The age factor: Does personal wisdom predict follower perceptions of transformational leadership at different ages?

Transformational leadership is desired since it enables impressive follower outcomes. Within an organizational setting it is sought after due to its positive effects on employee loyalty, commitment and satisfaction. Current research has not examined the effects of age and leaders’ ability to be wise on transformational leadership. The present study investigates how leaders’ personal wisdom is associated with their followers’ perceptions of their ability as transformational leaders. Additionally, the leaders’ age was examined to determine if age moderates this relationship. A mail out, door-to-door hand outs and snowball sampling was utilised to collect spiritual leaders from a variety of faiths and small business owners or managers. In total 80 leaders and 192 followers were analysed across the two samples. Leaders filled out questionnaires measuring their personal wisdom and age. 1-3 of the leaders’ followers completed a measure of their leaders’ transformational leadership. It was hypothesised that there would be a positive relationship between leaders’ personal wisdom and their follower’s perception of them as transformational leaders. In line with leadership categorization theory(Lord, Foti & De Vader, 1984) it was hypothesised that age would moderate this relationship such that wise older leaders would be rated as more transformational than wise younger leaders or unwise leaders regardless of age due to age stereotypes. Results indicate that wisdom predicted overall transformational leadership and the sub-dimensions of inspirational motivation and intellectual stimulation, whilst idealised influence approached conventional levels of statistical significance. The interaction of wisdom and age did not have significant effects on leadership