Followers' unclear demands during the COVID‐19 pandemic can undermine leaders' well‐being: A moderated mediation model from an entrapment perspective

Abstract

Although effective leaders are important for reducing employee stress during the COVID‐19, limited studies have examined how follower behaviors can influence leader stress and well‐being during the COVID‐19. This study draws on defeat‐entrapment theory to examine how followers' unclear demands during the COVID‐19 consequently impact leaders' psychological states and well‐being. We conducted a three‐wave time‐lagged investigation with a sample of 281 leaders in the United Kingdom and found that followers' unclear demands could generate feelings of entrapment in leaders, leading to decreased levels of well‐being outcomes in leaders. Importantly, we found that leaders who have higher levels of leadership responsibility during the COVID‐19 are likely to feel trapped by followers' unclear demands. They are also likely to face higher levels of feelings of entrapment and impaired well‐being compared with leaders who have lower levels of leadership responsibility. We discuss the implications for theories and practices, as well as directions for future research.

Don’t you tweet me badly: Anxiety contagion between leaders and followers in computer-mediated communication during COVID-19

“…There is a specific trend for leaders to try to take more responsibility and respond to employees' demands during a crisis period [46]. However, this seems not to be always the ideal action, since some evidence suggests that leaders' effort to take responsibility during a crisis and communicate their thoughts can harm their own [47] as well as their followers' well-being [48]. This also seems to be the case when communicating online based on the results of this study.…”

Tweet you right back: Follower anxiety predicts leader anxiety in social media interactions during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

“…In our study, we find that this, indeed, seems to be the case, particularly in a crisis context like the recent SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, during which leaders had to take action and respond (through social media as well) to followers’ affect and demands [ 41 ]. Leaders and followers need to understand that this can have a negative impact not only on each other’s mental health but also can harm their own well-being [ 42 ].…”

How positive leadership leads to employees’ interpersonal citizenship behavior: a self-consistency perspective

“…This study adopted time lags of one-month intervals as suggested by previous studies (e.g. Ali et al, 2023;Cheng et al, 2019;Holtz and Hu, 2017;Qing and JinHua, 2023;Yao et al, 2020;Zheng et al, 2022) since a one-month time lag was sufficiently long enough to avoid participants' memory effects but not so long that contaminating factors and respondent attrition became a problem. Finally, response biases related to social desirability, demand characteristics and ambiguity in the measurement items were controlled for by improving the scale items.…”