BUS603: Managing People

Authentic leadership and employees' well-being

Authentic leadership is "a pattern of leader behavior that draws upon and promotes both positive psychological capacities and a positive ethical climate, to foster greater self-awareness, an internalized moral perspective, balanced processing of information, and relational transparency on the part of leaders working with followers, fostering positive self-development". Researchers present slightly different elements of authentic leadership; however, self-awareness and self-regulation are commonly provided by many researchers. Self-awareness is realizing and clearly perceiving a leader's values, identity, and purposes. This is a concept that includes acting toward a true self based on the perception that one must know oneself and understand the relevant vision and belief. Self-regulation is about conducting certain behaviors and regulating such behaviors to minimize the gap between the ideal self and the real ego established through self-awareness.

In addition, relational transparency and balanced information processing between a leader and team members are viewed as constructs of authentic leadership. Relational transparency indicates that the leader can honestly show his/her ego to others including team members. In other words, the leader can open-mindedly talk about and reveal his/her negative aspects and shortcomings in addition to any positive aspects. The way in which the leader, who is at a higher level in terms of the organizational hierarchy, reveals his/her weaknesses without constraint to team members and makes efforts to become closer in terms of relationships encourages the team members to trust the leader. Such trust ultimately contributes to building reliable and meaningful leader-member relationships. Balanced information processing is objectively analyzing, reviewing, and processing related information in terms of the leader's decision-making. In other words, it indicates the ability of the leader to accept objections to his/her ideas and to accept criticisms of mistakes. In general, people have difficulty objectively analyzing or accepting criticisms and negative feedback about their weaknesses and faults. However, authentic leaders make efforts to accept such information, regardless of whether it decreases or increases self-esteem, as long as it is for the development of the organization and its members.

Since a leader is someone in a position who can affect the mental state of organizational members, he or she may affect employees' well-being. In the sense that authentic leaders are those who strive to make a positive organization by being honest to colleagues, team members, and the organization through self-awareness and self-regulation, authentic leadership will have positive effects on employees' well-being and health. Well-being is a cognitive representation, optimal function, and experience of individuals regarding the nature and experience of well-being. In particular, many researchers thus far have conducted studies on well-being by classifying it into hedonic well-being and eudaimonic well-being, referring to the former as subjective well-being and the latter as psychological well-being.

Authentic leaders do not pretend to like something when they do not. Rather, they clearly understand their motives and desires in life. They are positive role models who can overcome stress in an organization where anxiety and mistrust are rampant because they do not feel uncomfortable about objectively examining their flaws and limitations. Accordingly, employees experience hedonic well-being, whereby they consider their stress-free conditions satisfactory and think that they have achieved the things that they wanted. Further, employees feel satisfied with their present lives because they see socialized authentic leaders who sacrifice themselves to achieve the goals of employees and the organization.

According to the self-determination theory, authentic integration may have positive effects on well-being. A leader's authenticity decreases employees' worries and concerns, relieves depressive symptoms, and lowers excessive stress. Moreover, authentic leaders form supportive relationships that increase employees' life satisfaction and lower negative effects. These effects in turn positively influence hedonic well-being, which enables team members to experience pleasure and avoid negative experiences. The psychological support and empowerment provided by authentic leaders make team members satisfied with present conditions. Ultimately, a team leader's authentic leadership has positive effects on well-being by developing the self-determination of employees based on their absolute trust and positive emotions. In this sense, the following hypothesis is established.

H1: A team leader's authentic leadership will have positive effects on employees' hedonic well-being.

Eudaimonic well-being indicates profound happiness pursued by humans as social beings; however, there is insufficient empirical research on the concept compared with hedonic well-being. However, recent studies argue that eudaimonic well-being is relatively a more important concept in positive psychological functioning. While hedonic well-being is about enjoying present happiness (feeling good), eudaimonic well-being is finding oneself as a social being and getting closer to true happiness (being good). Well-being in a true sense is making efforts to find one's ego and feeling authentic happiness.

Discovering the meaning of work and helping team members find their callings are important roles of a leader. In this sense, authentic leadership may bring psychological well-being through the positive process of making team members' lives more meaningful. Authentic leadership focuses on self-development for employees in order to display their true potential beyond hedonic well-being, which makes them satisfied with their present lives, and enjoy a pleasant experience without stress. It may also have positive effects on eudaimonic well-being, through which employees intend to live a life that helps others. These positive effects occur because meaning is what builds a crucial dimension of eudaimonic well-being. Authentic leaders make efforts to reduce the gap between realistic egos and ideal egos through self-regulation of behaviors based on self-awareness. Thus, their efforts to overcome limitations and become closer to ideal egos promote eudaimonic well-being, which represents employees' search for true self. This situation arises because a leader's authenticity stimulates team members' individual growth and helps them set self-consistent goals.

According to social learning theory, people determine how to behave based on the information they have obtained. Thus, as employees consider as their role model an authentic leader who does his/her best to understand his/her goals and visions, and try to model themselves on the leader, they also give meaning and purpose to their lives and experience eudaimonic well-being, whereby they constantly strive for introspection and self-realization. In other words, as employees watch their team leader who makes constant efforts to clearly understand the driving forces in life and find a true self-image, they also make efforts to find out exactly who they are and develop their best potential.In particular, authenticity requires leaders and their team members to change their egos' identities in the process of achieving true worth and the organization's missions. This approach stimulates employees to accurately perceive who they really are in life. Authentic leaders also require team members to discover their possible selves by developing in addition to accomplishing the organization's mission. This requirement has positive effects on eudaimonic well-being, whereby employees constantly make focus on introspection and self-realization. Accordingly, authentic leaders who are honest with themselves create a positive and supportive environment to build a positive mood, thereby helping employees develop the utmost potential and encouraging them to find meaning and purpose in life. In this sense, the following hypothesis is established.

H2: A team leader's authentic leadership will have positive effects on employees' eudaimonic well-being.

Moderating effect of relational cohesion on employees' well-being

Relational cohesion may boost this relationship whereby a team leader's authentic leadership positively affects employees' well-being. This is because it is not too much to say that successful task performance in a team with high task dependency depends on how well a collaborative mood is formed among team members. The role of the team leader is important in successfully achieving the team's and the organization's goals; however, the relationship among team members, who must perform tasks together every day, is also highly important, in the sense that relational cohesion may contribute to their well-being. Relational cohesion is defined as "the perception by individuals in an exchange relation that their relationship is a distinct and unifying social entity". In other words, employees build trust among themselves depending on how close they are in their relationships with other team members who perform the tasks with them. Based on the foregoing argument, a strong perception of relational cohesion in the sense that team members have an extremely close, collaborative, and united relationship with their teammates increases their level of well-being, thereby producing a strong synergy with the effect of authentic leadership.

According to social exchange theory, social exchange formed as team members perform tasks creates positive or negative global feelings, which promote intrinsic motivation and may affect employees' emotions. A team's performance is determined by the success of exchange tasks, which further motivates employees who strongly perceive that relational cohesion maintains positive relationships with teammates. Because relational cohesion shows high immersion for a team since it focuses on the relational aspect of team members, it makes such team members perceive that they are currently living satisfactory lives. They also feel hedonic well-being because they have achieved the things they wanted. If teammates have a relationship that is too distant, conflicting, breakable, disruptive, and individual-oriented, they have a lower level of trust among themselves. This may result in negative effects on the well-being of individuals. However, if teammates perceive high relational cohesion, they have an improved ability to deal with a situation and experience hedonic well-being, which lowers stress. Employees working in a team must have more active contact and cooperation with their teammates to successfully perform the team's tasks. Thus, if they perceive high relational cohesion, they tend to maintain positive relationships with their teammates, thereby feeling more high-dimensional psychological well-being. Consequently, they experience eudaimonic well-being by making efforts to constantly develop their potential and give meaning and purpose to their lives beyond hedonic well-being.

The effects of authentic leadership of a team leader who strives to understand team members' motives and needs, and truly care for them, lead to the greater hedonic and eudaimonic well-being of employees because of the interaction with relational cohesion. In this sense, the following hypotheses are established.

H3: Relational cohesion will have a moderating effect on the relationship between authentic leadership and employees' hedonic well-being. In other words, higher relational cohesion will increase the positive effects of authentic leadership on employees' hedonic well-being.

H4: Relational cohesion will have a moderating effect on the relationship between authentic leadership and employees' eudaimonic well-being. In other words, higher relational cohesion will increase the positive effects of authentic leadership on employees' eudaimonic well-being.