The moderator role of followers’ personality traits in the relations between leadership styles, two types of task performance and work result satisfaction

Abstract

Authentic leadership is changing our understanding of what makes good leadership. However, few studies have explored how followers’ individual differences and the nature of the task they perform affect its relation to followers’ work outcomes. We examine the moderator role of two core task types (intellective vs. generative) and two personality traits (conscientiousness and emotional stability) in the relationship between two leadership feedback styles (authentic vs. transactional) and task performance or work result satisfaction in a two-wave experiment. The sample consisted of 228 participants enrolled in an organizational psychology course, 34% of whom had work experience. Our results show that over time the effect of an authentic feedback style on task performance became stronger for those participants who previously scored very low on intellective tasks or very high on generative tasks. Furthermore, a significant three-way interaction between these two traits and our leadership feedback styles indicates that the effect of authentic feedback conforms different patterns depending on the followers’ personality traits and the type of task they perform. Moreover, authentic feedback had a stronger effect on participants’ work result satisfaction. Participants with low levels of either conscientiousness or emotional stability displayed higher levels of satisfaction in the authentic feedback condition.

Keywords:

• Authentic leadership
• Conscientiousness
• Emotional stability
• Task performance
• Brainstorming
• Work result satisfaction
• Talent management

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to thank Prof. Berrin Erdogan, Vicente Gonzales Romá, Rolf Van Dick and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. Research for this article was partially supported by the Generalitat Valenciana [PROMETEO/2012/048].