Evidence-Based Leader Behavior Encyclopedia

Our encyclopedia is designed to help students and researchers identify evidence-based leader behaviors from the top scholarly journals. The behaviors can be used to help reach goals in the Sanger Leadership Journey. Please note, we are constantly adding new research articles and looking into new features. If you have comments or suggestions, reach out to us.

To search for a specific behavior, use the filters below to select. You do not need to select a filter for each category. You can view more information about the Michigan Model quadrants here, including a self-assessment you can take.

Do you have a journal article and behavior to submit? Use our form and we will review and add it.

Collaborating

Organization | Culture

Behavior:

Schedule a brief “legacy huddle” at the start of major projects: invite employees to share a story, symbol, or practice linked to an admired former leader and then connect that legacy to today’s objectives. Field evidence from a merger study shows that deliberately activating these “organizational ghosts” refreshes shared values, reassures members during change, and steers collective choices toward the culture’s founding ideals

Citation:
Bednar, J. S., & Brown, J. A. (2024). Organizational ghosts: How “ghostly encounters” enable former leaders to influence current organizational members. Academy of Management Journal, 67(3), 737-766.

Collaborating

Team | Inclusion

Behavior:

Start each remote week with a 15-minute video huddle where every teammate shares a personal win or challenge, then co-create simple digital norms (camera-on, real-time chat praise, virtual coffee breaks) and revisit them monthly. The COVID-era field interviews show that leaders who keep piloting and refining these rituals with follower feedback rebuild a shared sense of belonging, ensure all voices are heard, and counteract the isolation that distance can breed.

Citation:
Beijer, S. E., Knappert, L., & Stephenson, K. A. (2024). “It doesn't make sense to stick with old patterns”: How leaders adapt their behavior to foster inclusion in a disruptive context. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 45(9), 1315-1343.

Collaborating

Team | Inclusion

Behavior:

Each time you publicly support an issue that touches your own identity group, deliberately pair it with a timely statement backing a group you do not belong to. Consistent, cross-group advocacy prevents your later silence from being read as bias and sustains employees’ sense that you are broadly supportive of diversity and social justice.

Citation:
Birnbaum, H. J., McClanahan, K. J., & Unzueta, M. (2024). Silence on injustices speaks volumes: When and how silence impacts perceptions of managers. Journal of Applied Psychology.

Drive

Individual | Influence

Behavior:

Base your authority on expertise and voluntary followership rather than intimidation. Share know-how, credit others publicly, and frame requests around how the whole team benefits. Research shows that this “prestige” style signals strong moral character, tightens norms against cheating and corner-cutting, and cuts followers’ unethical behavior, whereas a dominance stance does the reverse

Citation:
Brady, G. L., & Sivanathan, N. (2024). More than meets the eye: the unintended consequence of leader dominance orientation on subordinate ethicality. Organization Science, 35(4), 1322-1341.

Collaborating

Team | Team inclusion

Behavior:

Take a moment to reflect on your friend group. Research shows that the presence of diversity is not enough to foster meaningful intergroup interactions because cross-race and cross-class interactions in college occur less often than expected. However, interactions across racial and social class predicted better academic performance for students.

Citation:
Carey, R. M., Stephens, N. M., Townsend, S. S., & Hamedani, M. G. (2022). Is diversity enough? Cross-race and cross-class interactions in college occur less often than expected, but benefit members of lower status groups when they occur. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Driving Results

Organization | Org Competitiveness

Behavior:

The findings indicate that lawyers often adopt uncooperative strategies in court to visibly distance themselves from opposing counsel who were once collaborators, highlighting a critical mechanism by which past collaborations can undermine rather than support future cooperative endeavors.

Citation:
Uribe, J., Sytch, M., & Kim, Y. H. (2020). When Friends Become Foes: Collaboration as a Catalyst for Conflict. Administrative Science Quarterly, 65(3), 751–794. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48589137

Driving Results

Individual | Influence

Behavior:

To lead or to be liked? Michigan Ross Professor Charleen Case and colleagues uncovered that leaders who are worried about prestige and how others perceive them often make bad decisions at the expense of the group. Experiment with divorcing your own feelings and ego from decisions and making the best decision for your team.

Citation:
Case, C. R., Bae, K. K., & Maner, J. K. (2018). To lead or to be liked: When prestige-oriented leaders prioritize popularity over performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(4), 657–676.