Social effects of engaged leaders on subordinates’ experiences in the workplace

We drew on the theory of conservation of resources to examine the social effects of a leader’s work engagement on followers’ psychological capital, work engagement, and job satisfaction. With a sample of 530 employees nested within 54 teams, we tested our hypotheses using multilevel path analyses in Mplus. As hypothesized, we found that the leader’s work engagement was positively related to followers’ psychological capital, work engagement, and job satisfaction. Further, followers’ psychological capital mediated the relationship between the leader’s work engagement and followers’ work engagement and job satisfaction. In particular, the leader’s work engagement was positively related to followers’ psychological capital, which, in turn, was positively associated with both their work engagement and job satisfaction. Implications of our findings are that if leaders openly express their identification with their work and put great effort into their job, followers are more likely to achieve high levels of team effectiveness.