Police leaders as role models in feedback-seeking: how police leaders’ negative feedback-seeking encourages, reinforces, and enables their followers’ negative feedback-seeking

ABSTRACT

This paper examines leaders’ role modeling of negative feedback-seeking behavior (NFSB). We hypothesized that leaders who solicit negative feedback from their followers increase followers’ negative feedback-seeking and that this relationship is moderated by leaders’ differentiation in negative feedback-seeking. Leaders engaging in authentic NFSB by not differentiating (i.e., asking all followers equally for feedback) should yield a stronger effect on followers’ NFSB. Data was collected from leaders and followers from two German police departments (N = 130 leader-follower dyads). Results support the hypotheses showing leaders’ role modeling of NFSB. Particularly in the police, errors and mistakes are often concealed or even covered up. Our results show that it is vital for police leaders to actively solicit critical information from all their followers to signal their followers that this behavior is accepted and welcomed. Our findings can be considered when decisions regarding leadership selection, promotion, and development are made.

KEYWORDS:

• Role modeling
• police leaders
• feedback-seeking behavior
• feedback

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Anastasiia Lynnyk

Anastasiia Lynnyk is a Doctoral student at the German Police University, Münster. She received her Master of Science in Psychology at the University of Münster, Germany. Her research to date is centered around police leaders’ behaviors, particularly their feedback-seeking behaviors and its antecedents and consequences. She currently works at the State Office for Education, Training and Personnel Affairs NRW (Landesamt für Ausbildung, Fortbildung und Personalangelegenheiten NRW), the professionally and scientifically recognized, quality-oriented educational institution of the North Rhine-Westphalian police. She works in the department for Leadership and Cooperation, Training for Leader.

Andrea Fischbach

Andrea Fischbach is Full Professor of Social, Work, and Organizational Psychology at the German Police University, Münster. She received her Diploma in Psychology at Goethe-University, Frankfurt, Germany, her PhD at Georg-August-University, Göttingen, Germany, and she has held a Junior-Professorship for Organizational Psychology at Trier University, Germany. She has published more than 65 professional journal articles and book chapters on emotional labor, job crafting, organizational justice, and work diversity (age/gender/culture), and their implications for both performance and worker health. She has led several funded research projects (1+ Million Euros) including one three-year project on emotional labor in retail stores. She co-edited with Benjamin Schneider the Special Issue of the Journal of Service Management Research, Emotional Labor and Service. Her research focuses on the dynamics of work conditions, leadership, and HR management to help understand what makes people engaged, motivated, and healthy at work.