Kumulative Dissertation, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, 2025

Recent research has shown that leadership behaviors are not only related to followers’ well-being, but also to leaders’ well-being, such as emotional exhaustion or affectivity. However, several aspects remain open, such as the role of multiple leadership behaviors, including passive leadership, the role of the understanding of well-being, mediating mechanisms, the directionality of the associations, and relevant leader-related factors. Additionally, most studies did not account for the fact that leadership and well-being fluctuate not only between but also within leaders, for example, on a daily or weekly basis. Therefore, in the present studies, I investigated the association between leadership and leader well-being in more detail by addressing the open aspects outlined above. Across these studies, I built on the full-range model of leadership and the Conservation of Resources theory as a theoretical basis.
In Study 1, I examined the potential reciprocal relationships between transformational leadership and leaders’ emotional exhaustion and vigor. I assumed that higher levels of transformational leadership are associated with higher levels of well-being. Furthermore, I investigated whether these relationships are mediated by leaders’ resources. To test these assumptions, I conducted a week-level online study across three weeks with 132 leaders. Random intercept cross-lagged panel analyses revealed that transformational leadership was positively related to well-being and resources, both between and within leaders. However, within-leader associations existed only within one week, but not from one week to the next.
In Study 2, I investigated ideal leadership behaviors as a factor associated with whether actual daily leadership behavior is positively or negatively associated with leaders’ well-being. Specifically, I focused on trait ideal (i.e., the leadership behavior the leader generally wants to show) and daily actual (i.e., the leadership behavior the leader actually showed on a specific day) full-range leader behaviors and basic need satisfaction and emotional exhaustion as well-being indicators. I assumed congruence between trait ideal and daily actual leadership to be most beneficial for leaders’ well-being and tested my hypotheses in a ten-day diary study with 90 leaders. Response surface analyses did not support the hypothesized congruence effects. On an exploratory basis, I found support for linear and curvilinear associations between daily leadership and well-being, but no direct or interactive relationships with ideal leader behaviors.
Study 3 acknowledged that leaders can show multiple leadership behaviors within one day (i.e., daily leadership profiles), and that profile membership can change from one day to the next. Additionally, I considered that the interplay of these daily behaviors could change the association with leaders’ daily well-being. Therefore, I used latent profile analysis to investigate which daily leadership profiles exist, the stability of profile membership across one week, and their associations with leaders’ emotional exhaustion and affectivity mediated by their daily thriving and time pressure. In a diary study across five consecutive working days (N = 289 leaders), I found three daily leadership profiles with varying stability across the week. The profiles were differentially related to leaders’ well-being, being in part simultaneously positively and negatively associated with leaders’ well-being, depending on the well-being indicator. In addition, there was support for the mediating role of daily thriving and time pressure.
Taken all three studies together, leadership behavior was related to different indicators of leader well-being at the within- and between-person level. From a resource-based perspective, the findings indicate that especially transformational leadership and contingent reward behaviors seem to be resources for leaders and are associated with greater well-being. In contrast, passive leadership showed rather stable negative associations with leaders’ well-being. At the same time, the studies show the importance of a differentiated investigation of leadership behavior and leader well-being because the associations varied greatly depending on the co-occurrence of multiple single leadership behaviors within one day. These results extend and specify our knowledge of the relevance of leadership behavior to leaders’ well-being, provide insights for future research, and have implications for leaders, leadership training and coaching.