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WHAT HELPS AND HINDERS EMPLOYEE WELLBEING IN THE FACE OF
POOR LEADERSHIP IN THE WORKPLACE?
Eleanor Sarah Burrows, M.A., R.C.C., University of British Columbia
Abstract
While researchers have investigated the concept of poor leadership in
the workplace and the construct of employee wellbeing itself, little is
known about the factors that positive or negatively affect wellbeing
when an employee has experienced poor leadership in the workplace.
This qualitative study investigated what factors helped, hindered, or
might have helped employee wellbeing in the face of poor leadership
in the workplace. Eight Canadian adult participants who self-identified
as having maintained wellbeing in the face of poor leadership were
interviewed according to the protocol of the Enhanced Critical Incident
Technique.
Contextual and critical incident data was analyzed according to both
the Enhanced Critical Incident Technique and Thematic Analysis,
which yielded seven critical incident categories and seven contextual
themes.
Results add deeper insight regarding the potential factors that help or
hinder employee wellbeing despite the experience of poor leadership,
and indicate that further research regarding how these factors
influence employee wellbeing, coping, and resilience is warranted.
Background
• It has been found that employees’ interactions with and perceptions
of their supervisors can largely impact measures of employee
performance and wellbeing.
• The most extreme manifestation of detrimental supervisory practice
is poor leadership, also known as destructive leadership or abusive
supervision (Aasland et al., 2010).
• Poor leadership behaviours have been found to directly affect
indices of employee wellbeing, such as coping ability and
psychological health and distress (Amundson, Borgen, Jordan, &
Erlebach, 2004; Gilbreath & Benson, 2004).
• While a wide range of literature has explored how employees cope
effectively with the challenges that threaten to affect their wellbeing
and coping in the workplace, no studies to date have explored how
employees who effectively maintain their wellbeing are able to do
so in the face of poor leadership practices in their organization.
Research Questions
The current study aimed to address the following questions:
• What factors help and hinder employee wellbeing in the face of
poor leadership?
• What factors might have helped but were not available at the time?
Method
The final number of critical incident items was 122, with 56 helping
items (46%), 33 hindering items (27%), and 33 wish list items (27%).
Data analysis resulted in seven categories that were each informed
by what helped, hindered, or might have helped employee wellbeing
in the face of poor leadership. These included:
• Beneficial or detrimental negative personal qualities and attitudes,
including personal outlook, feelings, perspective, personal style in
handling conflict, or beliefs
• Stress management, or factors that mitigated or perpetuated
physical, emotional, or mental stress
• Interpersonal intimacy and social support or lack of support,
including informal emotional, mental, physical and/or financial
support from other people
• Problem solving, including directly addressing the source of conflict
or, for hindering items, neglecting to address the problem
• Workplace support, such as managerial, material, communication-
related, or resource-related support at work and lack of such
support for hindering items
• Positive or negative communication on the employer or employees’
behalf regarding performance and expectations
• Work experience, competence, and success or lack of success.
Results
Conclusions
A purposive sampling method yielded eight participants who self-
identified as having maintained their wellbeing during at least one
experience of poor leadership during their adult life.
Data collection followed the guidelines for the Enhanced Critical
Incident Technique (ECIT) set out by Butterfield et al. (2005).
• Data was collected by the student researcher through one semi-
structured interview and one second contact exchange.
• In the interview, participants were asked what helped, hindered, or
might have helped them maintain wellbeing in the face of poor
leadership in the workplace.
• Participants were also asked to provide an example of the factor
from their experience and to describe its significance in relation to
the research question.
The program ATLAS.ti aided in coding the transcripts.
• Items were coded according to whether the student researcher
considered them to be helping, hindering, or wish list items.
• Categories were then created according to the study’s frame of
reference.
• The second contact was conducted with participants by e-mail and
telephone to ensure the results accurately reflected participants’
lived experiences.
• Finally, nine credibility checks were conducted in order to facilitate
sound interpretation of the data.
The results of the current study suggest that employee wellbeing
can be enhanced or hampered by a range of personal behaviours
and characteristics in addition to workplace support. The results
also imply that the onus for protecting wellbeing largely lies on
employees themselves, despite the organizational context in
which their wellbeing is threatened.
Implications for counselling professionals include the notion that
people are able to identify and draw on pre-existing sources of
support and strength, and that counselling interventions that
promote adapting a person’s attitude or perception of an adverse
workplace situation, as well as their behavioural response, might
be useful in protecting client wellbeing. The results also indicate
that the social support inherent to the counselling paradigm may
be an invaluable resource for clients who are struggling with poor
leadership in the workplace.