Leaders' mental health and leader-member exchange: Exploring relations on different levels of analysis

Abstract

Introduction: Research on leader-member exchange (LMX) has shown that the relation between leaders and followers may be considered from different angles. Leaders may form individual relationships with followers (LMX quality), may agree with their followers on these relationships (LMX agreement), and may form different relationships within their work group (LMX variability). We posit that leaders' mental health may function as an antecedent for these different forms of LMX. We use conservation-of-resources theory as a theoretical model to describe how leaders' mental health may interact with relationship quality with followers on different levels.

Methods: We operationalized leaders' mental health using depressive symptoms, anxiety, and stress reactivity. Our sample consisted of 322 followers of 75 leaders. Followers rated the LMX quality with their respective leader. Leaders rated depressive symptoms, anxiety, levels of stress reactivity, and LMX quality with their followers.

Results: Results of multilevel modeling showed that stress reactivity was negatively related to LMX quality and anxiety was positively linked to LMX agreement. Depressive symptoms were not related to aspects of LMX.

Conclusion: By using multisource data on different analysis levels, we are able to include different perspectives on antecedents of LMX relationship quality. Implications for LMX at different levels of analysis as well as future research are discussed.

Keywords: LMX agreement; LMX quality; LMX variability; anxiety; depression; leadership; mental health; stress reactivity.