Positive family events facilitate effective leader behaviors at work: A within-individual investigation of family-work enrichment.

Abstract

Challenges related to managing work and family demands have become more and more pressing, particularly for those with high work demands, such as those in managerial and leadership roles. While existing research has focused on how family demands may negatively affect employee functioning at work, less attention has focused on characterizing the process through which individuals can benefit from their family lives. Drawing from self-determination theory, we develop a family-to-work enrichment framework to illustrate how leaders' positive experiences and motivational gains from home may transfer to work. We conducted two experience sampling studies to examine our family-work enrichment framework. Our results show that daily positive family events are positively predictive of consideration and transformational leadership behaviors at work through family need satisfaction and prosocial motivation. Our results further demonstrate that positive family events are more beneficial for leaders who view their family role as important and central (Study 2). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).