Feel Good, Behave Better? The Effect of Leader Feeling Trusted by Employees on Leadership Behaviors

Abstract

The concept of feeling trusted refers to trustee’s awareness of trustor’s exposed vulnerability and positive expectations, which has received far less concern comparing with trusting. The limited research has merely centered on employee feeling trusted by their leaders and its influences on employee work-related outcomes, but there exists little work with the focus of the impacts of leader feeling trusted by employees. Grounded in theories of appropriateness and moral licensing, this research sheds the spotlight on explaining why leaders’ sense of being trusted by employees brings about both positive and negative reactions and considering how leaders’ moral identity moderates these effects. A multisource and time-lagged field study collecting from 159 leaders and 611 employees provided sufficient support for the benefits and drawbacks of leader feeling trusted. Results demonstrated that leader feeling trusted would trigger two main consequences: (1) the trusted leaders may have increased perceptions of obligation toward their subordinates, and further engage in benevolent leadership behavior to repay the kindness; and (2) leaders’ sense of being trusted may conduce to accumulate moral credits, thereby stimulating leaders to display laissez-faire leadership behavior. Additionally, our findings indicate that the leader’s moral identity would affect the decisions of the trusted leader to behave better or worse, which promote benevolent leadership behavior through enhanced felt obligation, and lessen laissez-faire leadership behavior via reduced moral credits.