Hong Kong Journal of Occupational Therapy (2014) 24, 35e42

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Leadership Style Preferenceof Undergraduate Occupational TherapyStudents in Australia

Ted Brown a,*, Brett Williams b, Laura Jolliffe c

a Monash University, Department of Occupational Therapy, School of Primary Health Care,Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Peninsula Campus, Frankston, Victoria,Australiab Monash University, Department of Community Emergency Health and Paramedic Practice,School of Primary Health Care, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing, and Health Sciences,Peninsula Campus, Frankston, Victoria, Australiac Occupational Therapist, Alfred Health, Prahan, Victoria, Australia

Received 25 June 2013; received in revised form 26 September 2013; accepted 28 April 2014Available online 14 August 2014

KEYWORDSleadership;occupational therapy;students;education

Conflicts of interest: All contributi* Corresponding author. Ted Brown,

Occupational Therapy, School of PrimCampus, Building G, 4th floor, McMah

E-mail address: ted.brown@monas

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.hkjot.201569-1861/Copyright ª 2014, Elsevier

Summary Background: Occupational therapy graduates are expected to assume leadershiproles in a variety of contexts and capacities.Objective: To investigate the leadership styles of undergraduate occupational therapy students.Methods: First, second, third, and fourth year undergraduate occupational therapy studentsfrom one Australian university were asked to complete the What’s My Leadership Style (WMLS)questionnaire.Results: The total sample response rate was 86.3% (nZ 182/211). Overall there was a statisticallysignificant difference in students’ preference for the leadership styles (p < .001). The two mostpreferred leadership styles were the Considerate and Spirited styles while the two least preferredwere theDirect and Systematic leadership styles. Therewere no statistically significant differencesin preference for anyof the four leadership styles basedon students’ sex, age, or year level of study.Conclusion: The Considerate leadership style is characterised by creating comfortable working en-vironments, following established procedures, and creating an easy work pace, while the Spiritedleadership style is about inspiring people, generating excitement, turning work into play, and ral-lying people. It is recommended that leadership be integrated into occupational therapy curriculaso as to adequately equip students for future professional practice.Copyright ª 2014, Elsevier (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved.

ng authors declare no conflicts of interest.Associate Professor, Undergraduate Program Convenor and Postgraduate Coordinator, Department ofary Health Care, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing, and Health Sciences, Monash University e Peninsulaons Road, PO Box 527, Frankston, Victoria, 3199, Australia. Tel.: þ613 9904 4462.h.edu (T.Brown).

14.04.002(Singapore) Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved.

36 T. Brown et al.

Introduction

The ability to lead is a key trait that many managers andpractitioners need in order to be successful in the health-care sector, including the allied health professions. Lead-ership, personality traits, and leadership style have beenextensively researched in the corporate world (Bono &Judge, 2004), comparatively, however, there has beenmuch less empirical leadership literature in the occupa-tional therapy field and about occupational therapy stu-dents (Braveman, 2006). Several doctoral theses have beencompleted that examined the leadership styles of occupa-tional therapy managers (Alexander, 2006; Luebben, 1997;Reiss, 2000; Wilson, 2004). In addition, the importance ofeffective and strategic leadership for the occupationaltherapy profession has been offered (Moyers, 2007; Rodger,2011), and an occupation based model of leadership hasbeen proposed called the Leadership in Enabling Occupa-tion (LEO) Model (Townsend, Polatajko, Craik, & vonZweck, 2011). The leadership qualities of occupationaltherapy department programme directors have also beeninvestigated to a limited extent (Dudek-Shriber, 1997;Snodgrass, Douthitt, Ellis, Wade, & Plemons, 2008). How-ever, very little research has been undertaken to investi-gate the leadership traits of occupational therapy studentsand novice practitioners.

Leadership style “is the manner and approach ofproviding direction, implementing plans, and motivatingpeople” (Clark, 2010, p. 1). Three main leadership styleshave been identified: authoritarian or autocratic; partici-pative or democratic; delegative or free reign (Newstrom &Davis, 1993). Two other leadership styles have been iden-tified as well, those being laissez-faire and paternalistic(Foster, 2002). Typically, effective leaders will use all fivestyles, with one or two normally being dominant. Ineffec-tive leaders usually stick to one leadership style and do notexhibit flexibility or adaptability depending on the situa-tional demands (Martindale, 2011).

Healthcare organisations are heavily influenced by po-litical agendas, economic climate, changing policies andprocedures, decreased reimbursement, increased compe-tition, and a more informed, assertive clientele (Braveman,2006). Therefore organisations in the healthcare sectorhave to constantly adapt to these pressures. These externalinfluences impact both upper administrative levels andlower levels of the healthcare managerial hierarchy (Nugus,Greenfield, Travaglia, Westbrook, & Braithwaite, 2010).Ultimately, students and new graduate therapists may findthemselves in both formal and informal leadership rolessooner than anticipated or desired (Swearingen, 2009).Furthermore, managers hold high expectations for thera-pists they supervise to problem solve creatively and work asefficient members of multidisciplinary teams. Workingwithin a team itself requires leadership skills as both theteam leader (which is often a rotating and/or shared role)and as the representative of their profession within thatteam (Rowe, 1996). The same could be said for other sec-tors (e.g., education, early intervention, aged care, voca-tional rehabilitation, public health, private industry),where new occupational therapy graduates may seekemployment. New graduates may also be called upon to

assume leadership positions outside of the work settingsuch as membership of the management board of a com-munity agency or membership of the local executive of theprofessional association.

Effective leadership affords collaboration, cooperation,conflict management, a united and shared vision/goal,empowerment, innovations, advocacy for the profession,enhanced individual knowledge, trust, and personal power(Barker, 2001; Day, 2000; Levey, Hill, & Greene, 2002). It hasbeen hypothesised and highly researched that the ability ofan individual to obtain/encompass these traits correlateswith certain personality types (Best, 2010; Bono & Judge,2004). There are several well-established personality in-ventories that assess traits that pertain to leadership styles.The most widely used personality test is the Myers andMcCaulley (1985) Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Schneider &Smith, 2004). Similar to this, the What’s My Leadership StyleQuestionnaire is based on the work of psychological theoristsCarl Jung and William Moultan Marston (HRDQ, 2003) toassociate personality traits with dominant leadership styles.

Given that the occupational therapy profession is femaledominated with only about 5% of all practitioners beingmale (Grant, Robinson, & Muir, 2004; Service and WorkforcePlanning Branch, Department of Human Services, State ofVictoria, 2008), this may also impact on the leadershipstyles that occupational therapists exhibit. Several studieshave been completed that compared the leadership char-acteristics of female and male managers. For example, in ayear-long study conducted by Caliper (2005), a Princeton,New Jersey-based management consulting firm, 59 womenleaders from large companies in the United Kingdom andthe United States completed in-depth interviews and apersonality inventory. The study focused on the personalityqualities and motivational factors of female leaders andidentified a number of traits that distinguished womenleaders from their male counterparts when it came toleadership. The findings can be summarised into fourstatements about women’s leadership styles: (a) womenleaders were more persuasive than their male counter-parts; (b) when dealing with controversy and rejection,women leaders learned from adversity and carried on withan “I’ll show you” attitude; (c) women leaders demonstratean inclusive, team-building leadership style of problemsolving and decision making; and (d) women leaders weremore likely to ignore rules and take risks. According toRiggio (2010), “using the theory of transformational lead-ership as an indicator of successful leadership (trans-formational leaders are inspirational, positive role models,concerned about followers, empowering, and push fol-lowers to be creative and take chances), research showsthat women, as a group, have more transformationalqualities than men” (p. 1). A study by Catalyst (2005)concluded that in the workplace where there are leadersand followers (subordinates), “women leaders take care,men leaders take charge” (p. 1).

There has been very little published literature thatexplores the leadership styles of occupational therapystudents (Brown, 1989; Landa-Gonzalez, 2008). Therefore,the aim of this study was to investigate the leadershipstyles of undergraduate occupational therapy students bycompleting a leadership style questionnaire and examiningif there was a difference in leadership styles between the

Leadership style 37

different level of student (year of programme). From this,the dominant leadership traits of occupational therapystudents were explored to generate a baseline of whatleadership styles are prominent in this group. This was usedto provide insights into how occupational therapy curriculacan be tailored to encourage and foster diversity in lead-ership styles and abilities. As mentioned earlier, diverseleadership styles are required for graduates to explore andfulfill the expanding and varied roles that are becomingafforded to occupational therapists.

Methods

Design

A cross-sectional, paper-based survey of undergraduateoccupational therapy students was conducted.

Participants

All students enrolled in the Bachelor of OccupationalTherapy at Monash University e Peninsula Campus (fouryear levels) were invited to participate in this study duringthe 2010 academic year. Inclusion criteria were beingenrolled as a full time undergraduate student in the fouryear occupational therapy programme and consenting totake part in the study. Questionnaires were distributed to75 first year students, 50 second year students, 36 thirdyear students, and 50 fourth year students. In total, ques-tionnaires were distributed to 211 undergraduate students.A convenience sampling approach was used in this study.

Instrumentation

The What’s My Leadership Style (WMLS) questionnaire isdesigned to identify the leadership styles of participants(HRDQ, 2003) and was selected because it has establishedmeasurement properties and was user-friendly for partici-pants to complete. It consists of 20 dichotomous actionword pairs where participants are asked to distribute fivepoints between two item words. The more points that areawarded to a particular item in each dichotomous actionword pair is indicative of a greater preference for that itemword. The points awarded to items are summed to producethe participants’ preference for four leadership styles:Direct, Spirited, Systematic, and Considerate (see Table 1).A total of 100 points is awarded and the maximum scorethat can be awarded to any one leadership style is 50 andthe minimum is 0. A higher score indicates a higher pref-erence for that leadership style.

The development of the questionnaire involved a reviewof current leadership theory literature that yielded two

Table 1 HRDQ Leadership Style Descriptions.

Direct � High assertiveness � LeadsSpirited � High assertiveness � LeadsConsiderate � Low assertiveness � LeadsSystematic � Low assertiveness � Leads

(Source: HRDQ Styles Series, 2003).

different developmental approaches to the assessment ofleadership styles. Both were tested, and both were foundto have face validity (HRDQ, 2003). There was a unanimouspreference from the sample group for the paired actionsover the paired adjectives, and so formed the basis of theWMLS (HRDQ, 2003). Literature supported the action-wordbased items as suited to the current behavioral and situa-tional approaches to leadership. The WMLS was thensampled again and items that participants consistently haddifficultly sorting were either rejected or revised. Finally,input from clients interested in leadership styles werecollated and the final version of the WMLS questionnairewas produced (HRDQ, 2003). The WMLS has documentedreliability and validity (HRDQ, 2003). In the current study,internal consistency (as measured by Cronbach’s alpha co-efficients) for the WMLS Direct, Spirited, Systematic, andConsiderate leadership style scales were all above 0.80.

Procedures

Ethics approval was obtained from the Monash UniversityHuman Research Ethics Committee (MUHREC). At the conclu-sion of lectures for each year level for the undergraduateoccupational therapy course, students were invited to partic-ipate in this study. Studentswereprovidedwith anexplanatorystatement andwere informed that participationwas voluntaryand anonymous. A non-teaching member of the staff facili-tated the process and participants completed a questionnairecontaining theWMLS and a brief set of demographic questions.The questionnaire package took approximately 10 minutes tocomplete and consent was implied upon its completion.Students who were absent on the day when the questionnairewas distributed were not included in the sample.

Data analysis

The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS, Version17.0, 2008) was used for data storage, tabulation, andanalysis. Means and standard deviations were used todescribe the data. One-way repeated measure analysis ofvariance (ANOVA) was used to analyse differences in par-ticipants’ preferences and one-way between group ANOVAswere used to analyse differences in participant groupsbased on sex, age, and year level of their course. Resultswere considered statistically significant when p < .05.

Results

Demographic profile

The complete demographic profile of the studentswho participated in this study is presented in Table 2.

by taking charge � Low expressivenessby inspiring � High expressivenessby building group harmony � High expressivenessby planning carefully � Low expressiveness

Table 2 Demographic Profile (N Z 182).

Number Percent

SexMale 22 12.1Female 160 87.9Total 182 100

Age (y)< 21 94 51.921e25 79 43.626e30 1 0.631e35 5 2.836e40 1 0.641e45 1 0.6Not stated 1Total 182 100

Year level1st year 71 39.02nd year 43 23.63rd year 27 14.84th year 41 22.5Total 182 100

38 T. Brown et al.

Seventy-one first year students, 43 second year students,27 third year students, and 41 fourth year studentsreturned completed questionnaires for a total sample sizeof 182 participants. The total sample response rate was86.3% (n Z 182/211). The majority of participants werefemale (87.9%) and 25 years of age or younger (95.6%),consistent with the usual profile of students enrolled in theoccupational therapy programmes. The sample also in-cludes students from all four year levels.

Leadership style

Overall there was a statistically significant differences inparticipants’ preference for the leadership styles, Wilks’Lambda Z .26, F(3, 165) Z 154.7, p < .001, multivariatepartial eta squared Z .74. According to Cohen (1988), thisis a very strong effect size. The most preferred leadershipstyle amongst the participants was the Considerate style(mean Z 29.2, SD Z 3.4). The least preferred was theDirect style (mean Z 18.6, SD Z 4.2). There were no sta-tistically significant differences in preference for any of thefour leadership styles based on sex, age, or year level of theparticipants’ degree. The complete list is presented inTable 3.

Table 3 Leadership Style Preferences Scores (N Z 182).

Style Mean SD

Considerate 29.17* 3.35Spirited 27.42* 4.13Systematic 24.89* 3.64Direct 18.58* 4.20

Note: significant difference between four leadership stylescores noted by one-way repeated measure analysis of vari-ance; *p < .001.

Discussion

The strongest preference amongst the participants was forthe WMLS Considerate leadership style. This style is char-acterised by creating comfortable working environments,following tried and true procedures, and establishing aneasy work pace (HRDQ, 2003). Accordingly, leaders with anaffinity for this style ask for people’s input, listen actively,and promote support for one another (HRDQ, 2003). Asimilarly strong preference was noted for the WMLS Spiritedleadership style, which is about inspiring people, gener-ating excitement, turning work into play, and rallyingpeople (HRDQ, 2003). Little preference was reported forthe WMLS Direct leadership style, a management stylecharacterised by taking charge and working towards aspecific goal and deadline (HRDQ, 2003).

It is informative to understand both the strengths andthe weaknesses of the dominant profiles endorsed by theoccupational therapy students in this study to gain insightinto expected leadership behaviours. According to HRDQ(2003), individuals who identified with the WMLS Consid-erate leadership profile are successful at: building a loyalfollowing and being supportive, being able to recognise theimportance of other people’s views, maintaining teamharmony, and reassuring to keep things comfortable. Someof the weaknesses of this approach include: over-reassurance for comfort potentially causing resistance tochange rather than assisting adaptation to it, potential forover permissiveness at the expense of control, avoidance ofconstructive conflict in favour of group harmony, and thepotential to ‘give in’ on important issues to accommodateothers’ opinions.

Individuals who identified with the WMLS Spirited lead-ership profile are successful at: generating enthusiasm,developing fresh approaches, inspiring their followers, andenjoying motivation. Some of the negatives associated withthis style include: the potential for manipulation due toextreme persuasiveness, the possibility that completion oftasks may be overlooked by the creativity aspect of newideas, the potential for loss of important details in theoverarching vision, and the spirited leader overlooking theneed to listen to their followers rather than constantlymotivate (HRDQ, 2003).

Out of the four possible leadership styles, it could besaid that the two dominant leadership profiles elicited aremost similar to each other in terms of shared traits incomparison to the other two more structured styles ofleadership. Both the WMLS Direct and Systematic ap-proaches to leadership share more traits, which are centredaround structure, sequencing of events, and maintaining astronger hold on leadership dominance (HRDQ, 2003). Ul-timately, results from this study indicate that the largemajority of occupational therapy undergraduate studentshave a strong preference for creative, harmonious,inspiring, accommodating, and supportive traits for lead-ership styles that were akin to the WMLS Considerate andSpirited management approaches. The findings thereforeindicate a minority of individuals with a preference towardsleadership attributes such as structured leadership, quickpaced goal attainment, a competitive edge, careful plan-ning, and taking charge (HRDQ, 2003).

Leadership style 39

According to the Hersey, Blanchard, and Johnson (2007)Situational Leadership model, leaders need to adapt theirstyle to the development style (or maturity level) of thesubordinates they supervise, based on how ready andwilling (e.g., their competence and motivation) those in-dividuals are to perform the specified tasks. There are fourleadership styles (S1eS4) that match the developmentlevels (D1eD4) of the subordinates. S1 and S2 styles areleader-driven while S3 and S4 styles are subordinate driven.The four leadership styles are: S1: Telling/Directing; S2:Selling/Coaching; S3: Participating/Supporting; and S4:Delegating/Observing (Hersey et al., 2007). The Consid-erate and Spirited leadership styles would be similar to theS2 and S3 Situational Leadership model leadership styleswhile the S1 is more aligned with the Direct managementstyle and S4 is more akin to the Systematic leadership style.

There are also multiple modes of leadership, the mostcommon two being transformational leadership (Bass, 1999;Rafferty & Griffin, 2004) and transaction leadership.Transformational leadership (Bass, 2008) centres onengaging, inspiring, and exciting subordinates. Trans-formational leaders motivate staff they manage byencouraging them to transcend their own interests forthose of the group or unit. Transaction leadership empha-sises rewards and penalties for subordinates who areassumed to be not motivated. Subordinates have to obeythe orders of the superior, and they have to be closelymonitored and controlled to get the work done from them(Hargis, Wyatt, & Piotrowski, 2011). Transactional leadersare highly directive and action oriented and their rela-tionship with the followers tends to be transitory and notbased on emotional bonds. Transformational leadership isproactive while transaction leadership is responsive. TheConsiderate and Spirited leadership styles would be similarto transformational leadership traits while transactionleadership would be more aligned with the Direct andSystematic leadership styles. In order for occupationaltherapists to be effective in the constantly evolving healthand social care sectors, they likely have to exhibit Directand Systematic leadership styles along with being trans-formational leaders.

Hardigan and Cohen (1998) found similar results whenpersonality trait profiles of five health professions weregenerated using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The studycompared osteopathy, pharmacy, physiotherapy, physicianassistant, and occupational therapy students from WyomingUniversity. Results found that the dominant traits foroccupational therapy students were talkativeness, warm-heartedness, and an interest in things that affected peo-ple’s lives,which is congruent and associated with results ofthis study. The dominant profiles of students of other pro-fessions, including pharmacy, osteopathic, and physicianassistant, included traits such as practical, realistic, andlogical. Occupational therapy students may be socialised sothey exhibit more communicative traits that align with aclient-centred approach to professional practice.

It would be expected that the personality traits of in-dividuals interested in a rehabilitation profession wouldinclude the following characteristics: helping behaviour,working collaboratively with clients and their families,rehabilitation by facilitating independence, and workingwith people with disabilities. This would strongly align with

some of the traits outlined in the Considerate and Spiritedleadership profiles. This hypothesis is further supported byHardigan and Cohen’s (1998) study concluding that “theresults support the notion that people choose professionspartially based on personality traits” (p. 1). Furthermore,some of these traits outlined in the dominant two profilesgenerated by this study are embedded into the foundationsof occupational therapy clinical practice, whereby enthu-siasm, creativity, egalitarianism, empathy, and reassuranceare paramount for the success and effectiveness of therapyservices provided for clients (American OccupationalTherapy Association, 2010; College of OccupationalTherapists, 2007; World Federation of OccupationalTherapists, 2008).

The Canadian Association of Occupational Therapistspublished the Profile of Occupational Therapy Practice inCanada in 2007. The Profile presents a continuum of abili-ties and knowledge needed by the practitioners to meethealth needs identifies. It also identifies seven primaryroles of occupational therapists as: an expert in enablingoccupation; a communicator; a collaborator; a practicemanager; change agent; a scholarly practitioner; and aprofessional. These multiple roles no doubt require well-honed leadership skills (Rodger, Clark, Banks, O’Brien, &Martinez, 2009). The professional competency documentsfrom several countries also state that effective leadershipskills are required for successful occupational therapypractice (College of Occupational Therapists, 2007;Occupational Therapy Board of New Zealand, 2004).

In a study by Brown (1989), a group of first, second,third, and fourth year occupational therapy students, plus agroup of practicing occupational therapy clinicianscompleted the Personality Research Form-E (PRF-E). Anal-ysis of variance indicated statistically significant differ-ences between fourth year students and clinicians oncertain personality variables with fourth year studentsscoring higher on the abasement, affiliation, change,nurturance, play, and social recognition scales. In anotherstudy, Donohue (1995) compared the personality traits ofentry-level occupational therapy students before and aftertheir participation in two years of academic and clinicaleducation in order to examine the change of traits in theirprofessional personality profile based on the CaliforniaPsychological Inventory (CPI). Based on the results,achievement via independence and psychological-mindedness emerged as the highest ranking personalitytraits of the students. The results obtained by Brown (1989)and Donohue (1995) are both congruent with the Consid-erate and Spirited leadership style preferences indicatedby the undergraduate students in the current study. ThePRF-E scales of affiliation, nurturance, play, and socialrecognition would fit with the Considerate leadership stylewhile the CPI scales of independence and psychological-mindedness would be conducive to the Spirited leadershipstyle.

Currently, there is limited research regarding occupa-tional therapy undergraduate students and leadership. Onestudy by Landa-Gonzalez (2008) investigated the conflictresolution styles that traditional and nontraditional occu-pational therapy students (n Z 145) at one American uni-versity were likely to use. No doubt conflict resolutionbehaviours used to navigate current and future practice

40 T. Brown et al.

contexts have significant implications for job retention,work climate, client care, and the development of profes-sional relationships. The results obtained by Landa-Gonzalez indicated that traditional students favouredcollaborating while nontraditional students preferredcompeting and avoiding. The collaborating conflict resolu-tion style preferred by traditional occupational therapystudents is similar to the Considerate leadership stylepreference reported by students in this study. Landa-Gonzalez (2008) recommended that “training in conflictmanagement strategies that would strengthen students’assertiveness and interpersonal skills would be helpful infostering the leadership needed for fulfilling the pro-fession’s vision” (p. 55).

Using the Leadership Ability Evaluation d Revised (LAE-R), Luebben (1997) compared the decision patterns of agroup of occupational therapy students (OTS, nZ 133) withthe LAE-R norm groups, labeled ‘typical individuals’ (TI) and‘outstanding leaders’ (OL). OTS, compared with OL, showeda significantly higher delegative dimension and lowerconsultative, directive, and participative dimensions.Compared with TI, OTS showed significantly higher partici-pative dimension and lower consultative and directive di-mensions, but no differences in the delegative dimension.The consultative and participative decision making di-mensions are akin to the Considerate leadership styleendorsed by the occupational therapy students in this study.

There were no statistically significant differences be-tween participants of different ages and of different yearlevels of enrolment (e.g., first, second, third, and fourthyear) in this study. This suggests that the occupationaltherapy field is pursued by individuals characterised bycertain personality traits, namely, consensus-seeking andenergetic people. Similarly, it indicates there was littlechange in prominent leadership styles across the four yearsof the occupational therapy undergraduate student cohort.In other words, students’ self-reported leadership stylepreference were not inclined to change with time, evenwith progression from first year to fourth (final) year of theoccupational therapy course. This potentially points to thefact that the education process is not having an impact onstudents’ self-perceived leadership style but rather build-ing on pre-existing traits. It should be noted that students,as they progress from first to fourth year in the occupa-tional therapy, complete practice education placementstotaling to 1000 hours (World Federation of OccupationalTherapists, 2002). With increased professional hands-onexperience, students’ leadership styles again appear tonot be changed. Further examination of this area is war-ranted in future studies.

Future research

It is recommended for future research that further longi-tudinal studies be undertaken to explore how leadershipstyle and other personality traits translate and transitioninto on-the-job performance for new occupational therapygraduates. It would also be beneficial to see if leadershipstyle changes post-graduation within the first few years as aworking therapist. It is important to remember that thesestudents are neophytes so their leadership style preference

may change when they are actively involved in the work-place. The leadership styles of undergraduate occupationaltherapy students could be compared with the leadershipstyles of other students enrolled in graduate-entry mastersoccupational therapy programmes. Another suggested ideais to investigate the leadership styles and dominant traitsacross different health professional student groups. Finally,it is recommended that leadership education programmesbe incorporated into occupational therapy curricula, andinvestigated for effectiveness in promoting positive man-agement traits amongst students.

Limitations

There are several limitations inherent in this study. Thesample size was limited to one geographical location.Despite this, the demographic profile is consistent with theprofile of students enrolled in other occupational therapyeducation programmes. That is, they are predominatelyyoung females in their early 20s. The participants were alsorecruited from one major Australian university, and so maynot be representative of occupational therapy studentsmore broadly. The recruitment strategy that was used wasconvenience sampling. The WLMS is a self-report instru-ment, so there is always the issue of social desirability andbiased responses from self-reporting participants. Howev-er, participants were reminded that all responses wereanonymous and would be analysed on a group basis. It ishoped that this encouraged participants to be honest intheir responses. Finally, it should be noted that curriculataught at other occupational therapy education pro-grammes may approach leadership issues in different waysin comparison to the education programme where thecurrent study was conducted, and that this may impactstudent outcomes in respect to leadership traits.

Conclusion

This study has provided insights into the preferred leader-ship styles of undergraduate occupational therapy studentsand highlights the importance of engendering effectiveleadership skills into future occupational therapy practi-tioners during their entry-level education. Therefore, it isrecommended that occupational therapy educators includematerial about leadership theories, styles, and strategies inthe curricula delivered to students.

Author contributions

Study Design: TB and BWData Collection and Analysis: TB, BW, and LJManuscript Writing: TB, BW, and LJ

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