The knowing-doing gap of leadership: an exploration of leader fear and leader courage and the gap between knowing leadership and engaging in leadership

This research explores the gap between knowing leadership and enacting leadership. It takes an affect-based approach, seeking to understand how leaders view the knowing-doing gap, and how they perceive and experience the impact of fear and courage on their knowing-doing gap. Affective Events Theory is used as the underlying theoretical lens, drawing on emotional,cognitive and behavioral mechanisms to explore the role of fear and courage in widening and bridging the leadership knowing-doing gap, and to shed light on how these may be influenced by and influence individual managers and their leadership contexts. The study pursues a qualitative research design. It relies on purposive sampling, and intends to use semi-structured interviews, observation, and organizational documents. Analytic induction following a phenomenological strategy and thematic analysis is planned for data analysis. The study aims to generate theoretical and practical implications towards leadership enactment and leadership development as well as emotions and leadership