The Effects of Authentic Leadership on Employees' Well-Being

Read this text to examine the effects of a team leader's authenticity on the perception of relational cohesion. Generally, when people have a higher sense of relational cohesion, they are more collaborative within teams. The text will refine your understanding of how authenticity affects how team members feel about themselves and their relationships within the group. You will find the survey about authentic leadership interesting.

Methods

Participants and procedure

In order to test the foregoing hypotheses, a survey was conducted on employees working in manufacturing firms, financial firms, and public enterprises in Korea. First, we obtained consent from the HR personnel of each firm after explaining the intent and importance of this study. We stated that the results of the research analysis are to be used for research purposes only and feedback of the results would be provided. We conducted three interviews with the HR personnel to ensure the adequacy and comprehension of the terms used in the survey. We then distributed the revised questionnaire to 1100 participants. After eliminating copies of the questionnaire that contained inappropriate and omitted responses for the key variables, an analysis was conducted on the data of 950 participants. These participants consisted of 98 employees in manufacturing, 570 in finance, and 282 in public enterprises. The demographic characteristics of the participants show that 48% are male and 50% are female and that their 20s' age is 528 and 30s' age is 312, with 83% of them college graduates.

In order to reduce common method bias that may damage the validity of measurement in the survey and contaminate the study results), a survey on authentic leadership was conducted first. Relational cohesion and well-being variables were measured from the same employees after 2 weeks to allow for a time interval.


Measures

Authentic leadership

The operational definition of authentic leadership is "being honest to oneself with high moral and ethical values and acting consistently with the values they expressed". The survey consisted of 21 items representing awareness, unbiased processing, behavior, and relational orientation. Higher scores indicate higher perceptions of a team leader's authentic leadership. See Table 1 in Section 4 for the detailed items of the questionnaire.

Authentic leadership (my team leader…) Factor loading
(1) Actively tries to understand which of him/herself aspects fit together to form his/her true self 0.82
(2) Has a very good understanding of why he/she does the things he/she does 0.80
(3) Actively attempts to understand him/herself as best as possible 0.81
(4) Often questions whether he/she really know what he/she want to accomplish in his/her lifetime (R) 0.76
(5) Is in touch with his/her motives and desire 0.74
(6) Frequently pretends to enjoy something when in actuality he/she really doesn’t (R) 0.85
(7) Has often done things that he/she doesn’t want to do merely not to disappoint people 0.81
(8) Finds that his/her behavior typically expresses his/her personal needs and desires 0.76
(9) Is willing to endure negative consequences by expressing his/her true beliefs about things 0.83
(10) Is very uncomfortable objectively considering his/her limitations and shortcomings (R) 0.88
(11) Finds it very difficult to critically assess him/herself (R) 0.81
(12) Tends to have difficulty accepting his/her personal faults, so he/she tries to cast them in a more positive way (R) 0.48
(13) If a close other and he/she is in disagreement he/she would rather ignore the issue than constructively work it out (R) 0.44
(14) Often denies the validity of any compliments that he/she receives (R) 0.58
(15) Wants close others to understand the real he/she rather than just his/her public persona or image 0.55
(16) Makes it a point to express to close others how much he/she truly cares for them 0.68
(17) The people he/she is close to can count on him/her being who she/he is regardless of what setting we are in 0.62
(18) It is important for him/her to understand his/her close others’ needs and desires 0.63
Relational cohesion Factor loading
(1) Distant - close 0.72
(2) Conflictual - cooperative 0.83
(3) Fragmenting - integrating 0.91
(4) Fragile - solid 0.95
(5) Cohesive - divisive 0.94
(6) Diverging - converging 0.90
(7) Self-oriented - team-oriented 0.85
Hedonic well-being Factor loading
(1) In most ways my life is close to my ideals 0.88
(2) The conditions of my life are excellent 0.91
(3) I am satisfied with my life 0.89
(4) So far I have gotten the important things in my life 0.77
(5) If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing 0.74
Eudaimonic well-being Factor loading
(1) I have a sense of mastery and competence in managing the environment 0.82
(2) I acknowledge and accept multiple aspects of self 0.86
(3) I have goals in life and a sense of directedness 0.91
(4) I am able to choose or create contexts suitable to personal needs and values 0.91
(5) I have aims and objectives for living 0.90
Model fit2
χ2 = 4430.94 (df = 554, p = 0.00), IFI = 0.96, CFI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.11, GFI = 0.72


Table 1.
Results of confirmatory factor analysis (n = 950).
Completely standardized solution.
df is degrees of freedom; RMSEA is root mean square error of approximation; and GFI is goodness of fit.


Relational cohesion

The operational definition of relational cohesion is "perceiving one's relationship with teammates as collaborative, close, and highly cohesive". It was measured by seven adjectives developed as semantic differential scales. Conflicting words such as "cooperative" for higher scores and "conflictual" were arranged for the opposite side, making participants mark the words that best described their relationships with teammates.

Hedonic well-being

The operational definition of hedonic well-being is "achieving the things they wanted and enjoying a satisfying life". It was measured by five items using the satisfaction with life scale of.

Eudaimonic well-being

The operational definition of eudaimonic well-being is "clearly having goals and directions of life for introspection and self-realization". It was measured by five items related to the purpose of life and individual growth among the measurement items of.

Control variables

Finally, the study's results may be distorted by other factors that were not selected in verifying the effects of authentic leadership on employees' well-being. Accordingly, gender, education level, marital status, duty, individualism, and collectivism were controlled. In particular, it was intended to verify the pure effect of authentic leadership by controlling the effects of transformational leadership, which is known to be very effective thus far. Transformational leadership is known to be a leadership style with systematically established construct validity. It can be applied quite universally. In this context, the effects of ethical leadership were also controlled. Ethical leadership is based on factors such as authentic leadership and has many similar characteristics in the sense that such leaders are highly empathic with others, do not pursue their own interests, and treat others with respect.