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The purpose of this paper is to develop and evaluate a leadership development program with focus on transformational leadership and communication. It is explored whether these aspects of leadership can be trained in the course of a two-day intervention. Furthermore, it is tested if pre-training differences among leaders have an influence on the effectiveness of participating in the leadership intervention.

In the study, 38 leaders took part in the two-day training session. The control group consisted of 59 leaders. Information was collected from participating leaders’ followers (n=356) on pre- and post-training measures of transformational leadership as well as on communication skills (attentive and impression-leaving style).

Results show that transformational leadership behaviors improved more after training in the experimental group (EG) than they did in the control group. Also, ratings of the attentive communication style improved more in the EG compared to the control group. Furthermore, participants of the leadership development program benefitted to different degrees from their training. Participants who initially had a medium score showed the best improvement.

The present study advances the scope of leadership development by also considering the trainability of communication skills. Also, insights on the contingency of training effects are provided.

The demands of balancing work and family roles are associated with stress experiences. Stress increases if work impinges too far on what is required from one’s family while a balance between these demands tends to decreases stress. The purpose of this paper is to investigate resiliencefor the extent to which it can predict both work-family conflict (WFC) and balance (WFB). Moreover, cortisol levels will be used as a physiological indicator of stress.

Totally, 35 employed parents with children up to the age of six took part in the study. Salivary cortisol was collected three times a day.

Results show that cortisol levels are related to internal as well as external WFCs while WFB is not significantly linked with cortisol. Resilience has a beneficial influence on the mean cortisol level. Moreover, resilience is also advantageous for the work-family interplay, especially WFB.

The study concludes with suggestions for further research and advises that organizational and individual health promoting activities should seek to implement WFB as well as resilience strategies.

For the first time, the aim is to assess whether work-family interplay and resilience are associated with an objective biomarker of stress, namely cortisol.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive examination of different leadership constructs investigated extensively, namely transformational and transactional leadership, laissez-faire, consideration, and initiating structure, as well as leader-member-exchange. The theoretical overlap as well as the empirical correlations between these constructs is explored.

Overall, 735 correlations were analyzed to generate a meta-analytical correlation matrix.

The meta-analyses revealed highly interrelated leadership constructs (0.26<∣ρ∣<0.74). Results of confirmatory factor analyses suggest a one factor solution of leadership.

The uniqueness and construct validity of leadership constructs is challenged, calling for a revision of the respective leadership theories. Ultimately, an integrative theory of leadership should be developed which accounts for similarities as well as differences between leadership constructs. An integrated theory of leadership would help: researchers to combine their forces and, consequently, organizations across the globe to better select and develop leaders for the future.

By taking a critical, cross-theoretical compare and contrast approach, the present study yielded a comprehensive picture of the interrelationship and partial redundancy of several of the currently researched leadership constructs.

New insights into the overlap between leadership constructs were generated and confirmed by meta-analyses.