The unexpected role of employees’ leadership for the self-management of their competence

Managers’ transformational leadership was repeatedly shown to support trust, intrinsic motivation and competence of employees working with them. In contrast, there is a gap in the literature regarding employees’ leadership. In line with a self-determined view of competence management, we investigate the role of employees’ transformational leadership, work motivation and trust on the satisfaction of their own need for competence. We surveyed a sample of 71 field workers, holding non-managerial, non-executive positions in the industry. Descriptive data show their relatively high level of transformational leadership, and predictive analysis shows its positive impact on their competence dynamics. Furthermore, identified motivation (and not intrinsic motivation) and trust towards managers also arise as significant drivers of satisfaction of the need for competence. Surprisingly, trust towards teammates acts as a barrier to individual competence, as if a trustworthy team would alleviate individuals’ responsibility or need to grow in competence. From these results, we discuss the potential of training transformational leadership in non-managerial populations: in addition to supporting employees’ efficiency at work, this could help them gain perspective and maturity on their professional role, increase their purpose- or value-driven identified motivation and support their competence development. Ultimately, all these factors are likely to enhance individual and organizational wellbeing, and thereby contribute to human and societal development.