Leadership and stress: A meta-analytic review. (2017)

“Stress influences leader behavior: leadership behavior and leader-follower relationships are significant determinants of stress/burnout in subordinates.”

P.D. Harms, University of Alabama; Marcus Credé & Michael Tynan, Iowa State University; Matthew Leon, Central Oklahoma University;  Wonho Jeung, Korean National Defense University

The Leadership Quarterly, 28(1), 178-194.

From the abstract:

“Stress has been implicated as an important determinant of leadership functioning. Conversely, the behavior of leaders has long been argued to be a major factor in determining the stress levels of followers.

“Yet despite widespread acknowledgement that stress and leadership are linked, there has been no systematic attempt to organize and summarize the literature in these fields. In this paper, we meta-analytically review the relationship between three leadership constructs (transformational leadership, leader-member exchange, and abusive supervision) and stress and burnout.

“Our analyses confirm that leader stress influences leader behavior and that leadership behaviors and leader-follower relationships are significant determinants of stress and burnout in subordinates.

“We build on these results to suggest new avenues for research in this domain as well as discussing how these results can inform practice with regards to leader development.”

Access the full paper here: Leadership and stress: A meta-analytic review.