Influence of Parental Experience on Transformational Leadership Behaviour: A Test of Work–Family Enrichment of Male Managers from an Employee Perspective

Background: When a male leader becomes a father, changes in his transformational leadership behaviour occur due to shifted priorities, role expectations and resource transfer between domains. Work–life enrichment research acknowledges the positive overall effects of fatherhood on overall transformational leadership behaviours. Our quantitative study contributes to existing knowledge by analysing the perception of behavioural changes of leaders from the employees’ view. The results are matched with previous studies to assess differences of perception between leaders and employees.

Methods: Our research uses a granular, detailed definition of transformational leadership. Based on a sample of 139 respondents, we test the positive effects of fatherhood on leadership performance with Wilcoxon signed rank sum tests.

Results: 13 out of 15 transformational leadership behaviours improve significantly with fatherhood. We find that leaders and employees view change differently. Employees perceive improvement similarly in terms of direction, but it is less pronounced in terms of magnitude. Moreover, we find that well rated leaders tend to benefit the most from fatherhood, at least from the perspective of their employees. Males perceive higher levels of improvement than females, which we attribute to a gender empathy bias.

Conclusion: Our study confirms work–family enrichment theory and the positive effects of fatherhood on transformational leadership behaviour. Nevertheless, we show that not all involved parties perceive behavioural changes conformably.