Leading on Empty? Daily Maintenance, Morning Energy, and the Spillover to Employee Well-Being and Work Engagement

Topic

This thesis examines how leaders’ daily recovery relates to morning vigor and employees’ work experiences. It focuses on sleep quality, psychological detachment, leader morning vigor, perceived leader vigor, and employees’ daily affect, stress, and work engagement.

Relevance

Leadership is not only shaped by stable traits or general leadership style. It is also enacted from day to day and depends on the resources a leader can bring into specific work situations. When leaders are mentally recovered and sufficiently energised, they may be better able to be present, attentive, and supportive. This thesis therefore contributes to the discussion on sustainable leadership by examining how daily recovery, visible leader energy, and psychological safety relate to employees’ everyday work experiences.

Findings

The results did not provide clear support for the full hypothesised spillover chain. Leaders’ evening recovery showed only limited evidence of being associated with their self-reported morning vigor, and leader-reported morning vigor did not clearly translate into employees’ perceptions of leader vigor on the same day. However, employees’ perceived leader vigor was consistently associated with their own daily experiences, including higher positive affect, lower stress, and higher work engagement. Psychological safety also emerged as an important contextual factor.

Implications for Practice

• Leaders should not only pay attention to their own recovery, but also to how their energy, presence, and support are experienced by employees in daily interactions.

• Organisations can support sustainable leadership by taking recovery, workload, and psychological safety seriously as part of everyday leadership conditions.

• Employees may benefit from work environments in which leaders are perceived as accessible, present, and supportive.

Methods

The study used a dyadic daily diary design across ten working days in five Swiss organisations. The final sample included five leaders and 31 employees, resulting in 50 leader-day observations and 266 employee-day observations. Leaders completed short morning surveys, while employees completed end-of-day surveys. The data were analysed using multilevel models to account for the repeated daily observations and the nested structure of the data.