Does self-care make you a better leader?
Subtitle
A multisource study linking leader self-care to health-oriented leadership, employee self-care, and health
Publication date
2022-05-31
Document type
Forschungsartikel
Author
Organisational unit
ISSN
Series or journal
International journal of environmental research and public health
Periodical volume
19
Periodical issue
11
Peer-reviewed
✅
Part of the university bibliography
✅
Keyword
Health-oriented leadership
Self-care
Employee health
Leader well-being
Leadership
Multilevel analysis
Abstract
Leadership plays an important role in employee well-being. In light of a growing research interest in leaders’ resources as determinants of healthy leadership, it is not yet clear how leaders’ behavior regarding their own health (self-care) may trickle down to employees. Drawing on Conservation of Resources Theory and the model of Health-Oriented Leadership, this study tests two mechanisms through which employees may benefit from self-caring leaders: (a) through staff care, that is, concern for their employees’ health (improved leadership hypothesis); and (b) through a direct relationship between leaders’ and employees’ self-care (role-modeling hypothesis). In turn, both staff care and employee self-care would relate positively to employee health. Multilevel path models based on a sample of N = 46 supervisors and 437 employees revealed that leader self-care was positively related to leader-rated staff care at Level 2, which was positively related to employee-rated staff care at Level 1. In turn, employee-rated staff care was positively related to employee health. The findings support the improved leadership hypothesis and underline the importance of leader self-care as a determinant of healthy leadership.
Description
This is an open access article under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Version
Published version
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Metadata only access