The LEAD program and the effect of leadership on employee well-being

Abstract

Although transformational leadership has consistently been shown to have a positive effect on direct reports’ well-being, a focus on leaders' own well-being is lacking. Moreover, leadership interventions have been proposed as a vehicle for occupational health interventions, but there has been limited research that directly evaluates this premise. Therefore, there were three goals for this dissertation: (1) to develop a transformational leadership intervention that targets leader and direct report well-being through leadership behaviour change; (2) to evaluate the efficacy of the program in increasing transformational leadership behaviours; (3) and to determine whether and how leader and direct report well-being can be positively influenced through leadership development. The program of research consisted of two studies: Study 1 involved the development of the LEAD program anchored by SME interviews as part of a four-step content development process, and Study 2 involved evaluating the efficacy of the LEAD program. In Study 1, I identified ten themes critical to leadership program design, which became the foundation for the LEAD program. LEAD was designed as a 10-week program focusing on transformational leadership development through individualized phone-based coaching. In Study 2, I recruited 72 leaders who were assigned to either the first intervention or wait-list control group. The efficacy of the program was evaluated through Kirkpatrick's model of training evaluation criteria, using both leader self-report and direct report data. Study 2 yielded mixed results. Leaders' reactions to the LEAD program were highly positive, and there were significant overall and weekly increases in transformational leadership and efficacy (leadership and professional). However, LEAD negatively affected leader, but not direct report, well-being. Together these studies failed to convincingly demonstrate the efficacy of the program. However, the studies do contribute to the theoretical understanding of leadership, employee well-being, and the potential for leadership development as an occupational health intervention.