Appreciative Leadership and Employee Well-Being in Everyday Working Life

Abstract

Appreciative leadership and employee well-being in everyday working life ** This study examines the relationship between appreciative behavior and employee well-being on a daily basis. The theoretical rationale of our approach is based in leadership concepts emphasizing the relational aspect of leadership, and, more generally, in a framework that emphasizes the central role of threats, or boosts, to self-esteem (i.e., the concept of "Stress-as-Offense-to-Self" [SOS]). Qualitative and quantitative data of 139 employees working in different occupations were assessed during five consecutive workdays. First, based on event-sampling of appreciative situations, the nature of appreciative situations from the perspective of the employees, as it manifests itself in daily episodes, was examined. Simple praise and gratitude were the most frequent types of appreciative behavior reported. Besides leaders, customers and coworkers were frequent sources of appreciation as well. Second, the intra-individual effects of daily experiences of appreciation on employee well-being at the end of work were analyzed. Multi-level random coefficient modeling showed that daily appreciation by all sources significantly predicted serenity (i.e., a low-arousal / high pleasure type of well-being) at the end of work. As serenity is likely to affect recovery, which, in turn, may affect health and performance, our findings show that for leaders, but not only for leaders, displaying elementary appreciative behavior is a simple but important tool for enhancing employee health and well-being.

Appreciation and Illegitimate Tasks as Predictors of Affective Well-being: Disentangling Within- and Between-Person Effects

“…These findings underscore the importance of appreciation for employee well-being, corresponding to its theoretically postulated importance for satisfying the need for a positive regard by important others (Leary, 1999(Leary, , 2015. Appreciation responds to this need in a way that is especially clear and direct (Stocker et al, 2014). Our results are in line with the few studies investigating appreciation as a variable in its own right (e.g., Apostel et al, 2017;Stocker et al, 2014).…”

“…Appreciation signals that one is valued and acknowledged; by contrast, illegitimate tasks signal a lack of respect for one's professional identity. The message sent by appreciation is rather direct, as appreciation is, for the most part, expressed directly in social interactions (Stocker et al, 2014). By contrast, the message sent by assigning illegitimate tasks is more indirect.…”

“…Existing studies have confirmed the effects of appreciation. Thus, a cross-sectional study by Stocker et al (2010) showed an association of appreciation with well-being indicators, such as job satisfaction and reduced negative emotions, over and above social support and interactional justice. found that the positive effect of appreciation on work engagement was the strongest of six resources tested.…”

“…Semmer et al (2007) argued, however, that appreciation is an important concept in its own right. Appreciation implies recognition of one's qualities and achievements; it signals acceptance and acknowledgment, and thus responds to the need to belong (e.g., Leary, 1999) and boosts self-esteem (Harter, 1993), and it does so in a very direct way (e.g., by praise; Stocker et al, 2014). Other constructs, notably social support, do entail appreciation; more specifically, through its emotional component, which refers to esteem, caring, and respect (Beehr & Glazer, 2001).…”

“…Semmer et al (2006) reported cumulative effects of appreciation in that the number of times participants reported high appreciation at work predicted job satisfaction at the last wave in a study with four waves of measurement. A recent event sampling study found that appreciative events throughout the workday predicted well-being in terms of serenity after work intra-individually (Stocker et al, 2014).…”