Building on 35 semi-structured interviews and a 225-respondent questionnaire, this study explores the social representation of leadership among top French executives and discusses its relationships with their leadership learning practices. The article introduces and discusses the results of a study exploring the implicit theory of leadership among top French executives. The results emphasize the importance given by top executives to developing their leadership, highlighting the centrality of charisma, vision and people management in the content of the representation. They also describe top executives’ experiences and beliefs about the leadership learning process. Beyond describing the implicit theory of a social group, the author suggests using the study of implicit leadership theories as a tool to question the formation of leadership theories, as well as the training practices of top executives.
- leadership
- implicit leadership theories
- social representations
- top executives