Our field has lost its way. Leadership is what people do in order to influence others so that the others can and will contribute to the objectives of the collective. And yet, when looking at recent leadership research, the “what people do” – the behavioral elements as shown in true actions and choices – are almost completely absent. They have been replaced by evaluative surveys that tend to have tenuous links to reality and correspondingly limited policy implications. If our discipline is to advance as a science and achieve impact, we need to move beyond the ritualized use of questionnaires and become true behavioral scientists, with behaviors as the fundamental units of our understanding. Against this background, in this editorial we discuss the theoretical, operational, and empirical limitations of questionnaires for studying leadership. We then highlight examples of how researchers can better measure leadership as behaviors, as well as antecedents and consequences of those behaviors. We synthesize the discussion and offer concrete recommendations to help our discipline become what it is supposed to be: A science that people look to in order to find actionable guidance for improving their leadership.

我们的领域迷失了方向。领导力是人们为了影响他人而所做的事情，以便其他人能够并且愿意为集体的目标做出贡献。然而，在审视最近的领导力研究时，“人们做什么”——真实行动和选择中所显示的行为要素——几乎完全不存在。它们已被评估性调查所取代，这些调查往往与现实的联系很薄弱，政策影响也相应有限。如果我们的学科要作为一门科学不断发展并产生影响，我们就需要超越问卷调查的仪式化使用，成为真正的行为科学家，将行为作为我们理解的基本单位。在此背景下，在这篇社论中，我们讨论了领导力研究问卷的理论、操作和实证局限性。然后，我们重点介绍研究人员如何更好地衡量领导行为以及这些行为的前因和后果的例子。我们综合讨论并提供具体建议，以帮助我们的学科成为它应有的样子：人们寻求一门科学，以便找到提高领导力的可行指导。