Enhancing team leaders’ well-being states and challenge experiences during organizational change: A randomized,controlled study

Abstract

When implementing teams, first-line leaders are often responsible for such implementation and their leadership role changes. This change may result in a perceived mismatch between the demands of the function and the leader’s resources. In a multi-method, controlled intervention study, we examined whether training leaders in team management changes their appraisals of the job and preserves their well-being. Data were collected with the Experience Sampling Method from 29 team leaders and survey data were collected from their followers (N = 233). Multi-level analyses revealed that training increased trained leaders’ challenge experiences and well-being states only where team members reported openness to change. In situations when both trained and non-trained leaders found themselves challenged above their average levels of challenge, they reported better well-being.