How Does Secure-base Leadership Influence Employee Well-being?

To improve their operations in fast-paced business environment, organizations need leaders who embed the required changes into corporate strategy and implement it accordingly to maintain competitive edge. However, organizational change is disruptive and have a significant impact on employee well-being, unfortunately, the literature does not provide a comprehensive answer on what kind of leadership can be more effective to support employee well-being in environmental uncertainty. To ensure a smooth transition in dynamic environment, among several influential leadership styles, recent research found that employee well-being in the organization can be improved through secure-base leadership. Since, secure-base leadership recognizes the value of employees and provide them with secure-base support in organization. However, the literature is silent on the attributes of secure-base leadership. Therefore, to explore the attributes of secure-base leadership and how these attributes affect employee overall well-being, the study conducted a thematic analysis, data was purposively collected via interview from eight respondents. The study found that secure-base leadership is characterized by the elements such as (1) autonomy to make decisions (2) maintaining healthy work life balance (3) open communication (4) handling conflicts (5) recognizing and appreciating employees (6) promoting employees wellbeing and mental health (7) collaboration and teamwork and (8) working on a challenging project, among others.  All these attributes are positively related to employee overall well-being, for example secure-base leaders fulfil employee psychological needs by providing autonomy through trust and empowerment, fostering competence through feedback and development opportunities, and promoting relatedness through open communication and interpersonal support. Fulfilment of employee psychological needs positively affect intrinsic motivation which in turn lead to higher level of job satisfaction and employee overall well-being. Findings of the current study enriches the literature on the relationship between secure-base leadership and employees well-beings. Further, the study shed light on key attributes possess by secure-base leaders, therefore, HR manager should formulate selection criteria for mangers in which priority should be given to candidates with secure-base leadership attributes.