Does what others can(not) see really matter? The relationship between leadership Arena–Reputation–Identity (LARI) model and leader effectiveness.

Leadership scholars recognize that there is value in capturing how leaders view themselves and how they are viewed by others. Recently, the leadership Arena-Reputation-Identity (LARI) model has been advanced as a means of more precisely capturing the shared and unique perspectives that underlie multisource ratings of leadership. Despite its strengths, several critical questions pertaining to this model remain unanswered: (1) Does the wealth of information provided by the LARI model have any bearing on the effectiveness of a leader? (2) Does the amount of variance explained by a particular source within the LARI model depend on the observability of the leadership dimension being rated? (3) Does the LARI model generalize to the upper echelon of the firms (i.e., senior executives) while also accommodating additional source effects (i.e., board members)? Drawing on multisource ratings of 491 senior executives' leadership competencies, as well as a team-based assessment of their effectiveness, we first conceptually and empirically extend this Model 1 that can accommodate predictive relationships, that is, LARI (S-1) model, and then find that the LARI (S-1) model functions well as a means of conceptualizing multisource ratings of leadership (even in a distinct context and additional sources of ratings). We also find that the LARI (S-1) model captures a significant, and at times, substantial portion of variability in leader effectiveness. Our results also suggest that the extent to which a particular source of leadership ratings predicts a leader's effectiveness is based, in part, on the observability of the leadership dimension being assessed. Implications and future directions are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).