From self-care to motivation: health-oriented leadership and basic psychological need satisfaction at work

Leadership research increasingly emphasizes the role of health-oriented leadership (HoL) for employee well-being and motivation, yet the motivational relevance of leaders' own self-care remains insufficiently understood. Addressing this gap, the present study integrates the HoL framework with self-determination theory (SDT) to examine how leader self-care relates to employees' basic psychological need satisfaction and intrinsic motivation. Building on SDT, self-care is conceptualized as a form of health-related self-regulation that supports the satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The study proposes a theoretically ordered model in which leader self-care is associated with staff-care, employee self-care, need satisfaction, and intrinsic motivation, thereby extending prior research that has primarily focused on leaders' health-supportive behavior toward employees. Data were collected from 122 employees in Germany using a cross-sectional online survey. Regression analyses showed that leader self-care was a strong and significant predictor of staff-care (b = 1.01, p < 0.001) and employee self-care (b = 0.37, p < 0.001). Within the mediation model, staff-care was positively but not significantly associated with basic psychological need satisfaction (b = 0.12, p = 0.055), and the indirect effect of leader self-care on need satisfaction via staff-care was not statistically significant (b = 0.12, 95% CI [0.00, 0.25]). In contrast, employee self-care was a significant predictor of need satisfaction (b = 0.41, p < 0.001), which in turn strongly predicted intrinsic motivation (b = 1.06, p < 0.001). These findings suggest that HoL may influence motivation less through direct supportive behavior and more through enabling employees' self-regulatory engagement. By identifying employee self-care as a proximal correlate of need satisfaction, the study contributes to a more differentiated understanding of how leadership-related health resources translate into motivational outcomes. The study is limited by its cross-sectional design, reliance on self-report data, and geographically restricted sample. Future research should employ longitudinal and multi-source designs to examine causal mechanisms and contextual boundary conditions.