Using the Repertory Grid Technique to Identify a Good Leader? Implications for Leading Organisations

The findings of this essay demonstrate the complex nature of leadership and the ambiguous understanding of the topic.

The shortcomings of the Repertory Grid Technique will illustrate why leadership as an academic subject is too complex to be elicited with a single theory, how ambiguity of the term 'leadership' causes bias in the research, and how problems arise in an organisational context.

A subsequent discussion on the Repertory Grid Technique presents a re-thought model as an approach to partly overcome the limitations of the original model. The failure of this approach will then be used as the basis for arguing that it might be necessary for organisations to re-think their idea of ‘leadership’.