Leaders that don’t care: Investigating leader caregiving from an attachment-theoretical perspective.
Per‐Magnus Moe Thompson et al.
What the paper says
The rationale for studying leadership, from an attachment perspective, often rests on the idea of leaders as caregivers.Therefore, it seems somewhat paradoxical that most studies focus on leaders' attachment style, rather than on their caregiving orientation.The present study first investigates the mediating role of caregiving avoidance on the relationship between leaders' avoidant attachment style and followers' experience of being cared for (i.e., interactive empathy, IE).Then the moderating effect of group cohesion is investigated, suggesting that avoidant leaders experience the interpersonal closeness of highly-cohesive groups as distressing, so provide lower-quality caregiving.Sampling from a context where leader caregiving was expected to be crucial, data was gathered from 410 Norwegian recruits during a two-week military leadership training program.The first study hypothesis was supported, such that the relationship between leaders' avoidant attachment style and follower-rated IE was fully mediated by leader's caregiving avoidance.However, contrary to prediction, group cohesion had a favorable effect on avoidant leaders.This suggests that cohesive groups may provide self-reliant, avoidant leaders with a sense of felt security, thus enabling them to provide care for followers in need.Implications for future research and leadership development are discussed.
3 citations
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.20 × 0.4 = 0.08 |
| M · momentum | 0.80 × 0.15 = 0.12 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.