The leadership ideology of aircraft commanders

Abstract

132 aircraft commanders indicated, on the Leadership Behavior Description Questionnaire, how they believed they should behave as leaders. They were also described by 1103 members of their crews (average per commander = 8.3 descriptions). On each scale of the Questionnaire—Initiating Structure and Consideration—the Commanders' average score was significantly higher than the average score based on the crewmen's responses. However, the correlation between the commanders' and crewmen's scores were low, suggesting "… that on the whole the aircraft commander's knowledge of how he should behave as a leader has little bearing upon how he is perceived as behaving by the members of his crew." (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)