Do You See What I See? Leader–Follower Congruence in Authentic Leadership and Employee Participation

ABSTRACT This study investigates the impacts of authentic leadership from both leader and follower perspectives and explores the effect of perceptual congruence, the level of agreement between the leaders' and followers' evaluations on the leaders' authentic leadership, on employee participation. Through two studies, using a sample of 102 leader‐member dyads from the United States in Study 1 and a sample of 71 R&D teams from Taiwan in Study 2, we found that employee participation is highest when leaders and followers share a high level of perceptual agreement on authentic leadership. These findings highlight the important research and practical implications of examining authentic leadership through a perceptual congruence perspective.