About the Project

Leadership in the United States is being closely examined and weighed in on heavily by the public, especially with the proliferation of social media and charged nature of current sociopolitical issues. This attention to the leadership landscape pervades not only the political and business spheres, but also education, media, non-profit, law enforcement, sport, community, and religious sectors, among others. People’s perception and willingness to follow is an important and powerful aspect of the leadership process; thus, systematically taking the temperature of follower perceptions is essential. Further, tracking trends in follower perceptions over time as various aspects of context shift is even more informative. 

To this end, we developed the Attitudes about Leadership in the United States national survey to help gauge the attitudes of people who live in the United States toward leadership within the nation. Rather than focus on people’s confidence in or approval of certain leaders, our survey investigates people’s attitudes toward leaders and leadership in general yet from specific angles and within various levels and sectors, including their purported willingness to follow leaders based on particular identities and values, their outlook on the ability of different generations to step up and lead, their impression of the impact of social media on leadership, and their view on the relationship between leadership and current events such as activism and social divides. Although certainly a challenge and never fully controllable, the survey was designed to be as apolitical and ideologically unbiased as possible.

Data that exposes the public’s attitudes toward leadership within the United States will be helpful to current and aspiring leaders, followers, leadership scholars, and leadership educators. Our nationally representative survey of 1,800-2,050 respondents has been conducted annually since 2019, with five years of longitudinal data collected for analysis and comparison thus far. Details about the survey itself can be found on the About the Survey page.