Relationship between Leadership Styles and Well Being and Stress

Abstract

This dissertation discusses the impact of leadership styles such as transformational, transactional and laissez-faire styles of leadership on the stress of employee and other emotional well-being. In line with the Full-Range of leadership theory, the Job-Demands-India’s model and the Conservation of resources theory, the paper discusses the role played by leadership behaviors in workplace psychological stressors. Information was sought from employees of various ranks all over the country of India. There included readily known forms of questionnaires for well-being and work stress used in collection of data. The results show that transformative leadership enhances well-being and reduces stress as compared to laissez-faire leadership causing an increase level of stress and decrease well-being. The transactional leadership displayed a mixed influence that had structure, but did not have any emotional support. In the investigation, it is emphasized that an empathic – motivational – individual consideration avoids the de-stressing process and contributes to wellbeing, on the other hand while the avoidant or performance-oriented leadership denotes strengthening the burden of burnout. It means that one of the main mediators in the relationship between leadership style and stress is emotional well-being. The research offers a sound lesson on leadership development, HR as well as mental health in the workplace, and the researcher suggests recommendations for future longitudinal studies.