Why busy leaders may have exhausted followers: a multilevel perspective on supportive leadership

Abstract

PurposeThis study of leaders and followers working in day-care centers aims to use a multilevel perspective on supportive leadership to examine its role in linking workload at the leader level and emotional exhaustion at the follower level. Integrating theoretical work on social support with conservation of resources (COR) theory, leaders' workload is proposed to be positively related to followers' feelings of emotional exhaustion through constraining the enactment of supportive leadership.Design/methodology/approachMultisource survey data from 442 followers and their leaders from 68 teams were collected to test the hypotheses.FindingsMultilevel analyses showed that leader workload was negatively related to followers' perception of supportive leadership, which, in turn, was positively related to followers' levels of emotional exhaustion. Leader workload was indirectly and positively related to follower emotional exhaustion via supportive leadership.Research limitations/implicationsThis study provides initial support for the idea that work contextual factors at the leader level create boundaries for the extent to which leaders may provide support to their followers and draws attention to the accountability of leaders' work contextual factors for followers' well-being.Practical implicationsThe findings suggest that organizations must not focus narrowly on training leaders on how to benefit followers but should also aim to optimize leaders' levels of workload to enable them to act in a supportive manner.Originality/valueBy considering both the receivers (i.e. followers) and providers (i.e. leaders) of support simultaneously, we take a crossover approach to COR theory and acknowledge that work contextual factors at higher organizational levels may spread to employee well-being at lower levels of the organization.