Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe, examine and discuss scholarly literature on reflective leadership, a topic gaining momentum as a result of globalization. Despite the growing popularity of reflective leadership techniques, current and aspiring leaders are struggling to find ways in which to effectively practice reflection as a consequence of a lack of tangible available guidance. Design/methodology/approach – Scholarly literature on reflective leadership was examined and presented in this paper. Discussion on the potential efficacy of reflective leadership is also included as the available literature on the topic is scarce in comparison to other more established leadership techniques. Findings – Reflective leadership has been shown to improve organizational performance. The advent of globalization further intensifies the need for an effective approach leaders may deploy when assessing the long-term consequences of their actions and decisions. Therefore, methods to extend the theory and effective practice of reflective leadership are necessary to enable the future development of leaders. Practical implications – This paper provides leaders with strategies for improving their leadership effectiveness. Practical techniques for utilizing reflective leadership are offered. Originality/value – This paper describes the challenges faced by leaders when adopting reflective leadership as a way to improve organizational performance. A universal framework is presented for the effective practice of reflective leadership. This framework provides a basis for future research to test the efficacy of the model.

Accountability and moral competence are two factors that may have a positive effect on ethical leadership in organizations. This study utilized a survey methodology to investigate the relationship among accountability, moral competence, and ethical leadership in a sample of 103 leaders from a variety of industries and different countries. Accountability was found to be a significant positive predictor of ethical leadership. Moral competence was also found to moderate this relationship such that increases in moral competence enhanced the positive effects of accountability on ethical leadership. The results of the study suggest that organizations can increase ethical leadership throughout the company via accountability (especially selfaccountability) and moral competence by training their leaders to use self-monitoring behaviors and increasing moral education.

Authentic leadership encompasses four dimensions crucial for the success of leadership: self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing and internalised moral perspective. In the context of Business Coaching, authentic leadership is a crucial factor in the coach-client relationship in which the leader demonstrates to others a genuine and honest desire to understand their leadership in order to serve others more effectively. The current study investigated the relationship between leadership style and coaching effectiveness among 96 business coaches from the Professional Business Coaches Alliance (PBCA). Study results indicate authentic leadership and its constitutive factor self-awareness were significantly related to coaching effectiveness. Coaching organisations, franchises and alliances, may benefit from this research if they wish to leverage higher levels of authentic leadership and self-awareness when developing selection, assessment, training and measurement systems.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to determine what motivating strategies followers (comprised of low and high need achievers) view as most necessary from their leaders. Design/methodology/approach -Three survey instruments were administered to 297 working professionals taking business courses offered through a college of management at a private university. Correlational research methodology was used to investigate the relationships between selfattributed needs for achievement on demographic, interest and effort variables. Discriminant analysis was used to determine if motivational and profile characteristics could be used to predict low and high self-attributed need achievers. Findings -The major findings of this study centered on the leader's ability to inspire followers by using a variety of interesting coaching techniques and by building their self-esteem regardless of achievement orientation.Research limitations/implications -The results of this study are tentative and need to be reproduced with a larger, more comprehensive sample of a broader population. Practical implications -This research offers leaders practical techniques for effectively utilizing motivating strategies which may increase their followers' interest and effort in a performance situation. Originality/value -The findings of this study indicating that interest and effort can be used to improve motivation suggest that followers may exhibit significant gains in continuing motivation when relevant techniques are applied by the leader.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop, validate, and test the impacts of reflective leadership (RL) on organizational performance. Design/methodology/approach This is an empirical study based on over 700 survey responses from business leaders around the world. An instrument was developed to validate the model, and the statistical significance of its impacts on organizational performance was tested. Findings The findings show that a model of RL consisting of three leadership practices, creating an open and safe work environment, defining purpose, and challenging assumptions had significant impacts on organizational performance, accounted for 16.5 percent of the variance in the accomplishment of organizational goals; 13.9 percent of the variance in sales; and 14.7 percent of the variance in profits. Research limitations/implications The major limitations are the biases that might be introduced with survey data. There are numerous implications for future research in terms of exploring additional RL practices, their impacts on additional and objective measures of performance, and in exploring the effects of moderating and mediating variables on the impacts of RL on performance. Practical implications The results show that RL is an effective management tool practitioners can employ to improve organizational performance. Originality/value A number of studies have broadly suggested that RL improves organizational performance, but this study empirically tests the impacts of a clearly defined, validated model of leadership on specific measures of performance.