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Leader-Member Relations as a Function of Rapport Management

University of Alabama

Charles D. White

University of Alabama

Diane E. Johnson

University of Alabama

Leader-member interaction is important to organizations. Unfortu nately, such exchanges can also be a leading cause of employee dis tress. Recent Research calls for leaders to develop higher quality rela tions with their members, which in turn will increase communication satisfaction. Scholars have also suggested additional research that focuses on interaction between leaders and members to better under stand how leaders can and should manage such relationships. How ever, there is considerable evidence that leaders and members do not agree about the quality of their relationship. In this article, we address how leaders can build better relations with their members. Specifically, we explain how leaders might improve the quality of their relationship with members by focusing on interpersonal communication strategy. First, we focus on a competing values framework to clearly establish the importance of relationship building in effective management. Second, we define communication strategies for building better leader- member relationships by borrowing concepts from rapport management in sociolinguistics. Finally, we demonstrate how our model of leader ship communication (based on a synthesis of competing values and rapport management theory) explains the quality of leader-member exchanges.

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