In agreement? Leader-team perceptual distance in organizational learning affects work performance

Leaders and their teams often differ in their perceptions of organizational issues, which have been suggested to influence both employee well-being and performance. The present study examined leader-team perceptual distance regarding organizational learning and its consequences for employee work performance. Sixty-eight leaders and their teams from the Swedish forest industry participated in the study. Polynomial regression with response surface analyses revealed that the perceptual distance between leaders and their teams regarding organizational learning was related to lowered work performance, beyond the influence of employee ratings alone. The analyses also indicated that work performance tended to decrease when the leader rated organizational learning as higher than the team. Our findings suggest that it is important for organizations to minimize the perceptual distance between the leaders and their teams and that further research on the construct of leader-team perceptual distance is warranted.