Workplace leadership sentiments and employee engagement

Abstract

This research examines the role of employees’ perceptions regarding the sentiments of their leaders in predicting followers’ levels of work engagement. Drawing on the Affective Events theory, Emotion as Information Model and Job Demands-Resources theory, it investigates the types of sentiments employees perceive their leaders display and whether these perceptions are associated with favorable employee outcomes, namely work engagement. Following a mixed-method research design, we collected both qualitative and quantitative data in Lebanon. We first interviewed Lebanese experts regarding the most common sentiments that leaders display in their workplaces. Informed by the qualitative research findings, we tested our conceptual model, collecting responses from a two-wave survey among 337 Lebanese employees. The results of the qualitative study provided the categorization of both positive and negative leader sentiments. The quantitative research findings indicated that employees’ perceived leader sentiments positively influence their work engagement levels. This relationship was partially mediated by employees’ amplification of their positive emotions towards their leader. Offering insights from a non-Western workplace context, the findings of this study can serve as the basis for future cross-cultural comparisons regarding the role of leaders’ sentiments in promoting favorable employee outcomes in the workplace.