Practical Innovation in Government

3

The Critical Role of the Front-Line Leader

In the mid-1980s, Fred Luthans, a professor at the University of Nebraska, led a research project to study how “successful and effective [managers] do things differently from their unsuccessful and less effective counterparts.”¹ His findings were eye-opening, and a bit unsettling.

Over a four-year period, Luthans’s research team tracked and categorized the activities of 457 different managers in a number of large companies and government organizations. When the data was analyzed, the team discovered dramatic differences between “successful” managers—that is, those who were promoted rapidly—and “effective” managers—those whose units performed well and whose employees were highly engaged. In common ...