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The Strength of Vulnerability: How Does Supervisors' Emotional Support-Seeking Promote Leadership Influence?
1School of Economics and Management, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China.
Behavioral Sciences (Basel, Switzerland)
|October 29, 2025
Summary
Supervisors seeking emotional support can boost leadership influence by improving team relationships (Leader-Member Exchange efficiency). Managerial competence further enhances this positive effect, challenging traditional views on status.
Area of Science:
- Organizational Behavior
- Leadership Studies
- Social Psychology
Background:
- Traditional views perceive supervisors as support providers, not seekers, due to status concerns.
- Prior research overlooks the relational aspects of support-seeking and subordinate expectations of authentic leadership.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how supervisors' emotional support-seeking influences leadership.
- To examine the mediating role of Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) efficiency.
- To explore the moderating effect of managerial competence.
Main Methods:
- Social network approach and regression analysis.
- Data collected from 150 supervisors and 525 subordinates across 93 teams in 51 Chinese organizations.
Main Results:
- Supervisors' emotional support-seeking positively impacts leadership influence through LMX efficiency.
- Managerial competence moderates the link between supervisors' emotional support-seeking and LMX efficiency.
Conclusions:
- Emotional support-seeking by supervisors can enhance leadership influence and relationships.
- Findings challenge the assumption that seeking support diminishes supervisor status.
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