Leadership Influence: A Contact Perspective

Whereas leadership has been vigorously studied in terms of ability to influence followers, the contact perspective has not been emphasised. Building on the contact hypothesis proposed by Gordon Allport, leadership is reconsidered as a way of influencing followers. We define leadership in terms of influence and show how leaders are connected to followers. We review existing leadership models as well as influence tactics and follower typologies. We introduce the leadership contact influence model with ten hypotheses. We propose a three-dimensional contact model: length, width and breadth of the contact. We review other critical aspects of the contact model: quality and quantity time, generational leadership-followership, leadership-followership dilemma, absentee leaders-followers, hands on-off leaders-followers and values, virtues and visions of a leader. Finally, we reflect on leadership contact standard in terms of its source.