Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Cultivating An Engaged Workforce: The Roles Of Leader Personality, Motivation, And Leadership Style, Amy Marie Taylor

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the links between leadership style, leader personality, and motivation to lead, with employee engagement. Transformational leadership, transactional leadership, and abusive supervision styles were examined in relation to levels of employee engagement via a sample of n=195 employees and n=130 managers. Consistent with findings from Christian, Garza, and Slaughter (2011), transformational leadership showed a positive link to employee engagement (r= .38, p< .05). On the opposite end, abusive supervision was negatively related to employee engagement (r= -.27, p< .05). Contingent reward leadership showed a positive link to employee engagement (r= .32, p< .05).

Relationships between personality and leadership style were framed according to the socioanalytic framework (Hogan & Shelton, 1998). This study did not find any significant differences in the relationships between the expected leadership behaviors and the traits …