Why not use just the self form of the MLQ? Why are the ratings of others important?
There are many reasons, but here are the ones that are perhaps most important to consider: • Leaders can have unique relationships with peers, followers and other leaders, thus the ratings will differ as a consequence of how unique these relationships are with their constituency. • Related to point 1, since leadership is in the ‘eye of the beholder’, why would you want to collect data from only the ‘self beholder’. • There is considerable evidence indicating that self and other ratings often times do not agree, for reasons mentioned above. • The choice of which rater source to use, should be tied to the research question. If you are interested in how leaders think about their own leadership, then just collect self. In every other instance, why would you not collect another source? • In sum, the self form does not measure actual leadership but only the perception of leadership. This is an important question so to expand this, at core, leadership is in the eye of the beholder. Thus, to t
