Is leadership in the eye of the beholder?

The HRM literature argues that intended leadership practices can be perceived entirely different by employees, and that perceived practices are more likely to be related to performance than intended practices, because perceived practices are closer related with motivation and commitment. Using a sample of 1,621 teachers and 79 Danish high schools, we find that intended and perceived transformational and transactional leadership strategies are only weakly correlated, and that only perceived strategies (both transformational and transactional) are significantly related to objectively measured school performance.