A Commentary on Choudhury and Maupin (2025): Perceived Overqualification and Challenge Appraisal of Shared Leadership

This commentary extends Choudhury and Maupin’s (2025) proposition that team members’ individual differences may influence how they evaluate shared leadership demands. Shared leadership demands, such as planning tasks and offering relational support (Contractor et al., 2012), may contribute to team members’ burnout because they may lack sufficient job resources to compensate for these demands (Bakker et al., 2023) and view them as impeding their accomplishments (Crawford et al., 2010). However, overqualified employees – those who think they possess more education, abilities, skills, knowledge, and work experience than required for their jobs – may be able to successfully meet the demands of shared leadership and in doing so may alleviate their feelings of relative deprivation including anger, frustration, and disappointment toward their employment (Luksyte et al., 2022). Building on relative deprivation theory (Crosby, 1984), we suggest that setting challenging team goals and supporting team members in shared leadership (Contractor et al., 2012) may lower overqualified employees’ relative deprivation by allowing them to fully utilize their excess capabilities. As such, overqualified employees may view shared leadership as a challenge, as opposed to a hindrance. We begin by explaining how and why overqualified employees may feel capable of successfully meeting the task and relational demands of shared leadership, thus alleviating their experiences of relative deprivation and fostering perceptions that shared leadership demands are challenges. Following this, we reverse the lens to extend our arguments, suggesting that employees’ overqualification may lead to a false sense of challenge appraisal, masking their long-term burnout and misfit.

Around 26% of employees across Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries consider themselves to be overqualified for their jobs (OECD, 2024). Given their excess abilities, we propose that overqualified employees who often feel that they deserve a better job (Luksyte et al., 2022) may be motivated to channel their surplus skills, education, knowledge, work experience, and training to support the effective planning of tasks and help team members in shared leadership (Contractor et al., 2012). The subsequent attenuated sense of relative deprivation explains why overqualified employees will interpret shared leadership demands as a challenge. In the sections that follow, we unpack how and why overqualified employees may view shared leadership demands as a challenge, and why, in the long run, perceived overqualification could result in false challenge appraisal expectations.

Shared Leadership as an Opportunity to Attenuate Relative Deprivation

The various dimensions of shared leadership could be aggregated into two overarching categories: task and relational (Contractor et al., 2012). We argue that they will attenuate overqualified employees’ feelings of relative deprivation, which are inwardly oriented because they capture disappointment and frustration with one’s inability to secure a good job (Luksyte et al., 2022). By appraising shared leadership demands as a challenge, overqualified employees will focus outwardly, thus channel their surplus talents in defining their team’s objectives and assisting with accomplishing team tasks.

One of the core characteristics of shared leadership is the autonomy of team members in setting and accomplishing the team’s goals (Contractor et al., 2012). Overqualified employees develop their self-efficacy to execute wide-ranging tasks beyond their role’s requirements if their focus is on showcasing their competence and performing well (Zhang et al., 2016). Resultantly, overqualified employees feel motivated to set challenging goals for their teams (Zhang et al., 2016). Given that overqualified employees feel deprived of challenging and meaningful jobs (Luksyte et al., 2022), we argue that these employees may think that leveraging their surplus skills and education in effectively mapping out clear team goals may help them channel their feelings of relative deprivation. Overqualified employees may view planning team tasks and objectives as an opportunity to utilize their skills and find meaning in their work by setting a challenging course of action for the team. As a result, overqualified employees may redirect their energy outwardly in devising team goals, rather than inwardly dwelling on their own anger, frustration, and disappointment.

One of the relational attributes of shared leadership involves the need for team members to provide social support by assisting others and facilitating team processes using interpersonal influence (Chamberlin et al., 2024; Contractor et al., 2012). Overqualified employees tend to support their peers without pursuing personal gains when these employees exercise greater, relative to lower, interpersonal influence (Deng et al., 2018). Overqualified employees often feel entitled to a better job than they currently have (Luksyte et al., 2022). As such, they may be motivated to help their team members with their tasks and in doing so they will use their under-utilized skills, which in turn will attenuate their feelings of relative deprivation. By helping team members with their work, overqualified employees may gain recognition, feel pride and reaffirm their self-worth by sharing their knowledge with others. Resultantly, overqualified employees may divert their focus from their feelings of boredom, frustration, and anger toward employment (Andel et al., 2022; Howard et al., 2022) to more motivating and challenging aspects of their work environment such as mentoring others or planning teamwork. Overqualified employees may thus view shared leadership as an opportunity to leverage their surplus talents in planning goals and supporting team members.

A False Sense of Challenge Appraisal

Initially, overqualified employees may view shared leadership as a chance to leverage their excess talents and counteract their relative deprivation. Underpinning this process is the need for overqualified employees to engage in effortful cognitive reappraisal of the demands of shared leadership as challenges they can overcome. However, over time, overqualified employees may come to believe that setting team goals and helping team members are merely another part of their existing unfulfilling role for which they are overqualified. This may be particularly true for involuntary overqualification, wherein employees feel they accepted a job below their qualifications by necessity, rather than by choice, due to limited alternative employment opportunities or other reasons beyond their control (Steffy, 2017). Involuntarily overqualified employees may feel trapped or stuck in their jobs (Steffy, 2017) and as such, may perceive task and relational elements of shared leadership as being inconsistent with their job expectations, rather than a meaningful opportunity to occupy a position they expected to hold in their job. Subsequently, overqualified employees may feel that their excess skill-based resources are being gradually depleted by the demands of shared leadership, without gaining personal value through growth and recognition within the team. Indeed, the constant cognitive reappraisal of the perceived discrepancy between what overqualified employees believe they deserve and what their current shared leadership role offers them may compound the negative effects of involuntary overqualification. In the long-term, chronic depletion of the excess skill-based resources of overqualified employees may backfire, further exacerbating their frustration and anger toward their jobs, particularly if overqualification is involuntary, as opposed to voluntary (or based on their choice and preferences).

Overqualified employees, particularly those whose jobs were not based on their choice, may eventually re-appraise shared leadership as masking underlying cause of their frustration – being deprived of a job which they feel they deserve given their outstanding credentials. Overqualified employees may perceive that they are bound to guide team members with a clear purpose and offer them support in shared leadership, while suppressing their own frustration and resentment that stem from relative deprivation. As a result, overqualified employees may find these shared leadership roles in conflict with their sense of competence, which may result in their increased cynicism about the meaningfulness of their jobs and subsequent burnout (Luksyte et al., 2011). The feelings of meaninglessness in planning and supporting in shared leadership may lead these overqualified employees to opt for conserving their capability-based resources. Consequently, overqualified employees may consider withdrawing their effort from the shared leadership role as a coping mechanism due to experiencing a violation of their expectations for a better job (Luksyte et al., 2011). Thus, overqualified employees may eventually perceive that shared leadership was their false expectation rather than a worthwhile opportunity to utilize their surplus talents on the job they think they deserve.

Conclusion

This commentary contests the idea that the appraisal of shared leadership demands as a challenge is always beneficial (Choudhury & Maupin's, 2025) by explaining why overqualified employees may view these demands as a challenge and why this may backfire for them in the long-term. We argued that when overqualified employees are given opportunities to engage in shared leadership and apply their surplus skills, they may be more likely to perceive job demands as a challenge rather than a hindrance. This reframing may help alleviate feelings of relative deprivation often experienced by overqualified employees, who may otherwise feel frustrated or angry due to a perceived mismatch between their capabilities and the job demands, and a belief that they are entitled to more meaningful work (Luksyte et al., 2022).

By offering a channel to leverage employees’ capabilities and assuage their relative deprivation, shared leadership presents an opportunity for organizations to enhance team effectiveness by engaging overqualified talent in meeting its broadened demands. Yet, organizations should pay particular attention to involuntarily overqualified employees when they offer shared leadership to them as a means to address their relative deprivation. This is because involuntary overqualification may undermine the long-term sustainability of challenge appraisal and eventually lead these involuntarily overqualified employees to perceive shared leadership as a hindrance rather than a growth opportunity.