn, 1990; Bakker & Demerouti, 2008;
Witemeyer et al., 2013). The rational factors relate to the level of how employees understand
their role in relation to organizations’ objectives and help the employer to succeed (Macey &
Schneider, 2008). In this case leaders play a significant part as they can help the employees
understand their role and create a behavior that makes employees wanting to help the
organization succeed (Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002). Measuring employee engagement can
be hard as it refers to subjective factors that by nature are hard to quantify. Macey and Schneider
(2008) suggest that it can be measured on four elements; satisfaction, advocacy, commitment and
pride. In other words, employee engagement is about how employees feel and how their feelings
make them want to behave in an organizational context (Bakker & Demerouti, 2008).
  4
 Employee engagement has become an important factor for many of today’s
organizations, as employees are invaluable assets in knowledge-intense sectors. Bakker and
Demerouti (2008) argue that having engaged employees lead to several advantages, such as
increased creativity, productivity and that they influence their colleagues and consequently
perform better as a team. Moreover, engaged employees are optimistic, efficient and carries more
organizational self-esteem, which is an important indicator of peoples well being within an
organization. Bakker and Demerouti (2008) found four reasons why engaged employees perform
better than others. It can be explained as people often experiencing positive emotions, being in
good health, creating their own job and personal resources and transferring their engagement to
others. This could be a reason why organizations pay attention to this subject and sees it as an
important factor in order to improve their business (Saks, 2006).

Kahn (1990) was a pioneer to drive employee engagement as a research domain. His
(1992) focus lies on individuals and their personal selves, in what way to get them present in
their work role and how to direct individuals’ energies toward the realization of organizational
goals. In order to achieve this, Kahn (1992) argues that employees have to be attentive,
connected, integrated and focused in their role performances. However, the business world has
changed and has become even more fast-paced and the working conditions have changed during
the last decades. Today, organizations are very focused on performance and employees are
working under time pressure, where individuals are seen as one among many. As a result,
organizations spend less time on the individual today. (Meyer, Allen & Topolnytsky, 1998) This
may result in employees feeling they do not get enough attention, which according to Kahn
(1992) is essential in order to have engaged employees. When employees feel they are not
attentive, connected, integrated and focused in their role performance, it may lead to them not
feeling embraced by the organization, and therefore lack willingness to dedicate their heart in
assignments. In the end, these employees will not perform as well as they can; they will neither
take part in learning, growing, or changing, nor contributing to the organizations success (Kahn,
1992; Macey & Schneider, 2008).

Bakker and Demerouti (2008) argue that leaders can engage their employees by giving
them feedback, which will gain and foster the learning process and increase their competence.
According to studies conducted by Truss et al. (2006), Ruck and Welch (2012), employees

  5
ranked committed leaders as an important factor in order to feel motivated in their work role.
However, 30 percentages of employees feel that their work rarely or never counts for their
leader, which can be explained by the difficulty of finding leaders possessing the right
managerial skills to involve and engage employees in their work role (Kronz, 2014; Truss et al.,
2006). This underlines the importance of understanding the relationship between leaders and
employees, and how it affects employee’s engagement. In line with Truss et al. (2006)
arguments, Worldwide and Bethesda (2007) found that organizations that communicated
effectively with their employees were four times more likely to have high levels of employee
engagement. According to Ruck and Welch (2012) employees have a desire of being well
informed as well having their voice heard, which is a communication challenge for leaders.
Despite that, organizations are not effective enough in communicating to employees how their
actions are important for the business as a whole (Ruck & Welch, 2012). This shows that besides
having a good relationship with the employees, communication is a highly important factor to
consider.

To sum up, communication is a vital factor in engaging employees. This is due to leaders
needing to convey how their employees are important and how they contribute to the
organization. The communication needs to involve both emotional and rational factors that make
the employees feel emotionally and intellectually stimulated, which are prerequisites in order for
leaders to create and maintain employees engagement.

2.2 Engaging leadership

For several decades, leadership has played a central part of academic research on management
and organizational behavior (Yukl, 1989; Bass, 1999; Fairhurst & Connaughton, 2014).
Although this field has been studied, there exists numerous of definitions of leadership, which
according to Yukl (1989) correlates to researchers individual perspective and interest within this
phenomenon. While some authors view leadership as collective process shared amongst
members of a group, others argue that every group have role specializations where leadership is
one of the roles. In the latter case, one person has more influence than others and performs
leadership functions critical to the success of the group (Yukl, 1989). Another discussion within
the field of leadership is the distinction between leadership and management (Mintzberg, 2004;
Yukl, 1989). Mintzberg (2004) argues that these concepts overlap, and that management without

  6
leadership is sterile and leadership lacking management is disconnected. However, according to
Yukl (1989) and Bennis and Nanus (1985), the fundamental difference between the concepts is
that leaders influence commitment, whilst managers only carry out position responsibilities and
exercise authority.

Due to the plurality of definitions, the one used in this study is that leadership is about
getting things done through others. This definition goes in line with Guibord (2012), who argues
that leadership is about setting up a team, developing trust among the team members and
knowing how to get the very best out of every individual. Guibord (2012) arguments highlight
the importance of personal interaction between the leader and his team members, and how a
leader coaches the group towards a common goal. In order to influence and inspire employees,
there is a need for leaders to learn how to reach out to and communicate with employees.
Leaders also need to be physical present and through their body language engage employees
(Kahn, 1992).

One leadership style that focuses on transforming and inspiring employees is

transformational leadership (Guay, 2013). Transformational leadership emphasizes emotions and
values, and provides meaning to employees work by communicating inspiring messages to evoke
emotions and to create long lasting relations. (Yukl, 1999; Guay, 2013) Therefore, the
relationship between leaders and employees is central for not only engaging employees but also
for successful communication (Ruck & Welch, 2012).

2.2.1 Transformational leadership

Over the past decades, the concept of transformational leadership has been established within the
field of management and organizational theories (Shamir, House & Arthur, 1993). Today, it is
one of the most popular approaches in order to understand leader effectiveness (Piccolo &
Colquitt, 2006). The theoretical pioneer of transformational leadership was Bass (1985), who
based his theories on Burns MacGregor (1978) ideas’ and concepts of transformational
leadership. Bass and Avolio (1990) argue that transformational leadership is when leaders take
their employees interests and emotions into account. It is done by broadening the employees’
perspective, communicating the purposes of work tasks, and by challenging them to look beyond
their own self-interest for the good of the group. Transformational leaders have the authority to
impact employees’ needs, values, and preferences, towards the realization of organizational

  7
objectives (Shamir, House & Arthur, 1993). Gregory Stone et al. (2004) explain transformational
leadership based on Bass (1985) theories, as a process of building commitment to organizational
objectives by empowering employees to fulfill those objectives. Transformational leadership
should put more emphasis on intangible assets, such as creating relationships and trust with their
team members, in order to impact their values and perspectives. Further, transformational leaders
should exert a behavior that encourages individuals to explore new ways of thinking by inspiring
them through communication. This will engage employees and create commitment that fulfills
organizational objectives. (Gregory Stone et al., 2004; Piccolo & Colquitt, 2006; Shamir et al.,
1993)

What makes transformational leadership unique is that leaders communicate innovative

strategic organizational visions, emphasize individuals’ needs (Conger, Kanungo & Menon,
2000) and their characteristics are strongly correlated to organizational objectives (Judge &
Bono, 2000). Typical characteristics associated with transformational leaders are that they
possess charisma and communication skills to build relationships with employees. Further, they
have the ability to increase employees’ motivation to their work through inspiring
communication. Weber (1968) argues that charismatic leaders have unconventional ideas, attract
individuals to follow them and have a portfolio of succeeded projects that validate their
expertise. Many of these characteristics have not been fully explored and there is no evidence of
how they benefit and improve employees’ performance. Nevertheless, charisma is associated
with transformational leadership, but does not include all of the mentioned characteristics
(Rafferty & Griffin, 2004) To sum up, the charismatic transformational leaders use inspirational
talks, have great communication and interpersonal skills and demonstrate a number of behaviors
that goes in line with values of the organization. Moreover, transformational leaders need to
function as coaches or mentors, be attentive to individuals’ needs and desires, and foster two-
way communication through effective listening. (Gregory Stone et al., 2004; Conger, Kanungo &
Menon, 2000) Further, they need to give feedback and motivate the employees to put the little
extra into their work by explaining the importance of their contribution (Piccolo & Colquitt,
2006) According to Gregory Stone et al. (2004) transformational leaders persuade individuals by
using their expertise, strength of relationships and charismatic abilities. Leaders engaging
employees are valuable, because they make employees view their work as more challenging and

  8
important (Piccolo & Colquitt, 2006). When leaders manage to engage and motivate individuals
they automatically feel more stimulated at work and experience a feeling of content.

Schippers, Den Hartong, Koopman and van Knippenberg (2008), argue that it exists a
link between transformational leadership and team performance. Further, they (2008) point out
that transformational leadership increases team effectiveness, since leaders and employees share
vision and have a common ground. It has been shown that a strong mutual viewpoint between
team members, results in increased reflection on and communication about different tasks,
strategies and processes within the team, leading to better performance (Schippers et al., 2008).

2.2.1.1 Key components of transformational leadership

Within the field of transformational leadership there exists many different components when
describing what characterizes a transformational leader. However, many of these components
have similarities, and can be summed up. The components used in this study include different
characteristics and strategies that a transformational leader should possess in order reach
organizational objectives. The components are vision, inspirational communication, supportive
leadership, intellectual stimulation and personal recognition, and will be described in this
section.

Vision is an important part of transformational leadership and is, according to Rafferty

and Griffin (2004), an expression of an idealized picture of the future based around
organizational values. It has been discovered that distinct articulated visions have a positive
impact on affective commitment and engagement (Xu & Thomas, 2011) since it interweaves
employees with believes and values of the leader. Judge and Bono (2000) claims that when
transformational leaders inspire people to identify themselves with a vision, it results in reaching
beyond their self-interest and encourages trust towards the leader and the work task. Moreover,
when leaders express a vision, employees tend to become more attached to the assignment as
well as increase the attractiveness of being a part of the organization. In order to articulate and
communicate a vision, Rafferty and Griffin (2004) argue that charisma is an important
component since transformational leaders need to convince the employees about an ideology that
increases goal clarity, task focus and value congruence. Another positive outcome, when sharing
a common vision, is that it results in the incorporation of organizational values and goals, which
encourages individuals to adopt certain behavior that is requested by the organization and its

  9
leaders. According to Ireland and Hitt (1999) the ability to express a tangible vision, values and
strategy was the most important skill a leader should possess, since it has shown having a
positive effect on team productivity (Schippers, Hartong, Koopman & van Knippenberg, 2008)
as well as creating a culture that allows people to share knowledge.

Inspirational communication is defined as the expression of positive and encouraging

messages and statements about the organization that build motivation and confidence (Rafferty
& Griffin, 2004). This definition describes the importance of having leaders who are
communicative and know how to connect with people through enthusing talks. It also refers to
how leaders stimulate motivation towards a specific task among the employees, and encourage
them to have faith in their ability to deliver the assignment successfully, as well as their
contribution to the success of the team (Yukl 1989). Moreover, inspirational communication
include leaders having impact on people’s intellect or emotions, as well as being able to envision
a desirable future. For example, leaders describe how goals can be reached, set an example to be
followed, set high standards of performance and express determination and confidence. (Rafferty
& Griffin, 2004; Bass, 1999)

Rafferty and Griffin (2004) have defined Supportive leadership as a way to express
concern for employees and pay attention to their individual needs. The big difference that sets
transformational leadership apart from other leadership theories is the supportive leadership,
since it includes individualized consideration. Supportive leaders are employee-oriented, give
them attention, follow up their achievements by giving them support, and give employees
recognition for their work. Moreover, the individualized support involves the leader’s instinctive
feeling of employees’ mind-sets and needs, and how to meet and behave respectfully towards
them. Rafferty and Griffin (2004) argue that supportive leadership is the key in order to reach
effective leadership in path-goal theory. The path-goal theory is when a leader chooses the
appropriate behavior that is best suited to employees’ need in order to guide them through their
path in the maintenance of their daily work activities. Becoming a supportive leader demands a
behavior that is directed toward employees’ satisfaction, showing concern for their welfare as
well as creating a friendly work environment.

Rafferty and Griffin (2004) have defined Intellectual stimulation as the process of leaders
enhancing employees’ interest in, and awareness of problems, as well as increasing their ability

  10
to think about problems in new ways. According to Rafferty and Griffin (2004), intellectual
stimulation is seen as the most undeveloped component, as it has not been subjected to extensive
research. It is however, an interesting part of transformational leadership, because intellectual
stimulation increases employee’s ability to conceptualize, comprehend and analyze problems,
which has resulted in improved quality of employee’s solutions (Rafferty & Griffin, 2004).

Personal recognition is the last component that is connected to transformational

leadership. Rafferty and Griffin (2004) define personal recognition as the provision of rewards,
such as praise and acknowledgement of individuals’ achievements. Personal recognition is when
leaders value individuals’ efforts and reward their achievements by showing credit and
acknowledgment, but only if it matches the vision of the assignment. Reward is a big part of
personal recognition, such as verbal rewards, recommendations for pay increases, and
promotions, or recommendations for exceptional effort.

2.3 The relationship between employee engagement and the key components
of transformational leadership
Barling, Slater and Kevin Kelloway (2000) argue that there are links between transformational
leadership and theories of employee engagement, such as motivation, job satisfaction,
organizational commitment, proactive behaviors and organizational citizenship. These links
indicate that transformational leadership can enhance employees’ satisfaction and affective
commitment to their leader and organization (Barling, Slater & Kevin Kelloway, 2000; Ghafoor,
Qureshi, Kahn & Hijazi, 2011).

Xu and Cooper (2011) found that transformational leadership has positive effects on the
performance of the employees. Further, they (2011) were able to find a link between how leaders
support teams, being genuinely interested in the team members by celebrating success and their
personal development and employee engagement. The result of transformational leadership was
a higher state of engagement, which can be explained by leaders support and genuine interest in
both the team and the individuals within the team. Hence, there is a relationship between
employee engagement and two of the transformational leadership components; supportive
leadership, and personal recognition.

  11
 Ghafoor et al. (2011) found a significant relationship between transformational
leadership, employee engagement and employee performance when studying telecom
companies. They stated that employee engagement is developed when transformational
leadership is strong. Further, they found that transformational leadership could lead to employee
engagement by inducing feelings of corporate citizenship, sense of belonging, affection, and
satisfaction towards the organization. Transformational leadership can also evoke employee
engagement through intellectual stimulation. For example, empowering employees can lead to
them feeling organizational support, a sense of belonging and intellectual stimulation. This leads
to employees feeling comfortable taking decisions and feeling responsible for their work. Hence,
there is also support that employee engagement can be created by the transformational leadership
component of intellectual stimulation (Ghafoor et al., 2011).

Papalexandris and Galanaki (2009) studied leaderships’ impact on employee engagement,

and found positive linkages between employee engagement, and leaders’ ability to mentor and
communicate. The authors (2009) argue that good mentors are the best predictor of employees’
engagement, since it will encourage employees to develop ideas, take initiatives and contribute
to improve organizational performance. Hence, this corresponds to the transformational
leadership components of supportive leadership, personal recognition and intellectual
stimulation. Further, Papalexandris and Galanaki (2009) found that creating and communicating
a vision could induce employee engagement, as they will get employees to understand the future
plans, get motivated, involved and engaged in the vision. Hence, the link between inspirational
communication, vision and employee engagement is also to be found.

To conclude, the linkages between employee engagement and transformational leadership

show that there is theoretical support for this study. However, the theories describe what the
linkages are but not how transformational leaders engage their employees in practice. Therefore,
this will be examined through the conceptual framework of transformational leadership,
consisting of the key components; vision, inspirational communication, supportive leadership,
intellectual stimulation and personal recognition. However, there is an aspect of transformational
leadership that has not been fully elaborated, namely communication. Communication is
essential in leadership (Bernhut, 2000) and needs to be highlighted in relation to the five
components of transformational leadership. This will be described in the next section.

  12
2.4 Communication and the five components of transformational leadership
Communication is essential in leadership (Madlock, 2008; Holladay & Combs, 1993), but has
not been highlighted within theories of transformational leadership. Barrett’s (2006) definition of
communication is explained as the transmission of meaning from one person to another or to
many people, verbally or non-verbally. Communication should according to Scott-Phillips et al.
(2012) not be looked as a trait rather as an interaction between people. Moreover,
communication is an on-going process as leaders constantly have a dialogue with employees, due
to the appearance of new situations or messages that have to be dealt with. When leaders are
having dialogues with employees, a process of sharing thoughts, questions and ideas begins,
based on a current situation and moment. During this process individuals interpret each other’s
messages as well as analyze the response, in order to make sure that the message has been
correctly understood. (Bohm, 1996) This process is difficult as it opens up for misunderstandings
due to different perceptions of the meaning of what has been said. However, it is through
dialogue leaders can gain additional perspectives and ideas when communicating (Bohm, 1996)
with employees. Bohm (1996) argues that dialogues augments the meaning of communication
and is therefore a vital part in leaders’ ongoing communication processes. Sensemaking is also a
fundamental part of communication, as it is a means of transforming circumstances into
comprehensible situations, and functions as a starting point to act on (Weick, Sutcliffe &
Obstfeld, 2005). Weick, Sutcliffe and Obstfeld (2005) argue that sensemaking is central as it is a
way to convey materialized meaning to actions through communication, and to increase
employees’ understanding of a situation. Thus, sensemaking can unify leaders and employees
and create a shared understanding, which makes it easier to work towards the same goal (Bohm,
1996). It is also through conversations that leaders have the possibility to impact employees’
heart and senses by transmitting the meaning of a situation (Weick, Sutcliffe & Obstfeld, 2005).

There are different ways to communicate, and it is important to have the knowledge to
choose the appropriate communication style. Daft and Lengel (1986) argue that communication
is the act where ambiguous issues can be cleared out, and they identified face-to-face
communication as most effective in bridging uncertainty and reduce misinterpretations.
Therefore, they (1986) argue that written communication should be used only when a message is
clear and does not consist of any ambiguous meanings (Daft, Lengel & Trevino, 1987). In order
to understand underlying meaning of communicated messages, Bohm (1996) also highlights the
  13
importance of face-to-face communication. By using face-to-face communication, leaders have
the opportunity to actively ask questions and challenge fundamental assumptions of problematic
situations (Bohm, 1996) and get a better understanding of employees’ mindset.

Besides knowing how to communicate, Fairhurst and Connaughton (2014) argue that
having a language focus increases the ability to create understanding among people, and make
leaders aware of how to express feelings and emotions. Madlock (2008) likewise highlights the
use of language but argues that it is combined with gestures and tone of voice. Other important
communication skills include the ability to actively listen to other points of views, to negotiate,
share and respond to information, and to communicate effectively by appealing to the interest of
employees in order to persuade them to follow their vision (Madlock, 2008).

According to Fairhurst and Connaughton (2014), communication has been seen at as an

incidental part of leadership that only functions as a variable that is related to leadership
processes or results. However, communication is essential in leadership as it builds trust between
leaders and employees (Thomas, Zolin & Hartman, 2009). According to Barrett (2006) it is
through effective communication that leaders can get things done through others. This could be
connected to Madlock (2008) who found linkages between communication and leaders’ success,
arguing that communicative skills can create higher employee satisfaction and subsequently
enhance their performance. Due to the fact that communication to some extent has been
neglected in the literature of transformational leadership, only two of the five components of
transformational leadership have obvious connection to communication, which are vision and
inspirational communication. However, Holladay and Combs (1993), Bernhut (2000) and
Madlock (2008) argue that communication is crucial in leadership, as leadership is executed
through communication. This shows that communication is in fact related to all of the five
components of transformational leadership, as it underlies all leadership practices. For example,
it would be impossible for leaders to give support, personal recognition or intellectual
stimulation to their employees without communication. Further, Macey and Schneider (2008)
points out that communication is strongly connected to leadership, where leadership
communication results in higher job satisfaction, organizational commitment and organizational
belonging among the employees. Furthermore, Blickle et al. (2013) found that when leaders
failed to communicate properly with their employees, the employees were unmotivated and

  14
unsatisfied towards their leader and work tasks, and lost the belongingness to the organization. If
leaders instead knew how to communicate properly, the employees’ results were better, their
motivation was higher and their commitment and enthusiasm towards their work and
organization was superior.

Building on the reasoning above, communication is something that underlies all the five
components of transformational leadership. Therefore, it will be incorporated into the conceptual
framework of transformational leadership.

2.5 The conceptual framework of transformational leadership

Through the literature review, three parts that are important in fulfilling the purpose of this study
have been identified and explored; transformational leadership, employee engagement and
communication. The model (figure 1) consists of five wedges, each containing a component of a
transformational leadership, which are vision, inspirational communication, supportive
leadership, intellectual stimulation and personal recognition. The different components are
connected with each other and are executed through communication; hence communication is an
essential factor in the framework. The model illustrates that when leaders possess the different
characteristics, it leads to employee engagement.

Figure 1. The conceptual framework, and its key components of transformational leadership
(own construction).

  15
The conceptual framework of transformational leadership is based on theories from Rafferty and
Griffin, (2004). However, their (2004) theories have been developed and elaborated to the
purpose of this study, and have been extended by adding communication as an essential factor
that underlies the five components of transformational leadership. The conceptual framework is
novel in the way that communication is added as a key component to reach employee
engagement through transformational leadership. Further, the aim is to study how top leaders’
practices create and maintain employee engagement. By observing these leaders, using the
components of the model, it may show how they work and if some of these components are a
more dominant than others. This framework will also function as a guidance to identify whether
these leaders possess the characteristics of transformational leaders. If they do, the relationship
between transformational leadership and employee engagement would be strengthened and
organizations would know how to develop leaders that can engage employees. In other words,
the conceptual framework will help to find a link between what characterizes a good leader and
how their practices contribute to engage employees.

  16
3.0 Method
In this chapter the operationalization of the purpose of this study will be presented and
described. It starts with a description of the research design followed by the method of collecting
data. This chapter ends with a discussion of the validity and ratability and methodological
challenges of the study.

3.1 Research design

The topic of this study was commissioned by the researched organization as a result of the
organization lacking knowledge of how leaders engage employees. This underlined the purpose
of the study, which is to identify top leaders’ practices in relation to employee engagement. In
order to fulfill the purpose, a research question was formulated that aims to give the answer of
how top leaders’ practices create and maintain employee engagement. In order to be able to
investigate how leaders’ practices create engagement, the organization gave access to a survey,
which they had earlier conducted. The survey revealed leaders who scored the highest rating
concerning employee engagement and from this list, 12 top leaders were chosen from each of the
six business units, to take part in this study. Therefore, the survey from the organization was a
good starting point and helped for further investigations. To be able to fulfill the purpose, these
12 top leaders were interviewed, they answered a questionnaire about their leadership practices
and they were observed. By mixing all of these methods, the aim was to reveal behaviors among
the leaders that would generate an understanding of the engaging every-day practices of the
leaders. The qualitative method, consisting of interviews and observations were used to ascertain
leaders’ characteristic behavior that raises the level of employee engagement. The quantitative
method, the constructed questionnaire of leadership practices, was handed out in connection to
the interviews. But how these different methods were conducted will be described in more detail
later on in section 3.2.2.

All of the methods were based on the conceptual framework of transformational

leadership and its key components, in order to operationalize the purpose and to ensure that the
right aspects were investigated. Therefore, this study has a deductive approach as it is grounded
in theory and where the components of the conceptual framework drive the process of gathering
data (Bryman & Bell, 2011; Eriksson & Wiedersheim-Paul, 2006). By doing this, empirical
  17
findings could now be compared with the theory about transformational leadership and its
positive effects on employee engagement. The intention with this research approach was to get a
detailed description of the phenomenon’s different aspects that will bring forth a holistic
viewpoint about how leaders’ practices create engagement. According to Bryman and Bell
(2011) the benefit of getting a holistic viewpoint is that it increases the understanding about the
phenomenon’s wholeness and will gain understanding of the creation of employee engagement.

3.2 Research process

The research process started in connection with the assignment from the researched organization
that wanted to know more about leaders’ practices in relation to employee engagement. In order
to fulfill the purpose of the study, there was a need for a well-structured plan, which was the
argument of the creation of the method scheme (see figure. 2) The method scheme for this study
started with searching for relevant theories about leadership and employee engagement, to be
able to reach next step, the collection of empirical findings. It is therefore important to be
thorough during the theory process; otherwise it could lead to looking after the wrong aspects
(Bryman & Bell, 2011). When the empirical data was collected it needed to be managed and
structured. The conceptual framework of transformational leadership was the foundation of
structuring the data from the interviews, observations and the questionnaires. Now leaders’
practices for engagement could be more easily analyzed with the empirical findings.

However, this research process was an iterative process, due to when analyzing there was
a need to go back and read the material one more time, in order to secure important findings
were not overlooked. There was also a need of revaluating the theory and adding information of
aspects where it was necessary. According to Bryman and Bell (2011), working iteratively with
theory and empirical findings will enhance the result, since the theories will constantly being
evaluated and in the end improved. Therefore, this was the most suitable research process for this
study, because it allowed critically evaluating how leaders’ practices created and maintained
employee engagement.

  18
Figure 2. The research process illustrates the course of action for the qualitative and
quantitative research approach (own construction).

3.2.1 Choice of theory

As mentioned in the previous section, the topic of this study was commissioned by the
researched organization. The fact that the subject was already decided when the study began
narrowed down the theories that could be used in order to fulfill the purpose of the study. The
two main topics that were given on forehand were employee engagement and leadership. With
these topics as a start, the priority was to explore employee engagement and leadership to gain
further knowledge about their theoretical background. As time progressed and understanding of
the two topics grew, it became more evident that leadership as a concept was too broad.
Therefore the concept of leadership was narrowed down to transformational leadership, which
also could be linked to employee engagement. With the connection found between
transformational leadership and employee engagement, the theories were used to develop the
foundation of the conceptual framework used in this study. Rafferty and Griffin (2004) identified
five components of transformational leadership that could be linked to employee engagement;
vision, inspirational communication, supportive leadership, intellectual stimulation and personal
recognition. However, the theoretical foundation of these five components did not explicitly
involve communication, when in fact leadership theories argue that communication is the key for
leaders in order to be successful (Holladay & Combs, 1993; Bernhut, 2000; Madlock, 2008;
Baldoni, 2004). Therefore, communication was incorporated as a foundation in the conceptual
framework of transformational leadership.

  19
3.2.2 Empirical data collection
The process of collecting data started with a meeting in the beginning of January 2015, with the
Human Resource (HR) leader of the organization, who was in charge of the assignment. During
the meeting, the HR leader explained that the organization needed a greater understanding of top
leaders’ practices in relation to employee engagement. This was decided to be the purpose of this
study. The researched organization had previously conducted a survey by a word leading third
party organization that provided data through advanced measurements systems. In the survey
employees assessed how good leaders were in terms of motivation and engagement. In other
words, the survey identified which leaders distinguished themselves in terms of motivating and
engaging their employees in their work tasks. However, until that day, the organization had not
used the information or transformed it into any kind of leadership changes in order to increase
the motivation among the employees. The reason behind the lack of changes was that the
organization only knew which leaders were good, not how they actually created or maintained
employee engagement.

Based on the results from the organization’s survey, a strategic sample was made. In a
strategic sample, variables that have theoretical significance are identified. Thereafter, the
variables are used to find respondents that are suitable to the study. (Trost, 1997) In this study,
the variable was that the leaders needed to have received a high score in the previous survey
conducted by the organization. By using the organizations survey, the selection process was
highly simplified, as top leaders could be identified. Among the top-scoring leaders, a random
sample was made where e-mails were randomly sent to both males and females within the
category. This resulted in 12 leaders participating in the study, among which nine were men and
three were women. More data could have been gathered but it was considered that more data
would not provide any new insight. As every respondent in this study participated in both an
interview and a questionnaire, the data from every respondent was rich. As a complement, some
of the leaders were also observed in their every-day practices.

The different methods complemented each other well, as the process started out with an
interview that brought forth personal reflections about their leadership style, while the
questionnaire gave information about how they ranked their own performance as a leader.
Combining the interview and questionnaire with observations of the respondents, the data could

  20
be compared to form a comprehensive picture of the leaders’ engaging practices. How the
interviews, questionnaire and observations were conducted will be described in detail in the next
section.

3.2.2.1 Interviews
In this study, the interviews were semi-structured and the pre-formulated questions were all
linked to the five components of the conceptual framework of transformational leadership (see
appendix 1). The operationalizing of the interview questions was done in order to make the
answers of the questions empirical measurable (Andersen, 1998). Before performing the
interviews, two pilot interviews were conducted to ensure that the questions were interpreted in a
satisfactory manner. However, even though the interview questions were thoroughly constructed
and tested, they had to be adjusted a couple of times, because some respondents did not elaborate
their thoughts as expected. The follow up questions varied in amount during the interviews,
depending on how talkative the respondent was and how he interpreted the questions. The
interviews were structured to emphasize greater generality in the formulation of initial research
ideas (Bryman & Bell, 2011) to encourage the respondents to share their own perspectives.
Moreover, semi-structured interviews give the respondents the opportunity to express their
opinion and elaborate when interesting discussions emerge (Eriksson & Wiedersheim-Paul,
2006). It is therefore important that the interviewer is observant, flexible and follows up on
interesting thoughts (Bryman & Bell, 2011). Another advantage was that the interviews gave
detailed information and descriptions of situations and processes (Björklund & Paulsson, 2003)
that illustrated how leaders interact with their employees.

In this study, 12 interviews were conducted with respondents from the six different
business units of the organization. The reason behind the choice of interviewing 12 respondents
was due to the fact that they were the top leaders of the six business units; hence the choice fell
on interviewing two leaders from each unit. The interviews lasted between 30-60 minutes, with
an average duration of 50 minutes. According to Trost (1997), a few well-performed interviews
are more valuable then plenty interviews of lower quality. The advantage of the strategic sample
in terms of the interviews was that all respondents were able to describe how they engaged their
employees. The fact that the respondents are top leaders provides legitimacy for the information
they have contributed to this study. During the interview process, the knowledge of

  21
transformational leadership and its correlation to engagement grew. This enhanced the
interviewers ability to pose more targeted and specific questions, which enriched the material
with more details. The difficulty when interviewing was when respondents were not specific and
gave short answers, which challenged the interviewer to find ways to overcome the problematic
situation.

In this study, the respondents are anonymous, as some of the information they have
provided can be sensitive and might jeopardize their position within the organization. Hence,
when presenting the empirical findings, the name or the position of the respondents will not be
displayed. As all the respondents have top scores from the organization’s earlier conducted
leadership and engagement study, it does not matter who said what, as they all have similar
positions within the organization. Therefore, the focus has been to capture the essence of the
respondents’ answers rather than individual point of views.

3.2.2.2 Questionnaire
The questionnaire performed as a part of this study is not to be mixed with the survey performed
by the researched organization. The questionnaire used in this study (see appendix 2) was created
as a tool to validate the answers of all of the 12 respondents, who answered the questionnaire in
conjunction with the interview. Hence, the questionnaire provided supportive evidence for the
interviews, and the results of the questionnaire was not compared between respondents. The aim
was to create a short, reliable, and valid instrument for measuring leadership, based on Bass’s
(1999) Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ). The MLQ was a source of inspiration as it
is constructed of concepts that are strongly connected to behaviors that motivates and increases
engagement (Bass, 1999). The MLQ was also constructed during Bass (1985) earlier studies of
transformational leadership, which is a reason of why this questionnaire is used as an inspiration
during tha construction of the questionnaire. Bass’ (1985) model was further developed by
Schneider et al. (2015), who embedded concepts into a six item scale-model, called Perceived
Leadership Communication Questionnaire (PLCQ). Combining the MLQ and PLCQ allows
leaders to answer how they perceive their communication with their employees.

The questionnaire used in this study was constructed according to likert scale. The
questionnaire contained statements that the respondents answered on a scale from zero to five,
where zero was completely disagree and five completely agree. Using the likert scale gives the

  22
interviewers the opportunity to perform a statistical analysis of the variables (Christensen et al.,
2011). However, in this context the questions were used to provide supportive evidence for the
respondents’ answers in the interview and enhance the pursuit of answering the research
question. Therefore the data of the questionnaires will not be graphical presented in the empirical
presentation (see chapter 4.0).

3.2.2.3 Observations
In this study, five leaders have been observed in order to get a better understanding of how they
act and behave in real world situations with their employees (see appendix 3). The leaders have
been observed in their work environment during business- or team meetings. The observer in this
case was not actively participating in the meetings and was only there to listen and observe the
leaders’ practices. Bryman and Bell (2011) argue that this kind of observation lets the observer
get an inside perspective and a deeper understanding of individuals reality in their natural
context. It was therefore considered as a highly relevant method for this study. Observing these
leaders in their daily work facilitated the understanding of their leadership practices, and what
they actually do.
Prior to the observations, an observation template was developed, and used to grade to
what extent the leader practiced according to the five components of the conceptual framework
of transformational leadership (see appendix 3). In line with the questionnaire previously
described, the observation template was inspired by Bass’ (1999) MLQ, to measure leadership
behaviors. As there are many similarities between the interview questions, the questionnaire and
the observation template, they complement each other well, as the methods have been used to
provide supportive evidence for each other. For example, the observations were great
complements to the other methods, because what could be observed could later on be contrasted
to the leaders’ replies from the interviews and questionnaires. This combination helped in
understanding the leaders’ practices as the same aspects were studied in three different ways.
Common risks with observations are that the respondents might feel uncomfortable and
therefore change their behavior because of nervousness, and that they simply do not want to
share information to others (Bryman & Bell, 2011). In this case, the observations were
performed without any major difficulties and the leaders’ practices could be observed. This was
due to that all of the observed leaders were aware of why they were being observed. The fact that
the leaders were being observed might have affected them to act differently than they usually do,
  23
and over emphasize certain aspects in their leadership. However, as observations were combined
with other methods to provide supportive evidence, it would have been identified if the leaders
were behaving differently, which they were not.

3.2.3 Management of empirical data

All the interviews were recorded with permission from the respondents and later on transcribed.
As the interview questions were semi structured and had pre-formulated questions, they could
easily be compiled and summarized according to a thematic coding (Bryman & Bell, 2011). This
made it easy to distinguish differences and similarities in the leaders’ practices. Because the
conceptual framework of transformational leadership was incorporated into the interview
questions, questionnaire and observation template, the compilation of data was facilitated as it
could be performed in a structural manner. A common problem with observations is that it can
be hard to remember what has been observed if observations are not recorded (Bryman & Bell,
2011). However, due to that an observation template was used in this study, it ensured that no
important information was forgotten. The observers also took notes during the observations if
anything important happened but was not incorporated within the template.

After gathering and compiling the data, it was important to create a common ground
among the researchers. To create the common ground, every interview, survey and observation
was thoroughly read and discussed jointly in accordance with the thematic coding. During this
process, any anomalies between the leaders' replies from interviews, the questionnaire or the
observations could be identified.

3.2.4 Method of analysis

The fact that all the empirical data from interviews, questionnaires and observations was aligned
to the conceptual framework of transformational leadership and then coded thematically, aided
significantly in the analysis (Christensen et al., 2011). The compilation of empirical data
described in section 3.2.3 was put in relation to the conceptual framework of transformational
leadership and its key components. During the entire process, the purpose and the research
question of the study was always present in order to avoid missing the target. To start out from
the five components, vision, inspirational communication, supportive leadership, intellectual
stimulation and personal recognition, it facilitated the analyze process. Now information could
be more easily gathered that describe how leaders’ practices descended from these components.
  24
Further, it helped to screen all data that did not add value in fulfilling the purpose or answering
the research question. This data was removed during this process, but stored in case of changing
opinions. The data analysis process was iterative where the researchers went back and forth
between empirical data and analysis, to ensure the data was aligned to the purpose and research
question (Bryman & Bell, 2011). The intention of the analysis process was to generalize and
illustrate the leaders’ practices as one, but in the cases where the leaders’ practices differed the
differences had to be illustrated.

In the empirical presentation, the data will be presented according to the five components
of transformational leadership, followed by an analysis. For example, after presenting empirical
data related to the component vision, an analysis of vision will follow. This structure was chosen
due to the large amounts of empirical data presented. If the empirical data and analysis were to
be presented in different sections, it would be hard for the reader to remember the empirical data
when reading the analysis.

3.3 Validity and reliability

Two pilot interviews were conducted to ensure that the interview questions were formulated
accurately and that the respondents would interpret the questions correctly. Deacon et al. (2007)
argues that pilot interviews leads to greater validity, as they can confirm that the interview
questions are relevant to what is being studied. The pilot interviews allowed for reformulation of
questions in order to ensure satisfactory interpretation. Thus, the study’s validity increased as the
pilot interviews helped in measuring what aimed to be measured more confidently. Even though
a few questions had to be reformulated after the pilot interviews, they aided in enhancing the
validity of the study.  

To strengthen the reliability, three methods of data collection were used. The interviews,
questionnaires and observations were used to provide supportive evidence for each other. By
using these methods, it could be made sure that what the leaders expressed and how they
practiced was aligned. Deacon et al. (2007) reasons that reliability includes how reliable
measurements are and how they describe the quality of the data. In other words, reliability is
when independent measurements provide similar results. By using three methods to provide
supportive evidence, the study’s reliability was augmented significantly. In spite of this, there are
factors that decrease the reliability of this study, as semi-structured interviews were conducted.
  25
Consequently, if the same interview questions were used again, different follow up questions
could emerge depending on the respondent. However, since the interviews were complemented
with questionnaires and observations, it was made sure that the data was relevant for the study.

3.4 Methodological challenges

During this study there have been some challenges, such as handling large amount of data, the
difficulty of generalizing research result and the subjectivity of the data collection and analysis
process. To quote Campbell (1975): “After all, man is, in his ordinary way, a very competent
knower, and qualitative common-sense knowing is not replaced by quantitative knowing ... This
is not to say that such common sense naturalistic observation is objective, dependable, or
unbiased. But it is all that we have. It is the only route to knowledge-noisy, fallible, and biased
though it be”. This quote shows the complexity when collecting data, and the difficulty to
reduce biases and that is up to the researcher to overcome these struggles. Thus, the different
methods are grounded in theories that will reduce biases and facilitate an objective comparison
between theory and empirical findings. Three different methods were used to collect data in
accordance to the conceptual framework of the study. A challenge then becomes to make sure
that the data gathered from different methods is consistent in its quality. This was overcome by
using the different methods to provide supportive evidence from each other, and to create one
general truth rather than one for each method. To exemplify, the questionnaire was used for
leaders to evaluate their own leadership, in order to be able to find contradictions or support to
what the respondent had said earlier.

Another challenge was during the observations, as the respondents’ were aware of that
they were being observed. Therefore, the observer tried to position herself in subtle way in order
not to attract any unnecessary attention. However, it might have influenced the respondents’ way
of behaving, and making them act as they thought would look good for the purpose of the study.
However, as observations were combined with other methods to provide supportive evidence, it
would have been identified if the leaders were behaving differently, which they were not.

  26
4.0 Empirical presentation and analysis
This chapter is a presentation of the empirical data collected from the researched organization.
The names or positions of the respondents will not be displayed, due to their wish of being
anonymous. Therefore, the data will present the essence of the respondents’ answers rather than
individual point of views. The empirical data is structured on the five components of the
conceptual framework of transformational leadership; vision, inspirational communication,
supportive leadership, intellectual stimulation and personal recognition. Each component
presentation is followed by an analysis.

4.1 Vision in practice

The empirical data shows that the global office of the researched organization sets the visions
and strategies for the future, and then passes them on to the leaders. These visions are
communicated each year and leaders have the responsibility of the realization of the
organizational objectives. However, leaders perceive these global visions as too abstract, and
therefore interpret them and adapt them to their local setting. If the vision is too abstract, the
respondents state that it would be hard to convince the employees about the organizational
ideology and the purpose of the vision.

“It is not so interesting to discuss what overall goals the organization has, I don’t think so, the
employees don’t think so”.

Due to this fact, some leaders do not communicate all of the global visions to their employees,
and instead focuses on local goals and concrete objectives. But to be able to adapt the vision into
their local context, they need knowledge of their employees in order to find a communication
strategy that will get them to embrace their vision.

It has been shown that the organization decides what the leaders should focus on, and the
leaders have to convey the organizational objectives to their employees. In order to adopt the
organizational objectives, leaders need to break them down into smaller and more tangible parts.
Thereafter, some respondents argued that it was important to have a discussion with the
employees, where they clarified the strategy of fulfilling the vision. This was done to facilitate
the understanding of the goals and how they would affect the employees. However, the

  27
respondents argued that is not enough to simply communicate the vision, they also have to be
attentive to their employees and act if they are not working in accordance to the visions.
Consequently, being attentive is considered as an important part of being a leader, to ensure the
fulfillment of the organization’s visions.

The leaders within the organization found it hard to transmit the organization’s vision
about engagement, due to it being poorly explained and communicated. For example, the leaders
received the results from the organization’s previous leadership and engagement survey and how
they scored, but they did not get any information if it would lead to any extensive leadership
changes. The respondents argue that when the organization is not clear in its communication,
their leadership will be unclear as well. Further, the leaders described that when they were not
able to fulfill the goals set by the organization, it created a stressful environment. This pressured
situation consequently affected the attitudes among the employees negatively and could possibly
decrease their engagement. Therefore, leaders try to avoid these situations by working
proactively; being attentive to employees and their problems, and motivating them to keep up
their good work.

The leaders have team meetings four times every year where they discuss the goals
together and pass on their visions about future challenges. Some of the respondents also had
contact with their employees on a weekly basis to discuss the agenda and at the same time let
employees ventilate possible issues. However, regardless of the character of the meeting, all
respondents usually discussed the current state of operations, the desirable state and the strategy
of how to get there. While some leaders discuss their goals and visions during the meetings,
others believe that it is up to the employees themselves to figure out how they, individually,
should fulfill them. There was consensus among the respondents to have a clear communication
style when sharing a vision, in order for all employees to know what they are working towards.

“I always try to use examples when goals are not clear. Otherwise employees do not now
what they should be working towards”.

By communicating visions, leaders also tried to create a sense of belongingness to the

organization, hoping that the employees will perform better if they feel like their contribution
matters. Further, the majority of the respondents found it important to have private conversations
with employees. During these conversations, they individualized their way of communicating, in
  28
order to reach out to the employee in best possible way. By changing the communication style,
the leaders could impact each individual and effectively discuss how the employee could
contribute in accordance to the vision and goals.

4.2 Analysis of vision

Xu & Thomas (2011) argue that distinct visions have a positive influence on employees’
engagement, as they help them to interweave with the organization and its values. The empirical
findings show that the organization’s global visions are not adapted to any local office, which
has been shown to affect the employees negatively. As a result, leaders often find themselves
being unable to communicate the visions to the employees. Hence, according to Macey and
Schneider (2008), when leaders ignore and do not communicate the organization’s visions, it
leads to negative consequences, such as failing to create a sense of belongingness for the
employees and thereby distancing them from the organization. To make sure this does not
happen, the majority of the leaders try to break down the vision and objectives into tangible
goals, and adapt them to their local context. This could be linked to Weick, Sutcliffe and
Obstfeld (2005) who argue that in order to affect employees, leaders need to communicate
meaning and sense to increase the understanding towards a situation. Hence, the leaders in this
study created a shared meaning among the employees, to create and maintain engagement
towards local visions and goals. Moreover, Ireland and Hitt (1999) argue that the ability to
express a tangible vision, values and strategy is the most important leadership skill. Further, they
(1999) argue that these abilities have positive effect on team productivity. Therefore, it can be
argued that the practices of the majority of the respondents are creating higher productivity
among employees, by adapting the vision to their local context and breaking it down into
tangible goals.

Daft and Lengel (1986) argue that communication is the act where ambiguous issues can
be cleared out, and identified face-to-face communication as most effective in bridging
uncertainty. Further, Xu and Thomas (2011) argue that distinctly articulated visions have a
positive impact on commitment and engagement. The empirical data shows that the respondents
act in line with Daft and Lengel (1986) and Xu and Thomas (2011), as the majority of the
respondents find it important to make the vision more clear and relatable for the employees. The
leaders also preferred face-to-face communication when conveying visions and upcoming work

  29
challenges. This indicates that by doing so, the respondents create engagement, which could be
an explanation to why they are considered top leaders. To further elaborate, Judge and Bono
(2000) argue that when leaders communicate a vision, employees tend to become more attached
to the assignment as well as increase the attractiveness of being a part of the organization. It can
therefore be argued that when the respondents communicate their vision face-to-face to the
employees, they get more productive, find the organization more attractive and find themselves
engaged in their work tasks.

Rafferty and Griffin (2004) argues for the importance of being able to communicate the
vision. In this study, the majority of the leaders are good communicators as they have the ability
to adapt their style of communication depending on whom they talk to. These leaders use the
organization’s vision and decide, depending on the employees and the leaders’ knowledge about
the employees’ situation, what they will tell them to get them engaged. The leaders had different
ways of doing this, such as one on one meetings, weekly meetings, or quarterly meetings.
However, it is clear that they prefer physical meetings when communicating visions, which Daft
and Lengel (1986) identifies as the most effective communication channel. It also illustrates how
the respondents use vision as a tool both to create and maintain engagement. The reason that
their practices differ might be that the employees in the leaders’ groups are different, and some
might need closer contact with the leader than others in order to become or stay engaged.

4.3 Inspirational communication in practice

There is consensus among the respondents that they need to be very clear and straightforward in
their communication style, otherwise they might loose people’s interest and fail to communicate
their message properly. All respondents believed that communication face-to-face is preferable
but leaders tended to use email when it came to spreading larger amounts of information. The
use of email can be beneficial in some situations, as some employees are very busy and therefore
prefer to communicate through email, as it allows them to answer when they can. All of the
respondents argue that in order to be able to inspire employees, they needed to adjust their way
of communication based on whom they are talking to and in what situation. To quote a
respondent:

“You have to be a chameleon, depending on situation and person you are talking to”

  30
This goes in lines with another respondents reasoning, who stated that you have to realize that
people are different and thus adapt your leadership style and the way you communicate to make
oneself understood. If the message is not obvious enough, one respondent stresses that there is a
need for self-reflection of how to communicate even more clearly.

Inspirational communication is also about recognizing individuals and adjusting the way
of communicating based on their personalities. The respondents argue that it is essential for them
to be well informed and transparent in order to inspire their employees through communication.
This also creates trust among the employees and thereby increases their attentiveness. One
respondent argued that leaders sometimes need to be less vocal and more carefully listen to what
other say, in order to be able to set the right tone. When it comes to setting the right tone, most of
the respondents preferred having an informal tone that procures inclusiveness.

“When I was younger, I was a military but getting more experienced I became less
authoritarian”.

The quote is related to the fact that the respondent realized that a co-operative communication
style worked much better since the employees became more engaged when they were asked to
help.

4.3.1 The importance of inspirational communication

The empirical data shows that communication is important in order to engage employees, but
also that the respondents have different agendas when communicating with employees. Some
leaders want to communicate in order to understand how their employees think and to get to
know about their ideas. This style of communication is personal, and where the leaders want to
communicate for their own benefit. To exemplify, one respondent mentioned that his
communication style has gotten improved by self-reflection and by trying to understand the
individual when communicating a clear message. Other respondents use communication to make
the employees understand the leader and his objectives.

“Time is precious and you need to be spot on”.

This kind of communication is used to increase the understanding among the employees and to
let them know how they contribute to the organization’s bottom line. Another example of the use

  31
of inspirational communication is when leaders try to convey how employees can think
differently, in order to perform even better.

4.3.2 Situations where leaders use inspirational communication

Leaders of the researched organization used inspirational communication in different kinds of
situations, but with one purpose: to engage their employees. One situation mentioned, was when
leaders needed to understand a problem, and therefore had one on one talks with employees,
where they carefully listened in order to understand the root cause. Based on the information
given, the leaders could now guide and lead the employees, since they knew how to verbalize
inspirational messages. Besides one on one talks, several leaders organized different
arrangements where they could influence a larger group of employees at the same time, such as
town hall meetings and brainstorming sessions. During these meetings leaders communicate
information about future challenges, as employees need to be encouraged and eager to meet
upcoming tasks. These activities allow leaders to convey personal experiences and knowledge to
the employees, while at the same time communicate the importance of the employees and how
their contribution makes a difference. Further, the empirical data suggests that inspirational
communication is frequently used when dealing with problematic work situations. Therefore,
one respondent discussed the importance of how leaders express themselves, due to some
expressions leading to negative associations.

In most of the earlier situations described, leaders communicate in person to the

employees. Further, half of the respondents tried to avoid digital communication channels when
aiming to inspire employees. This is due to leaders considering that digital communication
channels increases the risk of misinterpretations, because of the lack of physical interaction.
Therefore, they stressed the importance of communicating clear messages when using digital
channels in order to minimalize misunderstandings.

4.4 Analysis of inspirational communication

Rafferty and Griffin (2004) argue that inspirational communication is an expression of
encouraging messages about the organization that create motivation among employees.
Furthermore, they (2004) argue that leaders need to know how to bond with the employees
through enthusing talks. The empirical findings show that the leaders possesses good
communications skills and that they know how to express themselves in order to engage
  32
employees to embrace future challenges. In order to connect with employees, they adjust their
communication depending on whom they are talking to as well as adding own personal
experiences in their talks. In line with Bohm (1996), it is important that leaders are personal in
their communication, as they can affect the employees emotionally, and shape a mutual interest
towards a future challenge. This way of communicating could lead to a collective understanding
of a situation that would strengthen the message conveyed (Bohm, 1996). The leaders’ focusing
on their communication also goes in line with Fairhurst and Connaughton (2014), who stress the
importance of having a language focus when communicating, as it increases the possibility to
create meaning among their employees. The fact that the leaders’ adjust their communication
style depending on whom they talk to also suggest that they appeal to employees’ personal
interest, which Madlock (2008) argues is a way to persuade employees to follow their lead. Thus,
it could be argued that the leaders’ practices are about being aware of how they communicate in
order to affect the mindset of their employees. The leaders are personal and value giving
individual consideration in order to connect with the employees and create engagement, which
also suggests that they have to be good judge of characters and possess the ability to redirect
their communication when it is needed.

The empirical data shows that to be an inspirational communicator, leaders consider

other aspects to be able to convey inspirational messages. It is also about listening to employees,
to develop an understanding of how employees feel and reason, and in the long term perspective
get the picture of how to inspire each individual. These communication skills could be related to
Madlock’s (2008) ideas, as the leaders’ practices correlates with what Madlock (2008) describes
as key factors in order to be able to communicate effectively. Furthermore, the respondents were
self-reflecting regarding their way of communicating, with the purpose of becoming better
communicators. This describes the importance of communication, which goes in line with
Holladay and Combs (1993), Bernhut (2000) and Madlock (2008), who argue that
communication is crucial in leadership, as leadership is executed through communication. This
further supports the integration of communication into the conceptual framework of
transformational leadership, as the empirical data keeps pointing out the importance of
communication. There are, however, some forms of communication that the respondents try to
avoid as much as they can, like digital communication. The underlying reason is that digital
communication enhances the probability of misinterpretations, and the leaders have to be
  33
extremely clear when using these tools. This goes in line with the reasoning of Daft and Lengel
(1986) who argue that written messages opens up for misunderstandings. Thus, the leaders’ are
aware of when and how to use the appropriate communication channels in order to engage
employees. It could also explain why the respondents want to communicate face-to-face, as they
more easily can adapt their communication style depending on the employee and his individual
situation. Kahn (1992) and Daft and Lengel (1986) argue that physical presence reinforces and
reduces misinterpretations of leaders’ messages when inspiring employees. This indicates that
the leaders’ practices are about knowing the benefits and issues with different communication
channels and how they impact employee engagement, and in the end use physical
communication to reduce misunderstandings.

In addition to what has been described, the empirical data shows that there are more
fundamental aspects to inspire employees. The respondents consider it important to be well
informed and to possess knowledge about the subject in order to communicate clear messages to
the employees. The importance of being well informed can be linked to Rafferty and Griffin
(2004) and Bass (1999), who claim that leaders need to show confidence. Leaders can exert
confidence by being well informed about a situation, and hence feel confidence in what they are
going to communicate to the employees. It is also important that the information possessed by
the leaders is communicated to the employees, as they have a wish to be well informed, which
can lead to engagement (Ruck and Welch, 2012). Hence, being well informed and
communicating that information is a prerequisite for leaders to be able to create engagement.
Furthermore, by being well informed, leaders have knowledge about the employees tasks,
problems and results, and can therefore deliver useful feedback, which Bakker and Demerouti
(2008) argues leads to engagement. Finally, information helps leaders to come off as more
attentive, which has shown to have positive effect on employee engagement.

An interesting aspect revealed by the empirical data but that is not described in the theory
is the way the respondents reflect on how they communicate. For example, they always consider
their tone of voice, which they want to be inviting and to induce participation. This suggests that
the way leaders communicate is important in order to create and maintain engagement. This is
not only about the tone of voice itself, but also about how they deliver messages in an inspiring
way, which Madlock (2008) highlights as important aspects of communication. For example, it is

  34
likely that the leaders cannot yell at their employees if they want them to take on new challenges.
This reasoning can be linked to Harter, Schmidt and Hays (2002) who discuss that leaders need
to have the ability to communicate how the employees can contribute, and create a behavior that
leads to employees wanting to contribute to the organization’s bottom line.

4.5 Supportive leadership in practice

Supportive leadership has shown to be very important in order to encourage and engage
employees. All of the respondents reason that their support is crucial for employees, in order for
them to be engaged and to maintain their interest in their work, which in return results in
increased performance. One respondent argued that engaged employees work harder and are
willing to do the little extra for the organization.

The leaders of the researched organization have different practices of showing their
support. Some leaders found employee empowerment and letting them take more responsibility
to be the key for succeeding engagement. To exemplify, some leaders empowered employees
with tasks that were important to them in order to increase engagement. In this setting, the
leader’s role is more of being a coach and showing their support by recognizing the employees as
individuals and give personalized advises. Others found meetings to be powerful in order to
reach engagement, where leaders together with the employees shared knowledge and discussed
different subjects. During these meetings, the leaders supported knowledge sharing and actively
took part in the discussions. However, according to one respondent, these meetings only take
place four times a year due to the fast-paced business climate that in the long run reduces the
chance to learn from each other.

The empirical findings show that communicated support is fundamental in order to keep
employees interested in their assignments. For example, when a leader verbally express
appreciation and give recognition to individual’s efforts and to what they have accomplished.

“It is all about the people and sometimes, it is just the talk itself that encourages people to do
their job well”.

This quote goes in line with other respondents, who believe that having a dialogue where they
can give clear answers to employees’ questions, giving them a positive view on their
contribution and talking about realistic expectations, is essential when supporting employees. To

  35
effectively reach out to the employees, one respondent highlighted that great knowledge about
employees work situation is very helpful. In these cases, the leader can more easily coach and
motivate employees when they face difficult situations and challenges. The empirical findings
show that the supportive communication can take place in different settings. Some respondents
recognized that the informal moments, such as a small gathering by the coffee machine, is a good
way to give that little extra push of encouragement. When having these informal meetings,
leaders experienced that they could give their advise in a more relaxed way and also motivate
employees to keep up with the good work. Another informal setting described was leaders
having lunch with employees where they could talk about everyday life. The underlying reason
for this was to create relationships while at the same time get insight of how to motivate
employees individually.

However, one challenge when it comes to supporting employees in their work was when
a leader had employees positioned in other geographical parts of Sweden. The reason for that
was the difficulty to develop close relationships, since they only met twice a year. Another
challenge was that the organization has too many boundaries, systems and “must do’s” that limit
leaders to come up with new ideas to support and motivate employees.

4.5.1 How leaders support when employee engagement is low

The empirical findings show that more than half of the respondents found the importance of
handling everyday situations in order to maintain a high state of engagement among the
employees. To be able to deal with everyday situations, several leaders made sure that they were
there for the employees, for example if they experienced problems with a specific work task. The
benefit of being present was that employees had direct access to them, and where leaders now
had the opportunity to directly face the situation and actively support and lead employees
through their problems. The respondents also described different practices when they needed to
support discouraged employees, such as being communicative, frank and observant in order to
immediately take action when something was not working. Most of the respondents points out
the importance of communication, in order to figure out why employees lack engagement and
thus choose a suitable action plan.

“I need to know the root cause, and not go to the solution right away”.

  36
For example, a leader realized when talking to an employee that the person was not thriving with
its position within the organization and thus needed to be relocated. Therefore, the leader
believed in being responsive to and aware of the root cause, to find a suitable action plan.

4.5.2 Supportive leadership - a time consuming process

Supportive leadership requires time, and half of the respondents thought they had the time
necessary to support their employees. They also thought that it is important to take their time
even though the organization would not require that from them. One respondent argues that the
bottom line with his job it solely about spending time with the employees.

“I really see my employees as factors towards success, and I need to do every possible thing to
make that happen”.

The citation illustrates the importance of being able to prioritize, and that other things can wait
when employees need help or support. However, the empirical findings show that some
respondents constantly struggle with how they should clear their schedule in order to be able to
motivate, educate and coach the employees.

“Here at the organization I think it is a common statement that leaders believe they do not spend
enough time supporting their employees”.

The reason for not having enough time to spend on their employees is that some leaders have too
many administrative and managerial tasks, such as sales reporting or time logging. Further, the
organization expects that leaders should always be two steps ahead, but the administrative tasks
are time-consuming, making it impossible to fulfill the desire of high-level management. One
respondent explained that the overload of administrative tasks makes it hard not to see the
employees as numbers in Excel-sheets instead of human beings, which have effects on how they
can support their employees.

In order to solve the problem and to be able to spend more time with the employees, one
respondent argued that leaders should be more leading, since they spend too much time on
management. Thus, some of the managing tasks should be automated in one system, which
would free up their schedule and result in more time for the employees. This goes in line with
another respondent who argues that there are too many administrative tools and that some were
very time consuming, which lead to frustration and less time to spend on employees.
  37
4.6 Analysis of supportive leadership
The empirical data show that leaders are supportive as they realize how support can impact
employee engagement positively. Moreover, the leaders focus on the individual and they set high
value on employees, because it is their contribution that creates value to the organization. With
an individual focus, leaders can develop customized work methods that could improve
employees work skills and in the long run benefit the organization. This goes in line with
Rafferty and Griffin (2004), who argue that individual consideration is the key in order to be
effective in ones leadership. To be able to show individualized consideration, there is a need of
communication, as it is through communication leaders support employees. It was obvious that
the leaders used communication to gain knowledge of underlying motives to different problems,
when supporting employees. This strengthens the fact that communication is essential when
supporting employees and that it is a tool to create engagement. Without engaging in dialogues it
would be difficult to know how to affect employees as individuals, as dialogues can provide
information about employees’ personal interests. Madlock (2008) argues that without effective
communication where leaders appeal to interest of individuals, it is hard to have an impact on
them. This indicates that leaders need to combine effective communication with personal
consideration in order to engage employees. Moreover, the leaders need to focus on the
employees as individuals, and be informed about their situation in order to support and coach
them the best way possible. Even though the leaders did not explicitly utter the importance of
communication when showing support, it is easy to see the pattern, as it would be difficult to
show support without expressing it verbally.

The description of the respondents’ reality and their work practices goes in line with the
definition of supportive leadership by Rafferty and Griffin (2004), who argue that supportive
leadership is important to employee engagement. It can therefore be argued that supportive
leadership plays a crucial part in reaching a high state of employee engagement. However, in
order for leaders to be able to support their employees, it is clear that they need the support from
the organization. Today the respondents argue that they feel limited by the organization,
resulting in their inability to fully support the employees. Therefore, they need resources such as
time, monetary incitements, and being liberated from administrative tasks to create and maintain
engagement through supportive leadership. Despite that, leaders try to take their time to be
supportive and to genuinely show interest in employee’s situation or problem. According to Xu
  38
and Cooper (2011) this leadership behavior leads to employee engagement, which is a positive
indicator on leaders’ efforts and practices.

In theory, Rafferty and Griffin (2004) describe that leaders need to possess social skills to
be able to be supportive and coach employees to go beyond expectation. This suggests that
leaders need to listen, interact and communicate in order to support their employees. However,
the definition of supportive leadership by Rafferty and Griffin (2004) lack the aspect of
communication. Meanwhile, Barrett (2006) argue that communication is essential for leaders to
be able to get things done through others. This indicates that there is a link between supportive
leadership and communication, as the underlying meaning of supportive leadership is to coach
and lead employees towards a desired direction. To be able to support employees,
communication is essential, and in line with Bohm (1996) it is through dialogues that leaders can
figure out how to coach and engage individuals. Thus, by communicating, leaders can verbalize
their support and pass on individualized messages, in order to create and maintain engagement.
Communication as an important skill is verified by the fact that all leaders considered it to be
crucial, for example during weekly meetings or when coaching individuals by giving them clear
answers to their questions. This statement could be linked to Papalexandris and Galanaki (2009)
who found linkages between employee engagement and leaders’ ability to communicate, which
indicate leaders need to be good communicators. The leaders believe communication is
important when interacting with employees, which could be linked to Weick, Sutcliffe and
Obstfeld (2005) arguments, as they point out that communication is a way to convey
materialized meaning to actions. This indicates that leaders’ practices are about combining their
support in order to clarify a work task or situation.

On the other hand, there exist some obstacles for leaders to engage and motivate
employees to the extent they wish, due to their busy schedule. Besides that they often find
themselves under time pressure, the geographical distance made it more difficult to engage
employees due to the use of digital communication channels. Daft, Lengel and Trevino (1987)
argue that digital communication channels are used when conveying unambiguous messages.
Hence, leaders become limited, as it is difficult to convey more detailed and rich information
through these channels, as the risk of being misunderstood is higher. The geographical distance
also indicates that it creates a gap between leaders and employees, as they need to use digital

  39
communication channels. These channels complicate for leaders to create relationships with the
employees and reduce the possibility of employee engagement. These channels could lead to
employees feeling not been giving enough attention, which is according to Kahn (1992) essential
in order to have engaged employees. Consequently, it is important that the organization makes
sure that leaders have access to their employees in order to ensure employee engagement aligned
with organizational values and goals.

Gregory Stone, Russell and Patterson (2004) explain transformational leadership as a

process of building commitment to organizational objectives by empowering employees to fulfill
those objectives. However, Rafferty and Griffin (2004) do not include empowerment, when
defining supportive leadership, but the empirical data show that this aspect plays an important
part. On the other hand, it is not clear how leaders actually link more responsibility to
organizational objectives, and neither do they describe how they support employees when giving
them more responsibility. Instead, the data indicates that when leaders are empowering
employees, they distance themselves from the employees and let them become their own leader.

4.7 Intellectual stimulation in practice

There was a consensus among the respondents that it essential to stimulate employees, but also
that it is quite hard to achieve. The underlying reason to this statement was based on the
difficulty to create intellectual assignments due to ever changing business conditions. Beside
external influences, some leaders mentioned that employees have a responsibility to
communicate with their leaders if they feel unchallenged or under stimulated. When this
situation occurs, leaders attend to the individual and personalize the stimulation method to their
specific interest. Everyone does not share this point of view, due to the fact that some leaders do
not believe it is up to them to make employees feel stimulated, and that they do not have the time
required to develop their employees.

Many leaders found it difficult to create intellectual assignments, however, all agreed that
they tried to stimulate the employees by challenging them to think about problems outside the
box. One way of doing this was to create teams composed of young and experienced employees,
where they could share knowledge and discuss problems from different perspectives. According
to one leader, old methods could be combined with new ones that would lead to innovative ideas
and new ways of doing things. The empirical data also showed that some respondents
  40
experienced pressure from different management or customer channels, to constantly deliver new
ideas. This was due to the fact that they work in a very changeable business environment where
leaders found it a necessity to coach and challenge employees to go beyond the limits and to
quote:

“As a leader you need to step in and take action”.

However, one respondent mentioned that leaders talk about encouraging behaviors that involve
thinking outside the box and being innovative, internally called wild duck behaviors, but that
more could be done. This reasoning is grounded in the fact that leaders do not know what they
are set up to do and thus limit their course of action.

“Within the organization, you want to be a fish, since they throw you out in the ocean and watch
how far you can swim. If you can swim, you could create your own world map and then only you
know where to set your limits for how far you will go”.

The respondent argues that it is important to challenge one-self to take more responsibility for
their personal development that could lead to a more contentment with ones situation.

To stimulate employees’ intellect, leaders encouraged certain behaviors they personally

valued to be important. The variation of different behaviors depended on what context leaders
were in. One respondent underlined the importance of promoting the curiosity of trying new
things, for example new communication channels. Another leader found it vital for business to
encourage employees to show a willingness to learn, be open minded and creative.

“To stay on top, employees need to have an appetite to learn new stuff”

Some leaders mentored their employees to feel good about their work when reaching beyond the
expectation. To anchor this specific behavior, leaders stressed the importance of understanding
what method was needed to accomplish the desired outcome. However, not all of the respondents
did know what behaviors they wanted to encourage and one leader found it more meaningful to
act on behaviors he did not like.

4.8 Analysis of intellectual stimulation

The respondents considered intellectual stimulation as critical for the organizations success. At
the same time, they expressed how difficult they find it to challenge their employees constantly.

  41
There empirical data has revealed a discrepancy between the theory of intellectual stimulation
and the reality. While Rafferty and Griffin (2004) argue that stimulation is when a leader
communicate and enhance employees’ ability to think of problems in new ways, leaders perceive
intellectual stimulation as creating intellectual challenges for their employees. Interestingly,
when the leaders described what they did to stimulate their employees, the majority mentioned
challenging them to think outside the box, to be open minded and creative. Hence, the
respondents’ actions were in fact in line with the theories from Rafferty and Griffin (2004).

The empirical data shows that the respondents believe intellectual stimulation is
important. However, they also put some responsibility on the employees, who have to
communicate with their leader if they feel under stimulated. In some way, this might explain
why Rafferty and Griffin (2004) describe intellectual stimulation as the most underdeveloped
component of transformational leadership. Because the employees themselves have to tell the
leader when they are not stimulated, unless the leader sees it. The employees are usually in a
role, where it is hard for the leaders to simply alter the character of the tasks. Instead, the leaders
work with the individual rather than the task. When working with individuals, leaders have the
opportunity to communicate sense and create a shared meaning towards the task, which
according to Weick, Sutcliffe and Obstfeld (2005) gives the leaders the possibility to have an
impact on the employees’ mindset. This practice indicates that leaders who see their employees
as individuals have a greater chance of affecting the employees, stimulate them intellectually and
increase their level of engagement. The leaders use the tools they have and try to be attentive,
challenge employees to think outside the box, be open minded and creative. They alter their
stimulation method based on their knowledge of the individual and mentor employees to feel
good about their work. In other words, the leaders try to develop the employees’ cognitive ability
as well as making them feel good as individuals. Hence, it is much a question of personal
development, which Papalexandris and Galanaki (2009) argues has positive linkages on
employee engagement. This kind of leadership behavior can also be strongly linked to theories
by Xu and Cooper (2011) who argue when leaders support, show interest in employees and their
development, it leads to employee engagement.

Rafferty and Griffin (2004) argue that intellectual stimulation increases employees’
ability to conceptualize, comprehend and analyze problems. If the employees start approaching

  42
problems in new ways and think creatively, it is likely that they increase the employees’ ability
to conceptualize and analyze problems, as argued by Rafferty and Griffin (2004). Another
practice that the leaders use to stimulate employees is the composition of teams with people with
different backgrounds, thus, stimulating people intellectually. It can be described as a form of
indirect stimulation where the leader enables for employees to stimulate each other. The benefit
of composing teams like these can be linked to Bohm (1996), who argues that the creation of
dialogues within a group can lead to new perspectives, and glue people together through shared
meaning. Further, this indicates that when leaders compose diverse groups, they can create a
shared meaning that is essential in order to keep them engaged towards a work task. The
leadership practices are all used to make sure employees are stimulated, as well as stimulate,
challenge and develop each other. According to Bakker and Demerouti (2008), engaged
employees influence their colleagues and consequently perform better as a team, giving support
for the leaders’ practices from an engagement point of view. The empirical data indicates that the
leaders, in terms of intellectual stimulation, use tools that stimulate employees in a high extent,
which in the end results in employee engagement.

4.9 Personal recognition in practice

The empirical findings show that the majority of respondents believed they could become much
better in recognizing employees, especially employees’ efforts in the daily operations. The
reason why this is not done more on a daily basis is due to the fact that the leaders believe the
organization does not prioritize and financially support these types of recognitions. However,
according to the respondents, personal recognition does not have to include a physical item such
as monetary bonus. Instead, leaders experienced more appreciation when giving positive
feedback, thus, time is needed to make this possible.

The respondents were carefully considering the different needs and motivation factors
among the employees, and tried to fulfill them by showing personal recognition. For example,
leaders let outstanding employees come up on the stage during town hall meetings where they
would receive acknowledgement, giving them positive feedback, sending them gift cards, emails,
or giving them bonuses. One respondent also believed that it was important to recognize top
performers and separate them from the others and give them bonuses.

  43
 “You have to adopt to individuals and understand who wants what. People are not the same and
need to be recognized differently”.

The empirical data shows that leaders assess the support from their organization, ranging from
weak support to none at all. Therefore, many leaders feel constrained by their organization when
it comes to recognizing their employees. The main argument is that leaders do not acquire any
support from their organization, and that they do not have enough resources to always recognize
their employees, even if they want to. One respondent described his frustration, stating that the
incentive system has gotten less beneficial which has limited the leaders for delivering personal
recognition.

“It is amazing how employees succeed not feeling unmotivated due to the lacking incentive
systems”.

One respondent believed there are tools available for leaders to use in order to recognize
employees. However, leaders need to be creative and constructive, as higher management does
not educate the leaders about the tools available or how to use them. The lack of top management
support in this context is articulated in the following quote:

“I do not think the organization really encourages you to be more than a manger, to be a leader.
With that I mean that the organization often only wants us to fulfill our goals, nothing more”.

Another aspect regarding the difficulty of personal recognition is that the organization demands
that employees constantly need to outperform; a well executed task is not enough, it needs to
contain that little extra. One respondent found that the employees get pushed too far and that
they almost feel like they get punished, and that good performance is not enough.

4.9.1 How leaders recognize employee’s achievements

The empirical data showed that all respondents used similar methods when recognizing
employee’s achievements, such as giving feedback face-to-face or through digital
communication channels. Some respondents acknowledge their employees mostly by what is
accessible through the organization’s incentive system. One thing that is common for all
respondents is that they try to see the uniqueness of each individual and recognize their
individual efforts. They also adopt their way of showing recognition depending on the situation
and whom they are talking to. One respondent admitted spending more time on top performing
  44
employees, since they had contributed the most, and therefore had earned more credit. However,
some respondents mentioned that they would want to spend more time on recognizing
employees’ achievements, but they are restricted by the organizational rules. As a result, one
leader admits spending his own money on activities, to celebrate team achievements.

The empirical data revealed that leaders handled good and bad achievements differently.
All of the respondents agreed on the importance of having one on one meetings when they
needed to deal with bad achievements. During these private talks they could find out about the
root cause to the situation and several leaders stressed the importance of appearing sensitive and
thoughtful.

“If we observe employees performing badly, we try to get them on the right side.
You should never out an employee, and rather solve the problem instead of blaming employees
for the result”.

Further, one respondent also found that handling bad achievements required a lot of follow up,
and thus is a very time consuming process. Good achievements on the other hand were shown in
public. One respondent also stressed the importance of acknowledging achievements that might
not have been successful from the beginning, since it is essential to encourage employees to try.

4.10 Analysis of personal recognition

Personal recognition is when leaders give employees credit and acknowledgement when they
deliver in accordance to the initial vision of the assignment (Rafferty & Griffin, 2004). This
description of personal recognition could however be questioned, as the empirical data shows
that leaders try to recognize the employees even when they failed to accomplish an assignment.
The reason might be that leaders feel they should recognize and support their employees in both
good times and bad times, in order to maintain their engagement. It further shows that there are
several types of personal recognition, and that leaders find it important to recognize employees’
efforts regardless result. It can therefore be argued that leaders use different tools and different
kind of recognition whether they work to create, maintain or even reinforce the employees’
engagement.

When delivering personal recognition, the respondents always tried to adapt their way of
communicating based on the employee receiving it. The personal recognition is often delivered

  45
in person, which is a way to create trust between the leader and employee. This indicates that
communicating appreciation is important in order to build trust, which goes in line with Thomas,
Zolin and Hartman (2009), who argue that communication is the means of increasing trust.
Hence, the practice of giving recognition indicates increased level of trust, as it is an important
factor to enhance engagement (Guibord, 2012).

Personal recognition of any kind is a form of feedback from the leader to the employee.
Bakker and Demerouti (2008) state that feedback leads to engagement as employees become
more invested in their work. Further, if the leader delivers good feedback, it can be seen as the
leader being attentive, caring and aiming to develop the individual. These are all practices that
are described as engagement creating in the literature (Kahn, 1990; Bakker and Demerouti, 2008;
Xu and Cooper, 2011; Kronz, 2014), suggesting that how the respondents communicate personal
recognition is favorable in term of employee engagement. On the contrary, if the recognition was
only delivered through a short e-mail and a thank you, it would probably be seen as if the leader
did not bother to deliver the news in person and that what had been performed was not that
important.

An interesting finding in the empirical data was where the leaders describe how they
acknowledge efforts in front of other employees. It can be argued that this kind of recognition
gives the employee senses of personal satisfaction and pride, which both are sentiments that lead
to engagement (Kahn, 1990; Macey and Schneider, 2008). Further, this leadership practice
shows that the leader values the efforts of the employees, which can make other employees
engaged as engagement is transmitted among employees. This leadership practice shows that the
leader is attentive and sees the effort that employees put into their work, which can possibly
motivate the employees to maintain engaged.

  46
5.0 Discussion
In this section the leaders’ practices will be discussed to understand how to create and maintain
employee engagement.

5.1 The interrelatedness of the five components of transformational leadership

The empirical data clearly illustrates that the top leaders use practices similar to the five
components of transformational leadership. It is not clear whether they do it on purpose or not,
but it is likely a contributing factor to their high scores in the previous leadership and
engagement survey. This study shows that the five components of transformational leadership
are interrelated and should be treated holistically. To illustrate; in order for a leader to
communicate a vision, the other components of transformational leadership need to be
incorporated into the communication process. To communicate a vision is not easy, and it can be
crucial when leaders want to engage their employees in order to realize the goals of the
organization. As vision is not visible, it must emerge from dialogues and collective processes
among individuals. If not, leaders and employees will not share the same vision and hence
probably not strive for the same goals. Further, vision is also strongly connected to inspirational
communication, and therefore, leaders need a strategy for inspiring communication. When a
vision is spread and adapted to the employees’ context, they can more easily relate to the
message and in the end be motivated to fulfill the vision. Thereafter, leaders need to be there for
the employees, support and coach them, while at the same time give them freedom to push
boundaries, in order to fulfill the vision. By showing faith in the employees’ ability to perform;
trust and loyalty is created between employees and leaders. At this point, the leader sees to the
individual, and acknowledges the wished behavior and gives them the credit they deserve. When
leaders see to the individual, it also allows for employees to develop their skills and intellect
based on their interest and desires.

The example illustrates how the five components of transformational leadership are
interrelated, and that all components have to be considered in leaders’ practices. If a component
is disregarded, it is possible that employees will not be as engaged as they could possibly be.

  47
5.2 Communication bridging all leadership practices
After analyzing the empirical data, it is clear that communication is the foundation of all the five
components of transformational leadership, and has proven to be a key factor. However, in
theories regarding transformational leadership, communication is not mentioned as an important
part, until now. This study has shown that communication is what enables leaders to engage their
employees. Without communication, the leaders will not be able to pass on their vision in an
inspiring way. Further, they will neither be able to support, stimulate or give their employees the
individualized attention they need in order to create or maintain engagement. For example, the
leaders in this study were very aware and self-reflecting on how they communicated with their
employees, and it is clear that they have realized the importance of communication in their
leadership practices. This is likely an explanation to why the respondents all received top scores
in the organizations previous leadership and engagement study. The fact that communication is
not mentioned more extensively in the leadership theories is questionable, as it is through
communication leaders can consolidate a vision, provide support, and give recognition, attention
and stimulation. Communication might be taken for granted in transformational leadership
theories, but as it has the possibility to affect the outcome of leadership practices, it should be
treated with more respect and be integrated into the theories.

5.3 Characteristics of the engaging leader

This study has examined leadership practices in order to identify how the leaders create and
maintain employee engagement. Even though the conceptual framework of transformational
leadership contains five different components, the leaders used the same approach and mindset
regardless of what they wanted to do. For example, if leaders wanted to convey a vision, they
adjusted their communication to the person they were talking to. The same approach was
employed when the leaders tried to support, stimulate, recognize or inspire their employees.
They always focus on the employees as individuals and take the specific situation into account to
find the best way to reach out to them. In order to do this, the leaders need to know their
employees, their strengths, their weaknesses and their drivers. To achieve this, leaders talk and
listen to their employees, to get to know them. The leaders then use the knowledge in their
practices to find ways to engage their employees. If the leaders disregard their employees, they
will not know anything about them, and it is likely that engagement will not be created or
maintained. Getting to know employees is a time consuming process, time which the leaders not
  48
always have. If organizations want their leaders to engage their employees, they should hence
make sure that they are relieved of administrative tasks so they can focus on engaging them

A common feature among the leaders is that they all valued personal interaction with
their employees. Even though digital communication might sometimes be easier, the leaders
view face-to-face interaction as superior. Therefore, the leaders distinguish how they should
approach their employees based on the situation. For example, if leaders need to address
sensitive issues with employees they rather use face-to-face communication, but if it comes to
spreading large amount of information they might prefer digital communication. However,
personal interaction is an approach that leaders employ in relation to all of the five components
of transformational leadership. Personal interaction facilitates feedback and discussion, where
leaders can more easily show their employees that they care for them. Moreover, personal
interaction is valued among the leaders as a way to strengthen their relationship with the
employees and create trust and engagement through human contact.

Another thing that all the leaders have in common is self-reflection. They reflect about
how they want to be treated by leaders and try to imitate that behavior in their practices.
Furthermore, they reflect about the way they communicate with their employees, and critically
review their practices when something has gone wrong. This is a characteristic that indicates all
the leaders want to become better at what they do, and are humble enough to realize they can
always become better.

To summarize, there are many things confirming the leaders’ use of the five components
of transformational leadership. The fact that they do underlines the importance of vision,
inspirational communication, supportive leadership, personal recognition and intellectual
stimulation as tools to create and maintain employees engagement. Further, as these leaders have
been judged as good leaders, it is arguably beneficial to incorporate the five components into
leadership practices. From an organization’s perspective, they can use the five components of
transformational leadership when educating their leaders, if they want their leaders to engage
employees. However, they also have to focus on the communication skills of the leaders, as they
will not be able to engage employees without them.

  49
6.0 Conclusion
In this section, conclusions will be presented based on the analysis and discussion with the
purpose to answer the research question, how top leaders’ practices create and maintain
employee engagement.

It is evidential how leaders’ practices leads to engagement, and one reason is that they are good
communicators. What makes them unique is that they individualize their communication style to
ensure that their message is understood and embraced by the employees. In order to be able to
bring forth a clear and easily understood message, they reflect on how they express themselves.
For example, they think about their tone of voice based on the situation and whom they are
talking to, as it crucial to engagement. In order to individualize their communication style they
take their time and talk to employees with the purpose of getting to know them, and to gain
knowledge of their motivational drivers. What is essential to all leaders is to be a good listener
and genuinely show interest in employees’ needs and situation to be able to inspire them
verbally. Furthermore, the leaders are good at breaking down information and adjust it to fit the
context. To do this, leaders make sure that they are well informed about employees’ situation and
adopt the message to employees’ current state, to create and maintain engagement.
Another conclusion that could be drawn is that the leaders try to be present and support
their employees. Furthermore, they give employees recognition for their achievements regardless
of if the  result is good or bad. If the result did not meet the expectation of the leaders, they try to
be solution-oriented and see to what could have been done differently, and motivate employees
to try other ways of doing things. To be able to show support they prefer physical meetings as it
facilitates the creation of good relationships with the employees, as they can identify the single
individual. Moreover, leaders have activities where they stimulate employees’ intellect to
increase their engagement. They also empower their employees as it leads to engagement, where
leaders’ role is to act as a coach, leading them to stay on the right path.

6.1 Future research

The results of this study shows that more research is needed regarding the role of communication
in relation to transformational leadership practices. For example, a study could investigate how
effective the use of five components of transformational leadership is, if the leader is a poor

  50
communicator versus good communicator. Such a study could possibly deepen the understanding
of the role of communication in relation to employee engagement. Another interesting study
would be to observe both the leaders and their employees to see to what degree their leadership
practices are influencing the employee’s engagement. In this case, it would be interesting if the
leaders were unaware of that they were being observed. For example, this study could include
categorization of the leaders’ activities according to the conceptual framework of
transformational leadership. If the employees’ engagement level is measured at the same time, it
could be identified what leadership behavior creates the most engagement. Additionally, it would
be interesting to observe top-scoring leaders and low-scoring leaders and compare their
practices, in order to better understand which components in the conceptual framework are
directly crucial in terms of employee engagement and effective leadership communication.

  51
Reference list
Andersen, I. (1998). Den uppenbara verkligheten – Val av samhällsvetenskaplig metod. Lund:
Studentlitteratur AB.

Bass, B. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectation. New York: The free press.

Bass, B. M. (1999). Two decades of research and development in transformational leadership.

European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 8(1), 9–32.

Bass, B. M., & Avolio, B. J. (1990). The implications of transactional and transformational
leadership for individual, team, organizational development. Research in Organizational Change
and Development, 4, 231–272.

Bakker, A. B., & Demerouti, E. (2008). Towards a model of work engagement. Career
development international, 13(3), 209-223.

Bakker, A. B., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2008). Positive organizational behavior: Engaged employees
in flourishing organizations. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29(2), 147-154.

Baldoni, J. (2004). Powerful Leadership Communication. Leader to Leader, (32), 20-24.

Barling, J., Slater, F., & Kevin Kelloway, E. (2000). Transformational leadership and emotional
intelligence: An exploratory study. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 21(3),
157-161.

Barrett, D. J. (2006). Strong Communication Skills a must for today's leaders. Handbook of
business strategy, 7(1), 385-390.

Bennis, W., & Nanus, B. (1985). Leadership: The strategies for taking charge. New York:
Harper & Row.

  I  
Bernhut, S. (2000). In conversation: Henry Mintzberg. Ivey Business Journal, 65(1), 18-24.

Björklund, M., & Paulsson, U. (2003). Seminarieboken, att skriva, presentera och opponera.
Lund: Studentlitteratur AB.

Blickle, G., Kane-Frieder, R. E., Oerder, K., Wihler, A., von Below, A., Schütte,
N.,Matanovic,A., Mudlagk, D., Kokudeva, T., & Ferris, G. R. (2013). Leader Behaviors as
Mediators of the Leader Characteristics: Follower Satisfaction Relationship. Group &
Organization Management, 38(5), 601–629.

Bohm, D. (1996). On dialougue. New York: Routledge.

Bryman, A., & Bell, E. (2011). Business Research Methods. New York: Oxford University
Press.

Burns MacGregor, J. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper & Row

Campbell, D. T. (1975). Degrees of Freedom and the Case Study, Comparative Political Studies
(8),178-191.

Christensen, L., Engdahl, N., Grääs, C., & Haglund, L. (2011). Marknadsundersökning en
handbok. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Conger, J. A., Kanungo, R. N., & Menon, S. T. (2000). Charismatic leadership and follower
effects. Journal of organizational behavior, 21(7), 747-767.

Daft, R. L., & Lengel, R. H. (1986). Organizational information requirements media richness and
structural design. Management science, 32(5), 554-571.

  II  
Daft, R. L., Lengel, R. H., & Trevino, L. K. (1987). Message equivocality, media selection, and
manager performance: implications for information systems. MIS quarterly, 11 (3), 354- 366.

Deacon, D., Murdock, G., Pickering, M., & Golding, P. (2007). Researching communications: a
practical guide to methods in media and cultural analysis. New York: Bloomsbury.

Dewhurst, M., Harris, J., & Heywood, S. (2012, June). The global company’s challenge.
MacKinsey.com. Retrieved 20115-03-13 from
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/the_global_companys_challenge

Eriksson, T. L., & Wiedersheim-Paul, F. (2006). Att utreda forska och rapportera. Malmö: Liber
AB.

Fairhurst, G. T., & Connaughton, S. L. (2014). Leadership: A communicative perspective.

Leadership, 10(1), 7-35.

Ghafoor, A., Qureshi, T. M., Khan, M. A., & Hijazi, S. T. (2011). Transformational leadership,
employee engagement and performance: Mediating effect of psychological ownership. African
journal of business management, 5(17), 7391-7403.

Gregersen, H. B., Morrison, A. J., & Black, J. S. (1998). Developing leaders for the global
frontier. Sloan Management Review, 40(1), 21-32.

Gregory Stone, A., Russell, R. F., & Patterson, K. (2004). Transformational versus servant
leadership: A difference in leader focus. Leadership & Organization Development Journal,
25(4), 349-361.

Guay, R. P. (2013). The relationship between leader fit and transformational leadership. Journal
of Managerial Psychology, 28(1), 55-73.

Guibord, A. R. (2012). IT Leadership Manual: Roadmap to Becoming a Trusted Business

Partner. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
  III  
Harter, J. K., Schmidt, F. L., & Hayes, T. L. (2002). Business-unit-level relationship between
employee satisfaction, employee engagement, and business outcomes: a meta-analysis. Journal
of applied psychology, 87(2), 268.

Holladay, S. J., & Coombs, W. T. (1993). Communication visions: An exploration of the

role of delivery in the creation of leader charisma. Management Communication
Quarterly, 6, 405-427.

Ireland, R. D., & Hitt, M. A. (1999). Achieving and maintaining strategic competitiveness in the
21st century: The role of strategic leadership. The Academy of Management Executive, 13(1), 43-
57.

Judge, T. A., & Bono, J. E. (2000). Five-factor model of personality and transformational
leadership. Journal of applied psychology, 85(5), 751.

Kahn, W. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work.

Academy of management journal, 33(4), 692-724.

Kahn, W. (1992). To be fully there: Psychological presence at work. Human relations, 45(4),
321-349.

Kronz, E. (2014). Acquiring and developing leaders on a global or multinational scale. Strategic
HR Review, 13(6), 249-254.

Macey, W. H., & Schneider, B. (2008). The meaning of employee engagement. Industrial and
organizational psychology, 1(1), 3-30.

Madlock, P. E. (2008). The link between leadership style, communicator competence, and
employee satisfaction. Journal of Business Communication, 45(1), 61-78.

  IV  
Meyer, J. P., Allen, N. J., & Topolnytsky, L. (1998). Commitment in a changing world of work.
Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 39(1-2), 83.

Mintzberg, H. (2004). Managers, not MBAs: A hard look at the soft practice of managing and
management development. San Fransisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Papalexandris, N., & Galanaki, E. (2009). Leadership's impact on employee engagement:

Differences among entrepreneurs and professional CEOs. Leadership & Organization
Development Journal, 30(4), 365-385.

Piccolo, R. F., & Colquitt, J. A. (2006). Transformational leadership and job behaviors: The
mediating role of core job characteristics. Academy of Management journal, 49(2), 327-340.

Rafferty, A. E., & Griffin, M. A. (2004). Dimensions of transformational leadership: Conceptual

and empirical extensions. The leadership quarterly, 15(3), 329-354.

Ruck, K., & Welch, M. (2012). Valuing internal communication; management and employee
perspectives. Public Relations Review, 38(2), 294-302.

Saks, A. M. (2006). Antecedents and consequences of employee engagement. Journal of

managerial psychology, 21(7), 600-619.

Schippers, M. C., Den Hartog, D. N., Koopman, P. L., & van Knippenberg, D. (2008). The role
of transformational leadership in enhancing team reflexivity. Human Relations, 61(11), 1593-
1616.

Schneider, F. M., Maier, M., Lovrekovic, S., & Retzbach, A. (2015). The Perceived Leadership
Communication Questionnaire (PLCQ): Development and Validation. The Journal of
Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied, 149(2).

  V  
Scott-Phillips, T. C., Blythe, R. A., Gardner, A., & West, S. A. (2012). How do communication
systems emerge?. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 279(1735), 1943-
1949.

Shamir, B., House, R. J., & Arthur, M. B. (1993). The motivational effects of charismatic
leadership: A self-concept based theory. Organization science, 4(4), 577-594.

Thomas, G. F., Zolin, R., & Hartman, J. L. (2009). The central role of communication in
developing trust and its effects on employee involvement. Journal of Business Communication
46 (3), 287-310.

Trost, J. (1997). Kvalitativa intervjuer. Lund: Studentlitteratur AB.

Truss, K., Soane, E., Edwards, C. Y. L., Wisdom, K., Croll, A., & Burnett, J. (2006). Working
life: employee attitudes and engagement 2006. Chartered Institute of Personnel and
Development.

Weber, M. (1968). On charisma and institution building. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Weick, K. E., Sutcliffe, K. M., & Obstfeld, D. (2005). Organizing and the Process of
Sensemaking. Organization Science, 16(4), 409-421.

Wiman, E. (2012, 18 October). Största utmaningarna- enligt HR-cheferna. Motivation.Se.

Retrieved 2015-03-09 from http://www.motivation.se/hr/rekrytera/storsta-utmaningarna-enligt-
hr-cheferna

Witemeyer, H., Ellen, P., & Straub, D. (2013, September). Validating a Practice-Informed
Definition of Employee Engagement. In Third Annual International Conference on Engaged
Management Scholarship, Atlanta, Georgia.

  VI  
Worldwide, W. W., & Bethesda, M. (2007). Secrets of Top Performers: How Companies with
Highly Effective Employee Communication Differentiate Themselves. Watson Wyatt.

Xu, J., & Cooper Thomas, H. (2011). How can leaders achieve high employee engagement?
Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 32(4), 399-416.

Yukl, G. (1989). Managerial leadership: A review of theory and research. Journal of

management, 15(2), 251-289.

Yukl, G. (1999). An evaluation of conceptual weaknesses in transformational and charismatic

leadership theories. The leadership quarterly, 10(2), 285-305.

  VII  
Appendix 1. Interview questions
Date:
Place:

Background
1. What is your name?
2. What is your job role at the company?
3. What does your job role consist off?
4. How long have you been at this position and within the organization?
5. Do you want to be anonymous?

Supportive leadership
1. Do you think it is important to engage the organizations’ members? Why/ Why not?
2. Describe how you work to keep your employees interested in their work
3. How do you encourage when they lack motivation and interest in their work?
4. Can you recall a specific situation where you had to motivate an employee that was
lacking in interest of their work?
5. Do you experience that you have the time that is required to support your employees?
6. If you could require tools that would lead to more time, what would they be?

Inspirational communication
1. Describe your communication style that you use towards your employees
2. Do you communicate differently when you try to motivate different employees?
3. What is important to you when you communicate with your employees?
4. Can you give an example of a situation where you motivated your employees through
communication? What did you do?

Intellectual stimulation
1. Do you encourage certain behaviors from your employees? If yes, which ones?
2. When facing an obstacle or any sort of work situation as problematic, how are you
usually dealing with it?

  VIII  
 3. Do you challenge your employees to think about problems in new ways? How? /Why
not?
4. Is it important to stimulate your employees intellectually? Why/Why not?

Vision
1. What is a great leader to you?
2. Tell me about your view on being a leader…
a. What do want to achieve with your leadership?
b. How do you communicate goals and vision of tasks achievements to your
employees?
c. What important values and ethics do you believe you demonstrate as a leader?
3. Do you have the support required from your organization to aspire your vision and
empower others?

Personal recognition
1. How do you measure success as a leader?
2. Describe your thoughts on recognizing efforts of employees?
3. Do you feel you have the support needed from the organization to recognize your
employees?
4. How do you acknowledge employees achievements?
a. Is there any different of how you acknowledge bad or god achievements?

Is there anything I have not asked you about and that you would like to add?

  IX  
Appendix 2. Questionnaire template
Date:

Place:
Participant:

I am trusted by my team in overcoming any obstacle (vision)

I completely I most partly I more or less I don’t agree I don’t agree at
agree agree agree all

I am a symbol of success and accomplishment to my team (vision)

I completely I most partly I more or less I don’t agree I don’t agree at
agree agree agree all

When there is a risk involved in my team I am likely the go-to person (vision)
I completely I most partly I more or less I don’t agree I don’t agree at
agree agree agree all

I always try to be clear about the messages behind the tasks for my team (vision)
I completely I most partly I more or less I don’t agree I don’t agree at
agree agree agree all

I suggest new ways of looking at how to complete assignments (intellectual stimulation)

I completely I most partly I more or less I don’t agree I don’t agree at
agree agree agree all

  X  
I am open about sharing my curiosity for new things to solve problems (intellectual stimulation)
I completely I most partly I more or less I don’t agree I don’t agree at
agree agree agree all

I am considering myself not to be critical about creative ideas (intellectual stimulation)

I completely I most partly I more or less I don’t agree I don’t agree at
agree agree agree all

I help others to develop their strengths (supportive leadership)

I completely I most partly I more or less I don’t agree I don’t agree at
agree agree agree all

I spend time teaching and coaching my team (supportive leadership)

I completely I most partly I more or less I don’t agree I don’t agree at
agree agree agree all

I make sure to spend one-on-one working time with my team (supportive leadership)
I completely I most partly I more or less I don’t agree I don’t agree at
agree agree agree all

I inform my team what they should do to be rewarded for their efforts (personal recognition)

  XI  
I completely I most partly I more or less I don’t agree I don’t agree at
agree agree agree all

I recommend my team about open promotions positions for when it is deserved (personal
recognition)
I completely I most partly I more or less I don’t agree I don’t agree at
agree agree agree all

Tells my team when we perform well (inspirational communication)

I completely I most partly I more or less I don’t agree I don’t agree at
agree agree agree all

Encourages my team members (inspirational communication)

I completely I most partly I more or less I don’t agree I don’t agree at
agree agree agree all

Develop a challenging and attractive vision, together with the employees (inspirational
communication)
I completely I most partly I more or less I don’t agree I don’t agree at
agree agree agree all

Express confidence, decisiveness and optimism about the vision and its implementation
(inspirational communication)
I completely I most partly I more or less I don’t agree I don’t agree at
agree agree agree all

  XII  
 Appendix 3. Observation template

Agree Agree to Merely Do not Comments

Personal Recognition completely most part agree agree at all

Pays attention to work

groups’ efforts

Encourages
individuals/work
teams in their
performance

Encourages
individuals in their
work role

Indication of
appreciation of the
effort from the group
members

Shows indications of
what work is being
done in the work
group and by whom

Intellectual
Stimulation

Uses work group's

suggestions to make
decisions that affect

  XIII  
them

Makes decisions that

are based only on
his/her own ideas

Encourages work
group members to
express
ideas/suggestions

Encourages work
group members to
solve problems
together

Supportive
Leadership

Considers work
group's/member’s
ideas when he/she
disagrees with them

Listens to work
group's/member’s
ideas and suggestions

Shows concern or
there exists indications
of caring about work
group members'
personal problems

  XIV  
Takes the time to
discuss work group
members' concerns
patiently

Shows concern for

work group members'
success

Treats work group

members as equals

Gets along with work

group members

Finds time to chat with

work group members

Provides help to work

group/members

Inspirational
Communication

Gives all work group

members a chance to
voice their opinions

Gives work group

member’s honest and
fair answers

Suggests ways to
improve group
performance

  XV  
Talk enthusiastically
about what needs to be
accomplished

Vision

Leads by example

Helps work group see

areas in which they
need more training

Helps work group

focus on goals

Explains company
goals

Explains rules and

expectations to my
work group

Explains his/her
decisions and actions
to work group

Explains how work

group fits into the
company

Articulate a
compelling vision of
the future.

  XVI  
Sets high standards for
performance by his/her
own behavior

Sets a good example

by the way he/she
behaves

  XVII