Her Vision Guiding Him Toward ChangeThe Interactive Effects of Visionary Leadership, Leader Gender, and Follower Gender

Two theories walk into the same room and point in opposite directions. Role congruity theory suggests that women who act assertively face punishment — backlash is the social tax on assertiveness when it violates the communal expectations tied to the female gender role. Expectancy violation theory presents the opposite view — exceed a stereotype and you receive a benefit, because observers enhance their competence attributions when something desirable occurs that contradicts their predictions. Now place a woman in front of her team and observe her articulate a clear, compelling vision of where they should be in five years. Which theory prevails? That is the precise question Martin Buss, Mara Metzger, and Eric Kearney aimed to answer in this paper. The results reveal that the answer depends on who is in the audience. The key to understanding why visionary leadership serves as the right test case is a clear definition of what the construct actually represents. Visionary leadership, as defined by van Knippenberg and Stam, is a specific behavior: the communication of an image of the collective's future. It is not transformational leadership broadly, nor is it just charisma. It's simply here is where we are going, and here is what we can become. That communication is assertive — it indicates goal-orientation, ambition, and control over direction. However, it is not dominating, aggressive, or self-promoting. This distinction is crucial because the backlash literature, when examined closely, shows that what triggers penalties is not agency itself. It is the perceived lack of communal attributes that observers infer from certain forms of agency — explicit dominance, hostility, or self-aggrandizement. Visionary leadership is directive without being interpersonally threatening, making it a candidate for agentic behavior that could signal competence without violating communal expectations. Here is the integrated argument the authors develop. Leader prototypes significantly align with male gender stereotypes — effective leaders are typically perceived as confident, assertive, decisive, and agentic. Female leaders, however, face a different baseline expectation. When a woman stands up and delivers a vision that unmistakably exemplifies effective leadership, she accomplishes two things simultaneously: she meets the expectations followers have for good leaders, and she surpasses the lower expectations followers have for her based on her gender. According to the augmentation logic derived from Kelley's work, observers assign extra causal weight to desirable results that occur despite contradictory conditions. The outcome: her competence attributions are amplified. This does not happen for male leaders because a male leader's visionary behavior confirms both role and gender expectations — it aligns precisely with what was predicted. Buss, Metzger, and Kearney relate this to an identity-based perspective on leader-follower relationships drawn from Sluss and Ashforth. When followers view a leader as highly competent and matching the valued prototype, they are more inclined to incorporate that leader into their personal self-concept — a process referred to as identification. This identification drives behavioral support for the leader's agenda. Consequently, the hypothesized causal chain is as follows: visionary leadership leads to perceived competence, which contributes to follower identification with the leader, ultimately resulting in follower support for change. The five hypotheses formalize this framework. H1 establishes a baseline serial mediation — visionary leadership predicts support for change indirectly, sequentially through competence and then identification. H2 asserts that leader gender moderates the first link: the positive impact of visionary leadership on perceived competence is stronger for female leaders than for male leaders. H3 translates that into the indirect chain — the conditional indirect effect via competence and identification is larger for female leaders. H4 introduces a third moderator: follower gender. Men, on average, possess more traditionally masculine interpretations of leadership, leading to a larger disparity between their gender-based expectations for a female leader and the prototypical behavior she exhibits. This larger gap results in a greater positive expectancy violation. Therefore, the effect of visionary leadership on competence, which is already stronger for female leaders, is heightened when the follower is male. H5 embeds that within the entire indirect chain — the moderated-moderated mediation, where the conditional indirect effect peaks in female leader, male follower pairs. To test this, the team conducted two studies. The first study involved an experimental vignette with one hundred ninety-seven undergraduate participants recruited from a German university, with a mean age of twenty-two point six four, consisting of one hundred male and ninety-seven female participants. It was a fully between-subjects factorial design: two levels of visionary leadership crossed with two levels of leader gender, with participant gender measured as a factor. Participants watched a short video featuring a startup CEO, portrayed by either a male or female actor. In the high visionary condition, the leader communicated where the company was headed and why it was significant. In the low visionary condition, the leader discussed current technologies and present operations. Both conditions had the same length and focused on the same domain — the only differences were in temporal orientation and the presence of a vision. The manipulations were effective. Participants in the high visionary condition scored a mean of six point zero eight on the visionary leadership assessment compared to five point two zero in the low condition. Leader gender identification was nearly perfect — ninety-eight percent correct in the female actor condition, and two percent in the male condition. Perceived realism and actor attractiveness did not vary between the conditions. The results for the two-way interaction were distinct. Leader gender moderated the impact of visionary leadership on perceived competence: the unstandardized coefficient was zero point seventy-three, with a standard error of zero point thirty, and a p-value of zero point zero fifteen, reflecting a three percent increase in explained variance. Analysis of simple slopes revealed that the effect of visionary leadership on perceived competence was one point zero nine for female leaders — large and highly significant — and only zero point thirty-six for male leaders, which did not achieve conventional significance. This represents a substantial difference in effect size, aligning precisely with the prediction of H2. Then, the analysis progressed to the three-way interaction involving follower gender. The coefficient was negative one point seventeen, with a standard error of zero point fifty-nine and a p-value of zero point zero forty-eight. Four conditional effects emerged when analyzing the combinations of leader and follower gender. The female leader-male follower effect was one point fifty-two — significantly the highest by a considerable margin, with a p-value below zero point zero zero one. The male leader-male follower effect was zero point nineteen, which was not significant. The male leader-female follower effect was zero point fifty-three, and the female leader-female follower effect was zero point sixty-eight. The contrast tests confirmed that the female leader-male follower group exhibited a stronger positive effect than each of the other three combinations. The experimental design supports causal inferences about the manipulations driving these perceptions — random assignment effectively achieved its aim. Study two transitioned into the field. Buss, Metzger, and Kearney recruited two hundred eighty-eight leader-follower pairs, primarily from Germany, utilizing a three-wave design with one month between waves. During the first wave, followers rated their leader's visionary leadership using Kearney and colleagues’ five-item scale, which had an alpha of zero point ninety. Leaders also provided demographic information. In the second wave, followers rated perceptions of leader competence, with an alpha of zero point eighty-three. In the third wave, followers rated their identification with the leader, with an alpha of zero point ninety-three, and leaders rated follower support for change, which also had an alpha of zero point ninety-three. This separation in rating sources — leaders rating follower behavior instead of followers self-assessing — is significant for addressing common method bias. The confirmatory factor analysis on the four-factor model demonstrated adequate fit: a Comparative Fit Index of zero point ninety-three, a Root Mean Square Error of Approximation of zero point zero seven, and it fit significantly better than three-, two-, and one-factor alternatives. The results of the serial mediation were validated. The indirect effect of visionary leadership on follower support for change, sequentially through competence and then identification, was measured at zero point zero three, with a ninety-five percent bootstrap confidence interval from zero point zero one to zero point zero six. Visionary leadership influences perceived competence, which leads to identification, ultimately resulting in behavioral support for the leader's change agenda. Leader gender moderated the first link, replicating the vignette finding in real organizations. The interaction coefficient was zero point one three, with a standard error of zero point zero five and a p-value of zero point zero fourteen. The analysis of simple slopes showed a stronger effect for female leaders, measured at zero point two six, compared to zero point one three for male leaders — both positive and significant, yet the effect for female leaders was double that for male leaders. The conditional indirect effect for female leaders was zero point zero five, with a confidence interval from zero point zero two to zero point zero nine, compared to zero point zero two for male leaders. The three-way interaction involving follower gender was replicated as well. The coefficient was negative zero point twenty-nine, with a standard error of zero point eleven and a p-value of zero point zero twelve. Female leader and male follower pairs exhibited the largest conditional simple slope for visionary leadership on competence: zero point four six, nearly three and a half times the male leader-male follower slope of zero point one three. The conditional indirect effect — the full path from visionary leadership through competence and identification to support for change — was zero point zero eight for female leader and male follower pairs, with a confidence interval from zero point zero three to zero point zero sixteen. In contrast, it was zero point zero two for male leader and male follower pairs and zero point zero three for female leader and female follower pairs. The signal is consistent, coherent, and replicates the experimental finding across two distinct data sources and temporal separation between constructs. Now, a critical question arises: does this come at a cost? One concern with expectancy violation research is that competence gains might be offset by losses in warmth or likability — you may exceed expectations on one dimension but observers might discount you on another. The team conducted benevolence checks in both studies. In the first study, there was a significant three-way interaction on benevolence, but notably, the conditional effect for female leader and male follower pairs was positive — measured at one point two seven, with a standard error of zero point twenty-seven and a p-value below zero point zero zero one. This indicates no evidence of a warmth penalty. In the second study, the three-way interaction on benevolence was not significant, recorded at negative zero point ten with a p-value of zero point forty-four, and effects remained positive directionally for female leaders. The amplification of perceived competence does not come at the expense of perceived warmth in these samples. Why does visionary leadership evade the usual backlash? The argument centers on the specific structure of the behavior. Backlash appears to stem from violations of communal expectations — such as overt dominance, hostility, or self-promotion — rather than from agency itself. Visionary leadership is directive and forward-looking, but it is not aggressively interpersonal. It conveys "I know where we can go" instead of "I am better than you." This distinction enables the positive expectancy violation mechanism to function without triggering the prescriptive communal penalty. The authors clarify that this claim does not extend to all forms of agentic behavior. It specifically pertains to visionary leadership as a behavior that aligns with leader-role prototypes without contravening communal expectations. It is essential to acknowledge the limitations. Two hundred eighty of the two hundred eighty-eight field dyads were located in Germany. The experimental sample consisted of German undergraduates with a mean age of twenty-two. Cultural context influences both gender stereotypes and leader prototypes, and the augmentation effect observed in male followers depends on them adhering to more traditional masculine interpretations of leadership — an aggregate assumption not measured directly at the individual level within the studies. Although the field study maintains temporal separation, it does not support causal inferences regarding the mediation: while the path from competence to identification to support for change is temporally ordered, it is not experimentally established. The authors underline this point clearly. Replication in diverse cultural contexts and with designs permitting stronger causal tests of the mediation is a necessary next step. What do these findings signify theoretically? The authors navigate the debate between role congruity and expectancy violation not by declaring one theory incorrect, but by illustrating that the content structure of behavior determines which mechanism dominates. Visionary leadership possesses qualities — alignment with leader-role expectations combined with incongruence to gender stereotypes, without violating communal norms — that specifically activate the expectancy violation pathway. Other agentic behaviors with differing structural attributes may activate the role congruity penalty. Consequently, the finding is not that "women do not face backlash"; rather, it is that "this specific form of agentic leadership, for these structural reasons, circumvents backlash and fosters an amplification of competence." For practical application, Buss, Metzger, and Kearney advise that leadership development programs instruct female leaders on how to communicate clear, concrete visions — detailing where the team should be in a few years, what it can achieve, and how current work connects to that future. This is not merely a suggestion to adopt a strategic performance style but rather because empirical evidence demonstrates that this particular behavior leads to significantly enhanced competence attributions, identification, and behavioral support, particularly when enacted by female leaders and especially when their followers are male. In organizations undergoing change, where mobilizing follower support poses a critical challenge, visionary leadership emerges as a particularly effective tool for women — not in spite of gender dynamics, but partly because of them. Two studies, two methods, one coherent outcome. Visionary leadership by female leaders does not incite backlash. Instead, it incites an amplification of competence that flows through identification and results in support for change. This effect is most pronounced among followers most likely to hold the strongest gender-based expectations — male followers of female leaders. This result does not align with the predictions of either theory when considered in isolation. It is what unfolds when the content of the behavior is given serious consideration. This lecture was created by ennepō. Go to https://ennepo.ai to Discover, Create and Follow the latest research in your field. Read when you can. Listen when you want to.