Jin 2016

LEAQUA-01088; No of Pages 21
The Leadership Quarterly xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
The Leadership Quarterly

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/leaqua
Do happy leaders lead better? Affective and attitudinal

antecedents of transformational leadership
Sirkwoo Jin a,⁎, Myeong-Gu Seo b,1, Debra L. Shapiro c,2
a
Management Department, Girard School of Business, Merrimack College, 315 Turnpike Street, North Andover, MA 01845, USA
b
Management and Organization Department, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
c
Management and Organization Department, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: In a study of 357 managers using multiple methods and raters, we investigated how leaders' affec-
Received 22 September 2013 tive experience was linked to their transformational leadership. As predicted, we found that
Received in revised form 6 June 2015 leaders who experienced more pleasantness at work were rated by their subordinates as more
Accepted 18 September 2015
transformational, and this relationship was partially mediated by leaders' affective organizational
Available online xxxx
commitment. Surprisingly, job satisfaction did not mediate this relationship. Theoretical and prac-
Handling Editor: Shane Connelly tical implications of these findings are discussed.
© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Affective experience
Transformational leadership
Job attitude
Transformational leadership has emerged as one of the most prominent leadership theories during the past decade, drawing a
great deal of scholarly attention and investigation (Grant, 2012; Judge & Piccolo, 2004; Rafferty & Griffin, 2004; Rowold & Heinitz,
2007; Rubin, Munz, & Bommer, 2005; Van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013). According to Bass (1985, 1990), leaders are “transformation-
al” when they: (1) hold high standards of moral, ethical, and personal conduct (referred to as “idealized influence”); (2) provide a
strong vision for the future (referred to as “inspirational motivation”), (3) challenge organizational norms and encourage creative
thinking (referred to as “intellectual stimulation”), and (4) identify and meet their followers' developmental needs (referred to as “in-
dividualized consideration”). The reason why Bass referred to these four sets of behavioral characteristics as transformational in nature
is because he believed that these could transform employees into high performers. Indeed, studies have found that subordinates who
perceive their leaders as more transformational tend to have higher performance-levels (e.g. Barling, Weber, & Kelloway, 1996,
Howell & Hall-Merenda, 1999), higher creativity-levels (e.g. Shin, Kim, Lee, & Bian, 2012, Shin & Zhou, 2003), and higher frequencies
of organizational citizenship behavior (e.g. Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, & Fetter, 1990, Wang, Law, Hackett, Wang, & Chen,
2005). Collectively, these findings suggest that it behooves organizations to have transformational leaders. This, in turn, suggests
that it behooves management scholars to understand factors influencing leaders to behave (more versus less) transformationally.
Surprisingly, as noted by Rubin, Munz, and Bommer (2005: 846), the latter understanding is unclear. That is, we do not yet have an
answer to the question: “Why do some leaders engage in transformational leadership behavior and others do not?” The scholars who have
investigated antecedents to transformational leadership have done so with a “trait approach.” For example, greater degree of
⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 978 837 5414.

E-mail addresses: jins@merrimack.edu (S. Jin), mseo@rhsmith.umd.edu (M.-G. Seo), dshapiro@rhsmith.umd.edu (D.L. Shapiro).
1
Tel.: +1 301 405 7746.
2
Tel.: +1 301 356 8287.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2015.09.002
1048-9843/© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article as: Jin, S., et al., Do happy leaders lead better? Affective and attitudinal antecedents of transformational
leadership, The Leadership Quarterly (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2015.09.002
2 S. Jin et al. / The Leadership Quarterly xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
transformational leadership has been predicted to occur on the part of leaders who are more extraverted, more agreeable, more open
to change (Crant & Bateman, 2000; Judge & Bono, 2000), and more positive in their self-assessments (Hannah, Avolio, Chan, &
Walumbwa, 2012). Furthermore, studies of identical and fraternal twins have shown that transformational leadership is heritable
and influenced by genetic factors such that leaders engage in more transformational leadership behaviors when their twin sibling
is a transformational leader (Johnson, Vernon, Harris, & Jang, 2004; Li, Arvey, Zhang, & Song, 2012). Yet, Li et al. (2012) found that,
relative to one's additive genetic factors, one's unique environment and experiences in it explain larger variance in self-perceived
transformational leadership; and similarly but conversely, Bono and Judge (2004) found in their meta-analytic review of the leader-
ship literature that a large proportion (88 to 95%) of between-person variability in transformational leadership remains unexplained
by leader traits (e.g., personality). This led Bono and Judge to speculate that transformational leadership may be “more malleable, more
transient, and less trait-like than one might otherwise believe” (Bono & Judge, 2004: 906). To build on this speculation, the antecedents to
transformational leadership examined in this paper regard contextual variabilities that are likely to explain the between-person var-
iability of transformational leadership (cf. Luthans, Avolio, Avey, & Norman, 2007; Luthans & Youssef, 2007; Norman, Avolio, &
Luthans, 2010). Specifically, we examine how the extent of transformational leadership behavior is influenced by leaders' psycholog-
ical states (i.e., moods) and job attitudes at work that change across situations. Such antecedents have gone unexamined in studies
searching, instead, for differences in leaders' individually-invariable sources of variability (personality-traits).
To be clear, we are proposing that the leaders' mood experiences and job attitudes may directly influence their extent of transfor-
mational behaviors; as such, we are proposing a direct effect of leaders' mood-state and job attitudes on their degree of transforma-
tional leadership. We are not proposing that leaders' moods or attitudes at work affect transformational leadership only if leaders
express their mood and create “mood contagion” as suggested by other scholars. “Mood contagion” is a mechanism that induces a
congruent mood state through the observation of another person's public display of mood (Neumann & Strack, 2000; Sy, Côté, &
Saavedra, 2005). We recognize that empirical support for a mood contagion-explanation for subordinates' perception of transforma-
tional leadership exists (e.g., Bono & Ilies, 2006); but such explanations require leaders to express the moods they are feeling. In con-
trast, we posit that leaders' likelihood of being transformational is greater when leaders experience (rather than express) more pleasant
feelings. By pleasant feelings, we mean one's positive affective experiences, such as feeling various positive moods and emotions
(described in detail in our literature review). Hereforward we use the term “feelings” instead of moods or emotions to emphasize
the role of one's overall affective experiences in transformational leadership. Thus in our conceptualization of pleasantness we
focus on pleasant core affect (e.g., happy, excited, and enthusiastic; Barrett, 2006a, 2006b; Russell, 2003; Russell & Barrett, 1999)
and explore its association with transformational leadership. The possibility of a direct effect of leaders' pleasantness (pleasant core
affect) on their degree of transformational leadership has yet to be studied; examining this thus adds a unique perspective to research
on affective processes in transformational leadership (e.g., Berson, Shamir, Avolio, & Popper, 2001; Bono, Foldes, Vinson, & Muros,
2007; Bono & Ilies, 2006; George, 2000).
The idea that leaders' job attitudes may influence their transformational leadership adds a new direction in transformational lead-
ership research too. Our reasons for focusing on job attitudes as another “state-like” antecedent of transformational leadership are
twofold. First, recent studies have shown the importance of job contexts in transformational leadership (e.g. Purvanova & Bono,
2009, Zhang, Wang, & Pearce, 2014). Leaders' job attitudes can be an important mechanism linking job contexts to transformational
leadership because job contexts may constantly shape and reshape leaders' attitudes about their jobs and/or organizations that, in
turn, promote or inhibit their transformational leadership. Second, job attitudes are evaluative judgments containing both affective
and cognitive components (Allen & Meyer, 1990; Fisher, 2000; Weiss, Nicholas, & Daus, 1999). As a result, the variability of job atti-
tudes likely exceeds that of leaders' traits (Luthans & Youssef, 2007; Luthans et al., 2007), yet is probably less than the variability as-
sociated with leaders' moods and emotions, such as their feelings of pleasantness.
As illustrated in Fig. 1, we hypothesize that leaders who are likely to be more transformational are those who affectively experience
on a continual (day-to-day) basis greater levels of “pleasantness” (Barrett, 2006a,b; Russell, 2003; Russell & Barrett, 1999) and hold
more positive job attitudes, such as higher levels of job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment. Our reason for selecting
the latter two job attitudes over others is guided by insights drawn from Riketta (2008) who notes that job satisfaction and affective
organizational commitment are generalized rather than specific job attitudes and that more general (rather than specific) job atti-
tudes are more predictive of broad-based behaviors, which transformational behaviors are. As Fig. 1 shows, we hypothesize that
the leader with more positive job attitudes will likely be those who experience greater pleasantness in their day-to-day work expe-
riences; as such, we highlight job attitudes as a partial mediator of the relationship that leaders' pleasantness likely has with their
transformational leadership.
Our study promises to benefit managers as well as management scholars in two ways. First, if our findings show, as we predict, that
leaders' psychological states and experiences at work influence their transformational leadership, this will provide empirical support
for Bono and Judge's (2004) speculation that antecedents to transformational leadership may be contextually variable in nature. Relat-
edly, such findings will show that transformational leadership may not be due only to more stable and trait-like antecedents where
focus has been to date, such as personality factors (e.g. Bono & Judge, 2004, Hannah et al., 2012), genetic factors (e.g. Arvey, Zhang,
Avolio, & Krueger, 2007, Li et al., 2012), and life span factors (Avolio & Gibbons, 1988). Because the nature of the antecedents we ex-
amine are more malleable and transient relative to leader traits, our theorizing and findings also promise to help both managers and
management scholars rethink what it takes to encourage leaders to behave transformationally and how to increase leaders' motiva-
tion to do this. Fostering this choice may, in turn, increase, the positive consequences often linked to this leadership style (cf. Van
Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013).
A second way our study's findings may benefit managers as well as management scholars pertains to our possibly finding leaders'
job attitudes to be the partial mediator we predict these to be (illustrated in Fig, 1). If we indeed observe this, our findings will respond
S. Jin et al. / The Leadership Quarterly xxx (2015) xxx–xxx 3
Fig. 1. Hypothesized model.
to DeRue, Nahrgang, Wellman, and Humphrey's (2011) call for research to explore possible mediational mechanisms between lead-
ership and its predictors. A practical implication of this, too, is that creating and maintaining positive job attitudes among organizations'
leaders may be critical to ensuring that leaders (continue to) behave transformationally.
This paper proceeds as follows. First, we review literature guiding our hypotheses about how leaders' pleasantness may directly
affect their transformational leadership. Next, we review literature guiding us to hypothesize that the latter relationship may be me-
diated by leaders' job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment. We then describe the method used to test our hypotheses
and our study's findings. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for managers as well as management scholars.
Literature review and hypotheses
In organizations people experience a broad range of affective states (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996); leaders are no exception (e.g.
George, 2000, Huy, 2002). One fundamental affective property that underlies a broad range of affective experiences is the degree of
pleasantness, the most basic dimension of core affect (Barrett, 2006a,b; Russell, 2003; Russell & Barrett, 1999). As a momentary,
state-like description of neurophysiologic state, pleasantness summarizes “how well one is doing in terms of a hedonic valence of
pleasant-unpleasant, good-bad, positive-negative, or appetitive-aversive” (Seo, Barrett, & Bartunek, 2004: 426). A growing body of lit-
erature suggests that there are important cognitive and behavioral consequences associated with the degree to which people feel
pleasure or displeasure (see, Barsade & Gibson, 2007; Forgas & George, 2001; Isen, 2000; Seo et al., 2004, for reviews). Empirically,
various studies also show that people with more pleasant feelings have been found to have greater work motivation (Seo,
Bartunek, & Barrett, 2010), more positive job attitudes (Fisher, 2000), more creative performance (George & Zhou, 2002), more pro-
active performance (Tsai, Chen, & Liu, 2007) and better decision making (Wong, Yik, & Kwong, 2006). According to this literature, par-
ticularly within a broader theoretical perspective of affective event theory (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), the degree of pleasantness
that leaders experience at work may influence their thoughts and leadership behaviors in certain ways. One consequence is transfor-
mational leadership, for reasons we provide below.
Pleasantness and transformational leadership
For three reasons we posit that leaders' degree of pleasantness experienced at work increases the extent to which they will engage
in transformational leadership, as illustrated by arrow “a” in Fig. 1. These reasons relate to findings in previous studies (described
below) that show a significantly greater tendency for people whose affective experience is more pleasant to do things that are similar
to behaviors that have been identified as “transformational” in nature — namely: (1) to have more positive recalls and expectations
about people and events, and thus be more likely to be optimistic about their organization's future (hence to engage in “inspirational
motivation”), (2) to have more acceptance and exploration of new ideas and perspectives, and thus be more likely to encourage sub-
ordinates' seeking and suggesting creative solutions (hence to engage in “intellectual stimulation”), and (3) to have more positive re-
appraisal and problem-focused coping, and thus be more likely to understand subordinates' problems as developmental opportunities
and provide them with support and coaching (hence to engage in “individualized consideration”). We elaborate on these three rela-
tionships next, each in turn. In so doing we explain why each of these behaviors illustrate transformational leadership-qualities.
Pleasantness fosters positive recalls and expectations

The first reason why leaders who experience more pleasantness at work are more likely to be more transformational is because the
more pleasantly-affected leaders are more likely to: (1) recall more positive events and features related to their organization, and/or
(2) expect future organizationally-related events, including performance from their subordinates, to be more positive. Leaders with a
positive outlook for their organization are in turn more likely to set high performance standards and communicate inspiring visions
(desirable future organization-related states) to their subordinates (House & Howell, 1992; Yukl, 2012)—that is, to engage in the com-
ponent of transformational leadership called “inspirational motivation” (Bass, 1990). Consistent with our thinking, scholars have
found that people in more (rather than less) positive moods tend to recall a significantly greater number of positive organizational
or interpersonal events, a phenomenon called a “mood-recall congruency effect” (e.g. Erber, 1991, Mayer, Gayle, Meeham, &
Harman, 1990, Teasdale & Russell, 1983). Additionally, scholars have found that leaders in more (rather than less) positive moods
tended to have more positive expectations, such as more optimistic viewpoints, more trust in subordinates, and more confidence
in subordinates' abilities to perform well (e.g. Johnson & Tversky, 1983, Mayer, Gaschke, Braverman, & Evans, 1992, Wright &
Bower, 1992). In summary, these findings suggest that leaders who experience more pleasantness at work will be more likely to recall
and expect positive organizationally-related events and, in turn, communicate in positive uplifting ways—hence to behave in ways
reflective of the “inspirational motivation” dimension of transformational leadership (Bass, 1990).
Pleasantness elicits acceptance and explorations of new ideas

A second reason why leaders who experience more pleasantness at work are more likely to be more transformational is because
the more pleasantly-affected leaders are more likely to: (1) become selectively sensitized to more positive aspects of new ideas
(Forgas & Bower, 1987; George, 1995) and (2) explore them with a broader, more inclusive, and more flexible ways (Fredrickson,
2001; Isen, Daubman, & Nowicki, 1987). Consistent with our thinking, numerous studies in the domain of affect have demonstrated
that people with more (rather than less) positive feelings tend to more frequently engage in “mood-congruent processing”—that is, to
more frequently focus on, and take into account, more positive (rather than negative) aspects of information (cf. Bower, 1991, Forgas
& Bower, 1987). Additionally, scholars have found that people experiencing positive feelings tend to have broader momentary
thought-action repertories, which in turn tends to increase intellectual resources to further explore underlying meaning and values.
This pattern has been referred to as “broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions” (cf. Fredrickson, Cohn, Coffey, Pek, & Finkel,
2008, Johnson & Fredrickson, 2005). Extrapolating from this, leaders experiencing more pleasantness in their day-to-day work
ought to be more open to focusing on and incorporating ideas suggested to them by subordinates. This, in turn, is likely to heighten
subordinates' efficacy beliefs about their creativity and encourage their creative efforts (Bandura, 1997; Tierney & Farmer, 2004),
thereby providing subordinates the component of transformational leadership called “intellectual stimulation” (Bass, 1985).
Pleasantness encourages helping behavior with enhanced coping capabilities

A third reason why leaders who experience more pleasantness at work are likely to be more transformational is because pleasant
feelings have been found to enhance individuals' coping capabilities by helping them focus their attention on the positive meanings of
events (Bryant, 1989; Folkman, 1997), undo or overcome the influences of unpleasant feelings associated with stressors and chal-
lenges (Fredrickson, 2001), and/or mobilize greater mental and physical resources to overcome them (Tugade & Fredrickson,
2007). Additionally, more positive affect has been linked to more prosocial (e.g., helping) behaviors (e.g. George, 1990, 1991,
George & Bettenhausen, 1990). Extrapolating from this, leaders with more pleasantness are more likely to perceive each of their sub-
ordinates' (as well as their own) challenges and problems as a developmental opportunity, and/or provide greater support, coaching,
and encouragement to them so they can overcome the problems and grow their potential, which is another core characteristic of
transformational leadership, namely, “individualized consideration” (Bass, 1985).
Taken together, our reasons above and their direct and indirect empirical support lead us to predict the positive association be-
tween leaders' pleasant affective experiences at work and their transformational leadership. Similarly to our prediction, Chi, Chung,
and Tsai (2011) reported that leaders who experience more pleasant feelings tend to perceive themselves as more transformational.
Thus:
Hypothesis 1. Leaders' pleasant affective experiences at work are positively related to the degree to which they engage in transfor-
mational leadership at work.
The indirect role of leaders' job attitudes
Our theorizing until now assumes that leaders' transformational leadership is directly influenced by the extent to which they ex-
perience pleasantness at work. However, it is possible that leaders' pleasantness indirectly influences their choice to engage in trans-
formational leadership via leaders' job attitudes. Our reasons for expecting job attitudes to mediate the effect that leaders'
pleasantness has on their transformational leadership are twofold. First, job attitudes contain affective components (Allen & Meyer,
1990; Fisher, 2000; Weiss et al., 1999); and the nature of job attitudes' affective components generally mirror job holders' affective
state. Second, behaviors generally reflect underlying attitudes (Ajzen, 1991; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1974), and thus leaders with more
positive job attitudes are likely to engage in more positive and supportive behaviors at workplace such as transformational leadership
behaviors. As illustrated by Fig. 1's arrows “b” and “c”, leaders' experiences of pleasant or unpleasant feelings may first contribute to
their attitudes towards their job (job satisfaction) or organization (affective organizational commitment); and as illustrated by this
figure's arrows “d” and “e”, these job attitudes may in turn affect the degree to which leaders engage in transformational leadership.
Next, we review the literature guiding our reason for suggesting that the relationship between leaders' pleasantness at work and their
degree of transformational leadership may be due to this indirect path.
Pleasant feelings foster positive job attitudes

Several management scholars have noted that affective experiences at work play an important role in the formation of job atti-
tudes (e.g. Fisher, 2000, Heller & Watson, 2005, Ilies & Judge, 2002, Judge & Ilies, 2004, Weiss et al., 1999). These researchers argue
that people develop their attitudes as summary evaluations of certain objects such as their jobs or their organizations based on a num-
ber of qualitatively different sources of information, and that one important source is their affective experience (e.g. Crites, Fabrigar, &
Petty, 1994, Petty, Wegener, & Fabrigar, 1997). Briefly, they suggest that as a summary judgment or evaluation, one's attitude toward a
certain object at a given moment (Time 1), whether the object is one's job or organization, is constantly influenced not only by one's
cognitive belief about the object at Time 1, but also by the person's current and cumulative affective experiences associated with the
object until Time 1. In other words, even when leaders have high job satisfaction and organizational commitment at Time 1, their job
satisfaction and organizational commitment at Time 2 will be strengthened or deteriorated by their positive or negative affective ex-
periences associated with their jobs or organizations between Time 1 and Time 2. This theoretical perspective has been supported by
many empirical studies (e.g. Fisher, 2000, Heller & Watson, 2005, Ilies & Judge, 2002, Judge & Ilies, 2004, Seo et al., 2012, Weiss et al.,
1999). For example, Weiss et al. (1999) showed that employees' pleasant and unpleasant feelings experienced across 16 working days
significantly influenced their job satisfaction, independent of their beliefs about their jobs. Similarly, leaders' ongoing experience of
pleasant and unpleasant feelings is likely to uniquely contribute to the formation of their attitudes towards their jobs, leading them
to have a greater degree of job satisfaction.
Just as leaders' experience of pleasant feelings can positively influence their job satisfaction, it is also likely to positively contribute
to developing a positive attitude towards their organization, leading to a greater degree of affective organizational commitment in
particular, defined as one's emotional attachment to, and identification with, an organization (Allen & Meyer, 1990; Meyer, Stanley,
Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002). Measures assessing employees' level of affective organizational commitment, for example, include
items with affective content such as: “I would be very happy to spend the rest of my career with this organization” (emphasis ours,
Allen & Meyer, 1990). Consistent with this, higher levels of affective commitment to organizational change have been reported by em-
ployees who feel more positive affect during organizational change (Seo et al., 2012); while this finding is with regard to change-
specific affective commitment, we posit that this is likely to occur more broadly to one's organization.
In summary, the tendency for positive affective experience to foster positive job attitudes such as job satisfaction and affective or-
ganizational commitment has been documented in past research (Forgas, 1995; Loewenstein, Weber, Hsee, & Welch, 2001) and for
this reason, we believe that these two job attitudes should similarly be more strongly held by leaders who experience more pleasant-
ness at work. Our view is consistent with the dominant theoretical perspective in the literature that affective experience, as an irre-
ducible entity that can exist without assuming a cause (Russell, 2005), is one of the most proximate causes of various evaluative
judgments including job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment (Forgas, 1995; Petty et al., 1997; Schwarz, 1990).
Thus, we predict:
Hypothesis 2. Leaders' degree of pleasantness at work is positively related to their job satisfaction (H2a) and affective organizational
commitment (H2b).
Positive job attitudes foster transformational leadership

For two reasons we believe that leaders with more positive job attitudes are more likely to engage in transformational leadership.
The first reason is due to the fact that positive job attitudes promotes various extra-role behaviors (Bateman & Organ, 1983; Ilies, Scott,
& Judge, 2006; Van Dyne, Graham, & Dienesch, 1994) that are an essential part of transformational leadership (Bass, 1985, 1990,
1997). Two examples of recently-developed organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) that have been empirically linked to more
positive job attitudes are: (1) “[lending] a compassionate ear when someone had a work problem,” and (2) “[taking] time to advise,
coach, or mentor a co-worker” (Fox, Spector, Goh, Bruursema, & Kessler, 2012); both of these OCBs illustrate, also, what has been
called the individualized consideration dimension of transformational leadership. A number of studies suggest that job attitudes
are important determinants of various voluntary behaviors such as OCBs (e.g. Bateman & Organ, 1983, Ilies et al., 2006, Smith,
Organ, & Near, 1983, Van Dyne et al., 1994). Van Dyne et al. (1994) explain, consistent with Social Exchange Theory (e.g.
Eisenberger, Armeli, Rexwinkel, Lynch, & Rhoades, 2001, Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison, & Sowa, 1986), that more positive
job attitudes may reflect employees' perception that their jobs or organizations provide them with many valuable outcomes and,
thus, they feel a desire to reciprocate by contributing beyond what is generally required of them. Similarly, then, leaders with more
positive job attitudes may demonstrate a greater degree of transformational leadership, such as individualized consideration, because
this is their way of reciprocating.
The second reason why we posit that leaders with more positive job attitudes will likely engage in more transformational leader-
ship behavior is because leaders, like all people in general, prefer to behave in ways that are consonant (rather than dissonant) with
their attitudes. Such consonance is demonstrated when leaders who feel more positive about their jobs and/or their organization
behave more positively—that is, more prosocially—and demonstrated when leaders who feel more negative about their jobs and/or
organization behave more negatively. Consistent with this, Elliott and Devine (1994) explain that prosocial behavior is easier for
leaders who have positive job attitudes since prosocial acts are consonant with positive job attitudes and dissonant with negative
job attitudes. Direct empirical support for this comes from Rubin, Dierdorff, Bommer, and Baldwin (2009) finding that leaders who
were more cynical about organizational change tended to engage in fewer transformational leader behaviors. Indirect empirical sup-
port for our thinking comes from studies that found consonance between employees' job attitudes and other types of (non-transfor-
mational leadership) behaviors. Specifically, Skarlicki, Folger, and Tesluk (1999) found that employees with more negative affect and
greater perceptions of injustice tend to more strongly wish their organization harm and to behave in “retaliatory” ways; and similarly,
numerous studies have found that employees with more negative job attitudes tend to more frequently express negative behaviors
associated with withdrawal, such as greater absenteeism and turnover (e.g. Hom, Katerberg, & Hulin, 1979, Scott & Taylor, 1985,
Spencer & Steers, 1981). Although we do not necessarily believe that leaders will behave this way, we do think it is probably more
difficult for a leader who feels negatively about his/her job or organization to inspire others in the organization to see a desirable fu-
ture state, which is what transformational leaders do when they articulate visions for a team or the organization (Bass, 1990).
Extrapolating from these studies' pattern of findings, it seems likely that the effect that leaders' pleasantness at work has on their
transformational leadership will likely be due to an indirect path—via leaders' job attitudes. The following hypotheses, as a set, clarify
what this indirect path may be:
Hypothesis 3. Leaders' job satisfaction (H3a) and affective organizational commitment (H3b) is positively related to the extent to
which leaders engage in transformational leadership.
Hypothesis 4. The tendency for leaders who experience more pleasantness at work to engage in more transformational leadership
(as predicted by Hypothesis 1) is partially mediated by the extent to which leaders feel higher levels of job satisfaction and affective
organizational commitment.
Methods
Sample
The participants in the current study consisted of 357 fulltime managers (hereafter referred to as “leaders”) who were enrolled in a
part-time master of business administration (M.B.A.) program located in the southeastern part of the United States (U.S.). A total of
1404 of their subordinates also participated in this study with the average number of subordinates per leader-participant being
3.93 (s.d. = 1.96, range = 2–20). A total of 48 subordinates assessing 18 focal leaders were eliminated from the sample because
they did not reach an acceptable degree of agreement among the subordinates' perceptions regarding the focal leader's transforma-
tional leadership (as explained in details below). Our final sample of 339 leaders had an average age of 28.48 years (s.d. = 4.08) with
an average job tenure of 26 months (s.d. = 23.25), and 64.3% were male. Industrial backgrounds represented by the leaders included:
manufacturing (3.2%), education/research/ university (3.5%), oil/chemistry (1.2%), high tech (13.9%), communications (2.7%), con-
sulting (13.3%), financial services/banking (19.5%), healthcare (2.7%), government (7.4%), defense contractor (13.9%), and military
(1.2%).
Procedure
This study used a multi-method and multi-source approach. More specifically, at the start of our study we employed the experi-
ence sampling procedure that has previously been used in studies by Feldman (1995) and Seo and Barrett (2007) in order to assess
leaders' affective state at the time they are being experienced (hereafter referred to as our “leader mood survey”). The experience
sampling procedure requires participants to report their current mood states once per each business day randomly between the
hours of 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. for 27 consecutive days. In the leader mood survey, the leaders were asked to report their mood states
at the current moment in time (“how are you feeling right now?”) by indicating their strength of feeling for specific mood items,
such as happy or tired.
Four weeks after sending leaders the mood survey, we emailed to leaders a separate online survey (hereafter referred to as “the
leader survey”), which asked leaders to self-assess personal characteristics including personality-traits (i.e., agreeableness, extraver-
sion, conscientiousness, and openness to experience), demographics (i.e., age, gender, and job tenure), and job attitudes (i.e., job sat-
isfaction, and affective commitment). After completing the leader survey, the leader participants were asked to provide the contact
information of subordinates of theirs who had worked with them long enough to be able to accurately assess the supervisors' leader-
ship behaviors at work. We emailed these subordinate-participants a separate online survey (hereafter referred to as “the subordinate
survey”), which explained to the subordinates that, as part of their leader's educational program, they were asked to provide 360 de-
gree feedback regarding their leaders' transformational leadership behaviors at work and their quality of working relationship with
their leaders (Seers, 1989). To assure all participants that their responses would be confidential, this email also explained that feed-
back givers' responses would be reported back to the leader-participants in aggregated summary-form, and that only the researchers
would receive the responses since the survey website (which enabled the participants to access to the study's survey) was housed at
the researchers' university. The timing of measurement matched the hypothesized order of influence among the variables, starting
from leaders' pleasantness to their self-rated job attitudes, and then transformational leadership as rated by their subordinates, which
enabled us to assume and test causal relationships among them.
Importantly, a portion of our study's sample (N = 194) were recruited after our initial data-collection in order to enable us to as-
sess variables that we realized might provide rival explanations for our findings. Specifically, for these 194 participants we assessed (in
addition to the hypothesized variables) the following: trait affectivity (i.e., positive affectivity, negative affectivity), emotional stabil-
ity, and job contexts (i.e., psychological safety climate). There was no difference between these 194 participants and the others in our
sample in terms of age (t = .41, n.s.), gender (t = .37, n.s.), job tenure (t = .71, n.s.), and average number of subordinates per leader-
participant (t = −.61, n.s.). For this reason we combined all 357 sample-participants when testing our hypotheses.
Measures
The degree of pleasantness of the leaders

Using the experience sampling procedure, we asked leaders “how are you feeling right now?” and instructed them to reply by in-
dicating via a 5-point Likert scale (anchored by 1 = not at all and 5 = extremely so) the extent to which they were currently feeling
six affective states representing the “pleasant” dimension and six affective states representing the “unpleasant” dimension of the “af-
fective circumplex” (cf. Barrett & Russell, 1998; Russell, 2003). More specifically, the pleasant affective states included the extent to
which leaders at the current moment felt: happy, satisfied, calm, relaxed, excited, and enthusiastic; and the unpleasant affective states
included the extent to which leaders at the current moment felt: unhappy, disappointed, tired, depressed, nervous and angry (all of
these reverse-scored items). Following a procedure adopted by previous studies (e.g. Barsade, 2002, Mayer & Gaschke, 1988, Seo &
Barrett, 2007, Weiss et al., 1999), we measured the degree of pleasantness by averaging the scores of these 12 items (α = .82) treating
pleasant and unpleasant affective states as the bipolar opposites of one pleasantness dimension, as supported in this study by the fact
that pleasant and unpleasant affective states are significantly and negatively correlated (r = −.32, p b .01).3 The resulting scores were
further averaged across times for each leader, also consistent with a procedure used in previous studies (Fisher, 2000; Seo & Barrett,
2007; Weiss et al., 1999). A higher score in this index indicates greater degrees of pleasantness generally experienced at work. In order
to minimize the chance for creating demand-characteristics for our study, we also included four additional affective states that are not
necessarily pleasant or unpleasant (i.e., quiet, still, aroused, alert); but the latter four items were excluded from our measure of
pleasantness.
Although we measured the pleasantness dimension of leaders' affective experiences by randomly sampling their mood ratings at
multiple points of time, this measure could be confounded with their individual-specific affective predispositions, commonly referred
to trait affectivity, by averaging multiple mood ratings across times (Schmukle, Egloff, & Burns, 2002). Thus, it is important to examine
whether our measure of leaders' pleasantness is empirically distinct from their individual-specific affective traits.
First, using the 20-item PANAS scale developed by Watson, Clark, and Tellegen (1988), we measured leaders' general tendency to
experience positive feelings (i.e., positive affectivity measured by 10 items, such as interested, excited, and enthusiastic; α = .84) and
negative feelings (i.e., negative affectivity measured by 10 items, such as irritable, afraid, and nervous; α = 0.90) based on a sub-
sample of this study (N = 194). We found that leaders' trait PA and NA were only moderately correlated with leaders' pleasantness
experienced at work (r = .31, p b .01 and −.12, n.s., respectively). Second, the participants in the sub-sample (N = 194) related the
degree to which their work context is positive and safe for interpersonal risk taking using the 7-item psychological safety climate scale
developed by Edmondson (1999) (α = .71). We found that this positivity in the job contexts significantly and positively predicted
leaders' pleasantness at work even after controlling for trait PA and NA (β = .25, p b .01), but did not predict either trait PA or trait
NA. These results suggest that our measure of pleasantness is not only distinctive from individual-specific affective traits, but also re-
flects leaders' affective dimension that is malleable to leaders' job contexts consistent with our theoretical reasoning.
Transformational leadership of the leaders

To assess the degree to which the focal leader demonstrated transformational leadership at work, we asked the leaders' subordi-
nates to evaluate this via the measure of Avolio and Bass (2004) MLQ 5X. More specifically, via a five-point Likert scale (anchored by
1 = not at all, 2 = once in a while, 3 = sometimes, 4 = fairly often, 5 = frequently if not always), the subordinate participants in-
dicated how frequently their leader engages in various transformational leadership behaviors. Examples of some of these items used
in the subordinate survey include “(focal leader) goes beyond self-interest for the good of the group,” “(focal leader) talks optimisti-
cally about the future,” “(focal leader) gets others to look at problems from many different angles,” and “(focal leader) treats others as
individuals rather than just as a member of the group.”
Following the advice of James, Demaree, and Wolf (1984, 1993), we assessed the degree of agreement among the subordinates'
perceptions regarding the focal leader's transformational leadership (rwg), assuming a uniform (i.e., equal probability or rectangular)
distribution (LeBreton, Burgess, Kaiser, Atchley, & James, 2003) in which each focal leader would have a single true score of transfor-
mational leadership and any variance in subordinates' ratings would be error variance, and eliminated cases (18 cases with 48 sub-
ordinate ratings) that did not meet the selection-criterion of .70 or higher in rwg (James et al., 1993; Klein & Kozlowski, 2000). The
rwg values of transformational leadership behaviors for the remaining sample (N = 339) ranged from .74 to .99, with a mean of .96
3
Alternatively, we measured the degree of pleasantness by including only the four pleasant or unpleasant items that are neutral in activation (feeling of physical
arousal) — happy, satisfied, unhappy, and disappointed (α = .76). However, this alternative measure produced the same results reported in this paper. Additionally,
we measured activation using two separate items (aroused and alert, α = .76). When it was entered it together with pleasantness in all analyses, we found that it
did not affect the results reported in this paper.
and a median of .97.4 Importantly, the leaders retained for this study versus those that were eliminated due to low rwg values did not
differ significantly in terms of age (t = .43, p = .67), gender (t = −.08, p = .94), job tenure (t = −.39, p = .69), and transforma-
tional leadership (t = −1.14, p = .25).
The subordinates in the final sample showed an acceptable level of agreement (i.e., rwg N .70). We also calculated two intra-class
correlations – ICC(1) and ICC(2) – and conducted a F-test for the ICC(1). Specifically, ICC(1) indicates whether subordinates of a cer-
tain manager are replaceable, whereas ICC(2) indicates the aggregate variables' stability, or whether average ratings of a certain man-
ager help differentiate between leaders (Bliese, 2000). ICC(1) and ICC(2) for transformational leadership behaviors were .18 and .46
(F = 1.86, p = .00), all of which are similar to values usually reported in leadership research in field settings (Bliese, 2000).5 Thus,
their evaluations were aggregated and used as an index of the focal leader's transformational leadership (α = .93), consistent with
the procedures used in previous studies (e.g. Judge & Bono, 2000, Kark, Shamir, & Chen, 2003, Keller, 2006).
Job attitudes of the leaders

To assess leaders' degree of job satisfaction, we used the five-item instrument in Hackman and Oldham's (1975) Job Diagnostic
Survey (JDS). Specifically, leaders indicated via a five-item Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) the
extent to which they agreed with the five statements in this instrument. Examples of these statements are: “As a whole, I am satisfied
with my job,” “I am satisfied with the amount of challenge in my job,” and “I am satisfied with the feeling of worthwhile accomplish-
ment I get from doing my job” (α = .92).
To assess leaders' degree of affective organizational commitment, we used the eight-item instrument (affective commitment
scale) developed for this purpose by Allen and Meyer (1990). Specifically, leaders indicated via a five-point Likert scale ranging
from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) the extent to which they agreed with the eight statements in the instrument. Such
statements included: “I would be very happy to spend the rest of my career with this organization,” “I enjoy discussing my organiza-
tion with people outside it,” and “I really feel as if this organization's problems are my own,” among others (α = .88).
Controls
We controlled five groups of variables in our main hypothesis tests. First, we controlled for visible demographic variables of the
leader-participants—namely, leaders' age and gender since transformational leadership has previously been found to more frequently
occur in leaders who are older (Bartling & Bartlett, 2005) and female (Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, & Van Engen, 2003). Secondly, we
controlled for leaders' job tenure since knowledge and skills increase as managers spend more time on their job (McCall, Lombardo, &
Morrison, 1988), and transformational leadership, like many other leadership behaviors, may more frequently occur in leaders who
have greater knowledge and skill (cf. Locke et al., 1991, Yukl, 2012).
Thirdly, as noted at our paper's outset, we controlled for participants' personality, since prior theorizing and studies regarding an-
tecedents to transformational leadership have linked a greater degree of transformational leadership to certain types of personality
(e.g., Bono & Judge, 2004; Cavazotte, Moreno, & Hickmann, 2012; Judge & Bono, 2000; Ployhart, Lim, & Chan, 2001). We used the In-
ternational Personality Item Pool (IPIP) to measure the four essential dimensions of participants' personality in the first survey
(Goldberg, 1999). The IPIP is a 50-item instrument with ten items for each factor of the five factor model, such as extraversion, agree-
ableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience. Among them, we omitted emotional stability from our
main hypothesis tests because it is often shown to be more strongly associated with less effective and active forms of leadership than
transformational leadership, such as laissez-faire (Bass & Riggio, 2006).
Fourth, we controlled for the effect of subordinates' quality of working relationship with their leaders (Seers, 1989). The leader-
participants may provide contact information of subordinates with whom they have good working relationship, and the selected
subordinate-participants may provide generous ratings on the transformational leadership of the leader-participants. Therefore, it
is possible that the leader-participants' high transformational leadership score may stem from their choice of subordinates with
good working relationship instead of their degrees of pleasantness and positive job attitudes (i.e., self-selection bias). To rule out
this possibility, we asked the recruited subordinates to complete a 6-item scale regarding their quality of working relationship with
their leaders adapted and modified from Seers (1989). Sample items were “this person has good working relationships with the
other members of the work group” and “this person has established a high level of trust with the other members of the group.”
Their responses on these items were aggregated and used as an index of the quality of exchange (α = .79).
Finally, in order to rule out the possibility that our findings could be explained by the variability, not the mean-level degree, of
leaders' pleasantness, we controlled for the variability in leaders' degree of pleasantness. We measured leaders' variability of pleasant-
ness by calculating the standard deviation of the daily pleasantness scores across times for each leader, using the 12 items used to mea-
sure the degree of pleasantness. The variability of pleasantness was controlled in all analyses in which the effect of the degree of
pleasantness was examined.
4
We also assessed another index of agreement, r*wg, suggested by Lindell, Brandt, and Whitney (1999). The r*wg values ranged from .67 to .99, with a mean of .89 and
a median of .90. Consistent with the observation of LeBrenton and Senter (2008) and LeBrenton, James, and Lindell (2005), the r*wg scores were highly convergent with
but slightly smaller than the rwg scores.
5
We note that the low ICC(2) values were likely to result from sampling small number of subordinates per each manager (i.e., the average number of subordinates
per each manager whose rwg score for transformational leadership was over .70 was 4.00).
Table 1
Results of confirmatory factor analyses.a
Model χ2 df χ2/df Δχ2 (Δdf) CFI TLI RMSEA SRMR
Nine-factor measurement model 400.62 264 1.52⁎ Baseline 0.97 0.96 0.04 0.04
Seven factor model 985.08 279 3.53 584.46 (15)⁎⁎ 0.84 0.82 0.09 0.07
Four factor model 1621.46 294 5.52 1220.84 (30)⁎⁎ 0.70 0.67 0.12 0.09
Three factor model 2184.81 297 7.36 1784.19 (33)⁎⁎ 0.58 0.54 0.14 0.13
Two factor model 3325.88 299 11.12 2925.26 (35)⁎⁎ 0.33 0.27 0.17 0.17
χ2: the chi-square goodness-of-fit statistic, df: degree of freedom, CFI = comparative fit index; TLI = Tucker–Lewis Index (Tucker & Lewis, 1973); RMSEA = root-
mean-square error of approximation (Steiger, 1990); SRMR = standardized root-mean-square residual.
a
The nine factor measurement model consists of the degree of pleasantness, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, job satisfaction,
affective organizational commitment, transformational leadership, and quality of working relationship. The seven factor model consists of the degree of pleasantness,
extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, the combination of job attitudes (e.g., affective organizational commitment and job satisfac-
tion), and the combination of subordinate assessment of focal leaders (e.g., transformational leadership and quality of working relationship). The four factor model con-
sists of the degree of pleasantness, the combination of four personality traits, the combination of job attitudes, and the combination of subordinate assessment of focal
leaders. The three factor model consists of the degree of pleasantness, the combination of leader assessment of themselves (e.g., extraversion, agreeableness, conscien-
tiousness, openness to experience, job satisfaction, and affective organizational commitment), and the combination of subordinate assessment of focal leaders. The two
factor model consists of the degree of pleasantness and the combination of all study variables.
⁎ p b .05.
⁎⁎ p b .01.
Confirmatory factor analysis

To ensure variables in this study are distinct from each other, we conducted a series of confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) (See
Table 1). Because of a large number of items for study variables, which can cause parameter instability, correlated residuals and
cross-loadings, and increased standard errors (Bagozzi & Edwards, 1998; Bagozzi & Heatherton, 1994), we followed a parceling pro-
cedure recommended by Little, Cunningham, Shahar, and Widaman (2002), consistently with recent leadership studies (e.g. Grant,
2012, Judge, LePine, & Rich, 2006, Mayer, Aquino, Greenbaum, & Kuenzi, 2012, Zhang, Wang, & Shi, 2012). Specifically, for seven var-
iables including extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, job satisfaction, affective organizational
commitment, and quality of working relationship, we adopted random assignment procedure and created three parcels of randomly
selected items for each (i.e., 21 parcels total). For the transformational leadership, however, we adopted a domain-representative ap-
proach (Kishton & Widaman, 1994; Little et al., 2002) where four parcels were created by joining items from different facets into item
sets. It is because transformational leadership is known as a multidimensional construct (cf. idealized influence, inspirational motiva-
tion, intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration, Bass, 1985). Specifically, we created four transformational leadership par-
cels composed of two items from idealized influence, one item from inspirational motivation, one item from intellectual stimulation,
and one item from individualized consideration. In this manner, each parcel reflects all of the facets (or dimensions) of transforma-
tional leadership within itself. Finally, for the degree of pleasantness, we specified a single indicator latent variable by fixing its factor
loading to 1 and its error term to 0 (i.e., reliability of the indicator = 1).
The baseline nine-factor measurement model with factors of the degree of pleasantness, transformational leadership, extraversion,
agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, job satisfaction, affective organizational commitment, and quality of work-
ing relationship (Model 1 in Table 1) was specified by loading parcels on their respective latent variables with the degree of pleasant-
ness as a single indicator latent variable, and the correlations among the latent variables were freely estimated. Results showed that
the nine-factor model fitted the data well, χ2(264) = 400.62, comparative fit index (CFI) = .97, Tucker–Lewis Index (TLI) = .96, stan-
dardized root-mean-square residual (SRMR) = .04, and root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA) = .04. All parcels had sig-
nificant loadings on their respective factors (p b .01), which were ranged from .67 to .73 for conscientiousness, .80 to .83 for
extraversion, .63 to .90 for agreeableness, .67 to .74 for openness to experience, .82 to .87 for affective organizational commitment,
.83 to .94 for job satisfaction, .76 to .86 for quality of working relationship, and .82 to .92 for transformational leadership.6
Considering that the study variables were assessed by two different participant groups (e.g., leader-participants, subordinate-
participants), and leader-participants assessed two sets of constructs (e.g., constructs about their perceptions about themselves like
personality, constructs about their perceptions about others like affective organizational commitment and job satisfaction), we also
specified alternative models for comparison purposes including: a seven-factor model with factors of pleasantness, extraversion, con-
scientiousness, openness to experience, agreeableness, job attitudes (i.e., parcels of affective organizational commitment and job sat-
isfaction combined), and subordinate assessment of the leader (i.e., parcels of quality of working relationship and transformational
leadership combined); four-factor model with factors of pleasantness, personality (i.e., parcels of four personality traits combined),
attitudes (i.e., parcels of affective organizational commitment and job satisfaction combined), and subordinate-assessment of the
leader (i.e., parcels of quality of working relationship and transformational leadership combined); three-factor model with factors
of pleasantness, leader-assessment of themselves (i.e., parcels of four personality traits and leader attitudes combined), and
6
We also conducted another confirmatory factor analysis with the internal-consistency approach (Kishton & Widaman, 1994) for transformational leadership. Spe-
cifically, we created four parcels for transformational leadership that represented its four dimensions (i.e., idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual
stimulation, individualized consideration, Bass, 1985) while created three parcels of randomly selected items for other study variables, consistently with the above.
We found very similar results with the CFA using domain-representative approach for transformational leadership; nine-factor model fitted the data well,
χ2(264) = 435.51, comparative fit index (CFI) = .96, Tucker–Lewis Index (TLI) = .95, standardized root-mean-square residual (SRMR) = .04, and root-mean-
square error of approximation (RMSEA) = .04.
10
Table 2
Descriptive statistics, reliabilities, and correlations among measures.a
Mean s.d. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
1. Age 28.48 4.08
S. Jin et al. / The Leadership Quarterly xxx (2015) xxx–xxx

2. Gender 1.29 0.45 −0.23⁎⁎
3. Job tenure 26.42 23.25 0.37⁎⁎ −0.12⁎⁎
4. Agreeableness 4.01 0.57 0.02 0.22⁎⁎ 0.10 (0.79)
5. Conscientiousness 3.87 0.61 −0.07 0.15⁎⁎ −0.07 0.25⁎⁎ (0.75)
6. Openness to experiences 3.77 0.54 0.10 −0.10 0.01 0.27⁎⁎ 0.16⁎⁎ (0.72)
7. Extraversion 3.34 0.76 −0.13⁎ 0.00 −0.02 0.24⁎⁎ 0.11⁎ 0.31⁎⁎ (0.87)
8. Emotional stabilityb 3.31 0.72 0.08 −0.03 0.01 0.25⁎⁎ 0.22⁎⁎ 0.15⁎ 0.21⁎⁎ (0.85)
9. Positive affectivityb 3.66 0.69 0.06 −0.02 0.06 0.37⁎⁎ 0.33⁎⁎ 0.34⁎⁎ 0.27⁎⁎ 0.17 (0.84)
10. Negative affectivityb 1.94 0.71 −0.11 −0.10 0.01 −0.42⁎⁎ 0.41 ⁎⁎ −0.33 ⁎⁎ −0.27 ⁎⁎ −0.65⁎⁎ −0.26⁎⁎ (0.90)
11. Variability of pleasantness 0.60 0.23 0.13⁎ −0.13⁎ 0.04 −0.04 0.01 0.02 −0.01 0.02 0.10 0.00
12. Psychological safety climateb 3.11 0.62 −0.15⁎ −0.08 0.01 −0.01 0.00 −0.03 0.08 −0.04 0.09 −0.01 0.08 (0.71)
13. Quality of working relationship 4.36 0.43 −0.05 0.08 −0.03 0.07 0.00 −0.04 0.05 0.06 −0.12 −0.03 0.02 0.00 (0.79)
14. Job satisfaction 3.39 1.06 −0.03 −0.06 −0.03 0.20⁎⁎ 0.19⁎⁎ 0.20⁎⁎ 0.13⁎ 0.25⁎⁎ 0.30⁎⁎ −0.40⁎⁎ 0.03 0.25⁎⁎ 0.01 (0.92)
15. Affective organizational 3.18 0.88 −0.06 −0.01 0.02 0.26⁎⁎ 0.08 0.17⁎⁎ 0.10 0.20⁎⁎ 0.19⁎⁎ −0.24⁎⁎ 0.05 0.31⁎⁎ 0.08 0.57⁎⁎ (0.88)
commitment
16. Pleasantness 1.09 0.89 0.05 −0.11 −0.05 0.08 0.11⁎ 0.09 0.15⁎⁎ 0.19⁎ 0.20⁎⁎ −0.12 −0.09 0.30⁎⁎ 0.08 0.21⁎⁎ 0.19⁎⁎
17. Transformational leadership 3.85 0.41 0.01 0.07 −0.02 0.08 −0.03 0.07 0.19⁎⁎ 0.10 0.08 −0.05 0.04 0.01 0.14⁎ 0.01 0.11⁎ 0.14⁎ (0.93)
a
All the variables in this table reflect characteristics on the part of the focal managers. The total number of focal managers is 339. For gender, males were encoded by 1, females were encoded by 2. Thus positive correlations with
gender means females were more likely to be associated with the correlated variables, while negative correlations means males were more likely to be associated with the correlated variables. Internal consistency reliabilities (α)
are in parentheses on the diagonal when applicable.
b
Mean, standard deviation, and inter-correlation with these variables are from the focal managers in the sub-sample (N=194).
⁎ p b .05
⁎⁎ p b .01
subordinate-assessment of the leader (i.e., parcels of quality of working relationship and transformational leadership combined); and
two-factor model with factors of pleasantness and all other variables (i.e., parcels of all other variables combined and loaded on a gen-
eral factor). Table 1 shows the results of model fit comparisons. Compared with the nine-factor model, all alternative models yielded
significantly weaker fits to the data (CFI = .33 to .84, TLI = .27 to .82, RMSEA = .09 to 017, SRMR = .07 to .17).
Analysis
Following the suggestion of Cohen, Cohen, West, and Aiken (2003), we standardized all variables used in this study before testing
our hypotheses. For testing our hypotheses, we conducted two sets of analyses; for the first three hypotheses (i.e., Hypotheses 1 to 3),
we used hierarchical linear regression analyses to precisely examine each of the hypothesized relationships after taking into account
the effects of control variables (i.e., age, gender, job tenure, personality, subordinates' quality of exchange with their leaders, variabil-
ity of pleasantness) on the dependent variables. To test Hypothesis 4, we adopted Preacher and Hayes (2008) asymptotic and resam-
pling approach to examine multiple mediation models in regression. This approach allows researchers to simultaneously test the
extent to which each hypothesized mediator (e.g., job satisfaction) mediates the effect of the independent variable on the dependent
variable in the presence of other mediators (e.g., affective organizational commitment) in the model.
Results
Table 2 provides descriptive statistics and correlations for all measures. The results of our hypothesis-tests using hierarchical linear
regression are shown in Table 3.
Hypothesis Testing
As predicted by Hypothesis 1, leaders who experienced higher levels of pleasantness at work were indeed rated by subordinates as
more transformational in their leadership; this result is shown in Model 1 in Table 3 (β = .13, t = 2.31, p b .05). Thus, Hypothesis 1
was supported.
As predicted by Hypothesis 2a and b, the results presented in Models 2 and 3 in Table 3 suggest that leaders who experienced
higher levels of pleasantness at work reported significantly higher levels of job satisfaction (β = .18, t = 3.30, p b .01) and affective
organizational commitment (β = .18, t = 3.22, p b .01), respectively. Thus, Hypothesis 2 was fully supported.
Consistent with Hypothesis 3b and shown in Model 4 in Table 3, the results show that leaders who reported feeling more commit-
ted to their organization were indeed rated by subordinates as more transformational in their leadership (β = .16, t = 2.35, p b .05).
But contrary to Hypothesis 3a, and shown in Table 3's Model 4, the latter relationship was not observed for leaders who reported feel-
ing higher levels of job satisfaction. To see whether these results were due to entering the two highly correlated variables – job
Table 3
Summary of hierarchical linear regression analysis results for hypothesis test.a
Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Transformational Job satisfaction Affective Transformational

leadership organizational leadership
commitment
β t β t β t β t
Step 1: controls
Age 0.06 1.06 −0.03 −0.43 −0.09 −1.47 0.07 1.14
Gender 0.06 0.97 −0.13⁎ −2.19⁎ −0.08 −1.29 0.06 1.06
Job tenure −0.04 −0.59 −0.04 −0.63 0.02 0.39 −0.04 −0.59
Agreeableness 0.03 0.46 0.13⁎ 2.24⁎ 0.24⁎⁎ 3.99⁎⁎ 0.03 0.42
Conscientiousness −0.07 −1.18 0.15⁎⁎ 2.73⁎⁎ 0.01 0.22 −0.07 −1.22
Openness to experiences 0.02 0.31 0.09 1.66 0.09 1.48 0.02 0.39
Extraversion 0.20⁎⁎ 3.35⁎⁎ 0.05 0.79 0.00 0.03 0.19⁎⁎ 3.38⁎⁎
Quality of working relationship 0.13⁎ 2.43⁎⁎ 0.14⁎ 2.50⁎
ΔR2 0.07⁎⁎ 0.09⁎ 0.08⁎⁎ 0.07⁎
Step 2: leaders' affect
Degree of pleasantness 0.13⁎ 2.31⁎ 0.18⁎⁎ 3.30⁎⁎ 0.18⁎⁎ 3.22⁎⁎
Variability of pleasantness 0.06 1.06 0.04 0.77 0.08 1.54
ΔR2 0.02⁎ 0.03⁎ 0.04⁎
Step 3: leaders' attitude
Job satisfaction −0.10 −1.56
Affective organizational commitment 0.16⁎ 2.35⁎
ΔR2 0.02⁎
R2 for total equation 0.09 0.12 0.11 0.09
a
All the variables in this table reflect characteristics on the part of the focal managers in the final sample (N = 339).
⁎ p b .05
⁎⁎ p b .01
satisfaction and affective organizational commitment – in the regression analysis at the same time (r = .57), we entered one variable
at a time but the results remained the same. Thus, Hypothesis 3 was partially supported: the extent to which leaders behaved as trans-
formational leaders is significantly greater when the leaders reported higher levels of affective organizational commitment, not higher
levels of job satisfaction.
To test Hypothesis 4 regarding the possibility that the relationship that leaders' pleasantness has with their degree of transforma-
tional leadership is partially mediated by their job attitudes, we adopted the multiple mediation model via a nonparametric resam-
pling procedure (i.e., bootstrapping; MacKinnon, Lockwood, & Williams, 2004; Shrout & Bolger, 2002), suggested by Preacher and
Hayes (2008). As an extension of the Sobel test (Sobel, 1982), this approach allows researchers to assess total indirect effects
(e.g., through both job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment), a specific indirect effect (e.g., through either job satis-
faction or affective organizational commitment), and direct effect (e.g., from pleasant affective experiences) on dependent variable
(e.g., transformational leadership) simultaneously. Using this approach, we examined the specific indirect effects of leaders' pleasant-
ness on transformational leadership through affective organizational commitment and job satisfaction with the same set of control
variables (e.g., age, gender, job tenure, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, openness to experiences, quality of working
relationship, and variability of pleasantness). As shown in Table 4, the indirect effect through affective organizational commitment
was significant (ab = .011, CI95% = .001, .027). However, the indirect effect through job satisfaction and the total indirect effect
through affective organizational commitment and job satisfaction were not significant. These results suggest that the relationship be-
tween leaders' degree of pleasantness and transformational leadership was partially mediated only by their affective organizational
commitment, which partially supports Hypothesis 4.
In summary, our test of hypotheses yielded support for all but one of our hypotheses (Hypothesis 3a), suggesting that our theo-
retical model shown in Fig. 1 accurately captures antecedents to transformational leadership. However, we conducted several auxil-
iary analyses (described next) in order to provide additional insights and supports regarding our findings and to explore alternative
causal relationships among our study's variables.
Auxiliary analyses
The auxiliary analyses that we conducted pertained, first, to replication of this study with the sub-sample (N = 194) with addition-
al control variables, second, to mood contagion vs. motivation mechanisms, third, to the effect of leaders' pleasantness and affective
organizational commitment on specific components of transformational leadership, and fourth, to possible alternative causal relation-
ships amongst our study variables.
Analyzing with additional controls

With additional control variables, we repeated the multiple mediation model analysis used to test Hypothesis 4 on the subsample
of this study (N = 194) in order to rule out rival explanations for the partial support we found for that hypothesis. More specifically,
we added as control variables the following: leader-participant's trait affectivity (i.e., positive affectivity, negative affectivity; Watson
et al., 1988), emotional stability (Goldberg, 1999), and job contexts (i.e., psychological safety climate, Edmondson, 1999). We chose
these control variables because the positivity of leaders' experiences and situations tend to influence leaders' pleasantness (Russell,
2003; Russell & Barrett, 1999) and because transformational leadership has been found to be related to leaders' trait affectivity
(e.g., Epitropaki & Martin, 2004; Rubin et al., 2005), emotional stability (e.g., Bono & Judge, 2004; Ployhart et al., 2001; Reichard
et al., 2011), and job contexts (e.g. Bommer, Rubin, & Baldwin, 2004, Nielsen & Cleal, 2011, Walter & Bruch, 2010).
Before testing the model, we performed a confirmatory factor analysis with variables including leaders' degree of pleasantness, ex-
traversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, emotional stability, positive affectivity, negative affectivity, job
satisfaction, affective organizational commitment, and quality of working relationship with subordinates, transformational leader-
ship, and psychological safety climate. Consistently with our previous CFAs, for the four newly added variables, we created three par-
cels of randomly selected items for each. For others, we repeated the same procedure with the above CFAs. By doing this, we specified
a thirteen-factor model with 38 parcels. The result showed that the hypothesized model has satisfactory fit (χ2(588) = 773.41,
p b .01, CFI = .95, TLI = .94, SRMR = .04, and RMSEA = .04), which ensured the discriminant validity of our study variables. Following
this, we repeated the same procedure with our test for Hypothesis 4 with expanded sets of control variables that includes emotional
stability, positive affectivity, negative affectivity, and psychological safety climate. The result was consistent with our hypothesis tests,
showing that only the indirect effect of pleasantness on transformational leadership through affective organizational commitment
was significant (ab = .011, CI95% = .001, .024). Taken together, these results further warrant our empirical findings on the relation-
ship between leaders' affective experiences, job attitudes, and transformational leadership.
Table 4
Indirect effect of leaders' pleasantness on transformational leadership through job attitudes.a
Variables Indirect effect; ab s.e. Percentile 95% CI BC 95% CI
Lower Upper Lower Upper
Job satisfaction 0.000 0.006 −0.024 0.000 −0.027 0.000

Affective organizational commitment 0.011 0.006 0.001 0.026 0.001 0.026
Total 0.001 0.006 −0.012 0.012 −0.012 0.011
a
BC, bias corrected; 5000 bootstrap samples.
Mood contagion vs. motivational mechanism

In this study, the focal managers self-rated the degree to which they engaged in transformational leadership at work (using the
same measure used in the subordinate survey), which may indirectly indicate whether they actually chose to engage in transforma-
tional leadership at work regardless of how they were perceived by their subordinates. Our additional hierarchical linear regression
analyses showed that leaders' pleasantness significantly and positively predicted their self-rated measure of transformational leader-
ship after controlling for all the control variables (β = .21, t = 4.15, p b .01). This relationship remained significant even after leaders'
job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment were additionally entered and controlled (β = .18, t = 3.58, p b .01). The
subordinate-rated measure of transformational leadership was still predicted significantly by leaders' pleasantness after the self-
assessed measure of transformational leadership was controlled (β = .12, t = 2.13, p b .05). These findings provide indirect support
for our theoretical arguments that the relationship between pleasantness and transformational leadership is partly based on leaders'
voluntary choices (cf. motivational mechanism) rather than through transferring leaders' pleasantness to subordinates' affective ex-
periences and perceptions (cf. mood contagion).
The next important question is whether this leaders' voluntary choice of transformational leadership is actually reflected in, and
thus congruent with, the ratings of transformational leadership assessed by their subordinates, the ultimate dependent variable in
our study, because our theoretical argument still may not hold if the leaders' self-assessed and subordinate ratings of transformational
leadership are completely independent of each other. First, we examined the relationship between the leaders' self-assessed and
subordinate's ratings of transformational leadership, and found that the ratings are significantly related to each other (r = .18,
p b 0.01). Second, we calculated an index of congruence between leaders' self-ratings (L) and subordinates' ratings (S) of transforma-
tional leadership based on similarity-intensity procedure (Haas, Katz, Rizzo, Bailey, & Eisenstadt, 1991; Thompson, Zanna, & Griffin,
1995) by taking the difference between the average of leaders' self-ratings and subordinates' ratings of transformational leaders
and the absolute difference between them (i.e., (L + S) / 2 − |L − S|). A higher score in this index indicates greater degrees of con-
gruence between leaders' self-ratings and subordinates' ratings of transformational leadership. The results of another set of hierarchi-
cal linear regression analyses suggest that leaders' pleasantness significantly and positively predicted the assessment of congruence in
transformational leadership ratings after controlling for all the control variables such as age, gender, job tenure, personality, and qual-
ity of working relationship (β = .14, t = 2.52, p b .05). The association between leaders' pleasantness and congruence also remained
significant even after leaders' job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment were controlled (β = .12, t = 2.04, p b .05).
These results suggest that the leaders' self-assessed and subordinate's ratings of transformational leadership are not only congruent
with each other, but also that the degree of congruence increases as a function of leaders' pleasantness. The latter finding is particu-
larly interesting because it suggests that leaders' pleasant feelings positively influence not only the degree of transformational lead-
ership (assessed by both the self and the subordinates), but also its effectiveness, that is, the extent to which leaders' subjectively
engaged in transformational leadership behaviors are actually recognized by their subordinates.
Leaders' pleasantness, affective organizational commitment and specific components of transformational leadership
We also conducted additional sets of mediation tests (Preacher & Hayes, 2008) for the relationship between leaders' pleasantness,
affective organizational commitment, and four components of transformational leadership (e.g., idealized influence, inspirational mo-
tivation, intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration) to identify the specific components of transformational leadership that
drive the hypothesized relationships. Adopting the same procedure with our test for Hypothesis 4 but using four components of trans-
formational leadership as dependent variables, we assessed the direct effect (e.g., from pleasant affective experiences) and indirect
effect (e.g., through affective organizational commitment) on four components of transformational leadership. As shown in Table 5,
leaders' pleasantness directly predicted idealized influence (c′ = .053, p b .05), inspirational motivation (c′ = .063, p b .05), and in-
tellectual stimulation (c′ = .048, p b .05) but not individualized consideration (c′ = .037, n.s.). Also, its indirect effect through affec-
tive organizational commitment were significant on idealized influence (ab = .008, CI95% = .000, .018) and inspirational motivation
(ab = .013, CI95% = .004, .026) but not on intellectual stimulation (ab = .003, CI95% = .006, .012) and individualized consideration
(ab = .000, CI95% = −.009, .009). These results suggest that the leaders' pleasantness and affective organizational commitment are
most strongly associated with inspirational motivation, followed by idealized influence.
These results are consistent with transformational leadership theory in that leaders' affective and attitudinal experiences were
more strongly associated with the “emotional component” of transformational leadership — namely, idealized influence and inspira-
tional motivation (Bass, 1990, p. vii) than intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration. Moreover, given that idealized in-
fluence and inspirational motivation are also considered as components of charismatic leadership (e.g., Rowold & Heinitz, 2007; Van
Table 5
Mediation of the effect of leaders' pleasantness on components of transformational leadership through affective organizational commitment.a
Components of transformational leadership Direct effect; c′ Indirect effect; ab (through affective Percentile 95% CI BC 95% CI
(from pleasantness) organizational commitment)
Lower Upper Lower Upper
1. Idealized influence 0.053⁎ 0.008 0.000 0.018 0.000 0.019

2. Inspirational motivation 0.063⁎ 0.013 0.004 0.026 0.004 0.026
3. Intellectual simulation 0.048⁎ 0.003 −0.006 0.012 −0.006 0.013
4. Individualized consideration 0.037 0.000 −0.009 0.009 −0.010 0.010
a
BC, bias corrected; 5,000 bootstrap samples.
⁎ p b .05
Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013; Yukl, 1999), our findings suggest that leaders' pleasantness and affective organizational commitment
may also predict their charismatic leadership (cf. Bryman, 1992).
Exploring alternative causal relationships

Some scholars might argue that the direction of influences in some of the hypothesized relationships between the key variables
could be reversed. For example, there are findings from experience sampling studies in which the reverse causal-order has also
been observed — that is, more job-satisfied employees tended to report more positive affective experiences at home (e.g. Heller &
Watson, 2005, Judge & Ilies, 2004). Although our cross-sectional study design makes it impossible to precisely determine the causal
directions between the variables, we developed four alternative structural equation models (SEMs) based on different causal assump-
tions between the key variables and compare them with the hypothesized model in order to explore which directions of influence
may be better supported by the data. We used the same parcels we created for the confirmatory factor analysis for model specification,
and specified a single indicator latent variable for the degree of pleasantness (i.e., factor loading = 1, error term = 0). To be consistent
with hypothesis tests, we included extraversion and the quality of working relationship, two of the control variables that were signif-
icantly correlated with transformational leadership (r = .19, p b .01, and r = .14, p b .05, respectively) in the structural equation
models. We made this choice because including more controls and the paths from control variables to endogenous variables may
not only undermine but could also mislead the model fix statistics regardless of the strengths of the relationships among the key var-
iables to be estimated. The specifications, chi-square statistics, the goodness of fit indices, and path coefficients of the structural equa-
tion models are summarized in Table 6. We compared the fit of the alternative models with hypothesized model using Akaike's (1987)
information criterion (AIC) and Schwarz's (1978) Bayesian information criterion (BIC), which have been adopted and used in past
studies for comparing non-nested models (e.g. Ou et al., 2014, Real, Roldán, & Leal, 2014); the model with the lowest AIC and BIC is
the best-fitting model (Akaike, 1987; Schwarz, 1978).
As can be seen in Fig. 2, the first model represents our hypothesized model also presented in Fig. 1, and specifies five main paths to
be estimated: a path from leader pleasantness to transformational leadership (H1), paths from pleasantness to job satisfaction (H2a)
and to affective organizational commitment (H2b), and paths from job satisfaction to transformational leadership (H3a) and from af-
fective commitment to transformational leadership (H3b). The second model, referred to Alternative Model 1, specified that leaders'
affective organizational commitment and job satisfaction lead to their transformational leadership, and then, to leaders' pleasantness.
The third model, referred to Alternative Model 2, specified that leaders' affective organizational commitment and job satisfaction lead
to their pleasantness, which, in turn, leads to transformational leadership. The fourth model, referred to Alternative model 3, specified
paths to be estimated in ways that the direction of influence starts from transformational leadership to pleasantness, and then to af-
fective organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Finally, the fifth model, referred to Alternative model 4, reverses the entire
directions of influence specified in Hypothesized Model; this model specifies paths to be estimated in ways that the direction of influ-
ence starts from transformational leadership to job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment, and then to leaders'
pleasantness.
As summarized in Table 6, while most alternative models shows acceptable goodness-of-fit scores, the hypothesized model shows
the most satisfactory scores and fit the data the best, χ2(110) = 136.65, comparative fit index (CFI) = .98, Tucker–Lewis Index
(TLI) = .97, standardized root-mean-square residual (SRMR) = .05, and root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA) = .03.
Also, the Hypothesized model has the lowest AIC (9066.92) and BIC (9106.79) among them. Finally, as shown in Fig. 2, the significance
of each path estimated in the hypothesized model matches the results of hypothesis testing reported in Tables 3 and 4. Taken together,
these results suggest that, although alternative causal explanations are possible, the hypothesized directions of influences, starting
form leaders' pleasantness to their job attitudes, and then to transformational leadership, fitted the data best among alternative
explanations.
Discussion
Taken together, the findings of our study lead us to make three conclusions. First, the extent to which leaders engage in transfor-
mational leadership is significantly influenced by the extent to which leaders experience pleasantness at work. A second conclusion
guided by our study's findings is that the extent to which leaders feel affective organizational commitment partially accounts for why
more transformational leadership tends to be engaged in on the part of leaders with more pleasant affect at work. A third conclusion
Table 6
Summary of structural equations modeling (SEM) results.a
Model χ2 df χ2/df CFI TLI RMSEA SRMR AIC BIC
Hypothesized model 136.65 110 1.24 0.98 0.97 0.03 0.05 9066.92 9106.79
Alternative model 1 (job attitudes → transformational leadership → pleasantness) 336.39 107 3.14 0.94 0.91 0.08 0.05 9270.66 9511.69
Alternative model 2 (job attitudes → pleasantness → transformational leadership) 285.25 107 2.67 0.95 0.94 0.07 0.09 9209.52 9247.44
Alternative model 3 (transformational leadership → pleasantness → job attitudes) 339.26 111 3.06 0.94 0.91 0.08 0.06 9265.53 9491.26
Alternative model 4 (transformational leadership → job attitudes → pleasantness) 482.15 112 4.30 0.89 0.87 0.12 0.10 9406.41 9628.32
a
χ2: the chi-square goodness-of-fit statistic, df: degree of freedom, CFI = comparative fit index; TLI = Tucker–Lewis Index (Tucker & Lewis, 1973); RMSEA = root-
mean-square error of approximation (Steiger, 1990); SRMR = standardized root-mean-square residual; AIC = Akaike's (1987) information criterion; BIC = -
Schwarz's (1978) Bayesian information criterion.
Fig. 2. Summary result of hypothesized sem model.a aStandardized coefficients were reported. (N = 339). ⁎p b .05 ⁎⁎p b .01
guided by our study's findings is that all job attitudes are “not equal” in their potential to account for affect-leadership relationships;
this is because we found affective organizational commitment but not job satisfaction to partially mediate the tendency for more
positively-affected leaders at work to engage in transformational leadership. Theoretical and practical implications of our conclusions
are discussed next, each in turn.
Theoretical implications
Our first conclusion is that transformational leaders are likely to experience more pleasantness at work. This conclusion is derived
from our finding that leaders' ongoing experience of pleasant feelings at work led them to engage in more transformational leader-
ship. This finding was robust after controlling for various demographic and personality factors. An important theoretical implication
of this is that leaders' affective experience emerges as an important antecedent to transformational leadership. Although a growing
body of research suggests that transformational or charismatic leadership is based on affective processes (e.g., Bono et al., 2007;
Bono & Ilies, 2006; Conger & Kanungo, 1998; Sy et al., 2005), it mainly focuses on a mechanism of emotional contagion, a process
of transferring leaders' experienced or expressed positive emotions to the moods and perceptions of their subordinates (e.g. Bono
& Ilies, 2006, Sy et al., 2005). To our knowledge, no study has examined leaders' affective experience as a direct antecedent of trans-
formational leadership.
Our illuminating leaders' affective experience as an important antecedent to transformational leadership suggests that it may be
time for leadership scholars who have tended to focus on effects from individually-invariable sources on transformational leadership
(e.g. Bono & Judge, 2004, Judge & Bono, 2000) to also consider more dynamic (e.g., emotion-related) influences from individually-var-
iable sources on leaders' likelihood to engage in transformational leadership behaviors. Doing so would sensitize leadership scholars
to likelihood that leader behaviors (like other work-related behaviors) have motivational underpinnings which include, but are not
limited to, individual traits (cf., Kanfer, 1990). In line with the recent conceptual development that focuses on leaders' motivation
to lead (Chan & Drasgow, 2001), recognizing leader-behaviors as motivated actions promises, in turn, to sensitize leadership scholars
to the likelihood that leaders may not necessarily engage in transformational leadership at work unless they are strongly motivated to
do so. This means that it may be time to question the implicit assumption seen in the leadership literature that leaders who have been
trained to lead transformationally, or who were “born” to behave this way, will (always) do so. This assumption is found, for example,
in the long-held debate regarding whether leaders are born or made (cf. Avolio, 1999; Jago, 1982). In summary, our finding that
leaders' affect influences how they choose to lead suggests that the static quality of “born” or “made” is an oversimplification of
what determines leaders' behaviors (Avolio, 2005).
This conclusion also yields several important issues about the variability in transformational leadership (Bono & Judge, 2004). Al-
though our study shows that between-person difference in individually-variable sources (i.e., mood states) across leaders
(i.e., averaged across about a month of time) uniquely explains their between-person variability of transformational leadership,
we still do not know precisely whether and to what extent transformational leadership also varies within individuals as a
function of their individually variable sources. We also do not know the relative strength of the effects of within-person (individually
variable) sources and between-person (individually invariable) sources on the within-person and between-person variability of
transformational leadership, as well as when the effects of within-person sources become greater than those of between-person
sources (or vice versa). Fortunately, leadership scholars already have started considering the variability of leadership
(e.g., Ashkanasy & Jordan, 2008; Livi, Kenny, Albright, & Pierro, 2008; Ployhart, Holtz, & Bliese, 2002) as well as the variation in lead-
er–subordinate interactions (e.g., Bono et al., 2007; Inness, Turner, Barling, & Stride, 2010), which can be a foundation for the future
research on these issues. For example, our study, also combined with Ployhart and colleagues' (2001) finding that leaders with higher
levels of openness demonstrate more transformational leadership in challenging situations but not in typical situations, suggests a
possible intriguing contingency theory that the relative effect of trait factors (as opposed to contextually variable factors) on transfor-
mational leadership may be greater in more challenging (or unpleasant) situation because those traits and their effects on transfor-
mational leadership are less likely affected by the current unpleasant situation (e.g., only certain leaders high in specific traits may
engage in transformational leadership). In contrast, the relative effect of state factors will be greater in more typical (or pleasant) sit-
uations where more transformational leadership is driven by contextual and state factors. We hope future research further investigate
these important issues to better respond to why some leaders engage in transformational leadership behaviors and others do not (Rubin
et al., 2005).
Our second conclusion is that leaders' affective organizational commitment, but not their job satisfaction, partially accounts for
why leaders experiencing more pleasantness at work are more transformational in leadership. This conclusion is derived from our
finding that the relationship between leaders' pleasant feeling and transformational leadership was partially mediated by their affec-
tive organizational commitment. More specifically, leaders who experienced more pleasantness at work tended to be more commit-
ted to their organization, which led them to engage in more transformational leadership. This finding has several important
theoretical implications. First, leaders' affective organizational commitment emerges as an important antecedent to transformational
leadership. Scholars have not considered leaders' job attitudes as potential antecedents of leadership behaviors, and to the best of our
knowledge, this is the first study that examined the relationship between leaders' job attitudes and transformational leadership. In
particular, unlike other types of leadership behaviors, transformational leadership includes various pro-organizational behaviors
(e.g., articulating a compelling vision for an organization) that cannot be expected when leaders are not committed to their own or-
ganizations. Consistent with cognitive dissonance theory (Elliott & Devine, 1994), our finding suggest that whether leaders have pos-
itive or negative attitudes towards their organization may either promote or constrain the degree to which they engage in
transformational leadership. This finding also encourages scholars to further investigate leaders' attitude towards various other ob-
jects in their leadership situation such as specific teams or individuals and how leaders' attitudes toward the teams or individual em-
ployees they are leading affect the degree to which they engage in transformational leadership.
A second important theoretical implication of this finding is that affective experience is an important antecedent to affective orga-
nizational commitment. Although several scholars have investigated and found affective antecedents to job satisfaction (e.g. Fisher,
2000, Weiss et al., 1999), few scholars have extended this finding to other important job attitudes such as affective organizational
commitment. Our finding suggests that individuals' ongoing affective experience in a given organization also uniquely contributes
to their attitude towards the organization. Given the performance implications of affective organizational commitment (e.g. Allen &
Meyer, 1990, Hunter & Thatcher, 2007, Luchak & Gellatly, 2007, Meyer et al., 2002), our finding may suggest an important but uniden-
tified mediation mechanism for why happier workers are often more productive at work (e.g., Staw & Barsade, 1993; Wright,
Cropanzano, & Meyer, 2004).
Our third conclusion is that all job attitudes are “not equal” in their potential to account for leader affect-behavior relationships.
This conclusion is derived from our finding that leaders' affective organizational commitment, but not their job satisfaction, partially
mediated the tendency for leaders experiencing more pleasant feelings at work to engage in more transformational leadership. One
possible explanation is that there are two necessary but sometimes competing mechanisms simultaneously operating underlying this
relationships, making, for example, the overall effect of job satisfaction non-significant by cancelling each other. More specifically,
leaders should be most likely to engage in transformational leadership behaviors (1) when they are placed in a situation that calls
for transformational behaviors (i.e., unsatisfied with the status quo; Bass, 1985, 1997) and (2) when they have strong motivation
to engage in transformational behaviors. In our study, as we theorized, leaders with high levels of job satisfaction may have enhanced
motivation to engage in transformational leadership behaviors driven by experiencing pleasantness, and thus meet the latter condi-
tion. However, those leaders may fail to meet the former condition because they see fewer problems with the status quo to address or
change as they are satisfied with their current job. Leaders with low levels of job satisfaction may face the opposite problems; they
may see a lot of problems in the status quo that require transformational leadership behaviors to change them, but the unpleasantness
stemming from the dissatisfaction with their current jobs may demotivate them to engage in transformational leadership behaviors.
In either case, the overall effect of job satisfaction on transformational leadership can be substantially weakened. With the regards to
the effect of affective organizational commitment, on the while, we do not see the conflicting underlying mechanisms found in job
satisfaction because organizational commitment is less affected by problems with the status quo but more affected by personal iden-
tification with the core features of the organization, which sometimes makes people to perceive even organizational problems as their
own (Allen & Meyer, 1990). Future research is needed to determine why some job attitudes such as affective organizational commit-
ment are stronger than other job attitudes in motivating transformational leadership. Doing so may strengthen understanding about
the motivational underpinnings of transformational leadership which have generally been neglected due to the tendency for leader-
ship scholars to focus, instead, on leader-traits as determinants of leader behavior (cf. Chan & Drasgow, 2001).
Practical implications
Our findings have several important implications for practicing leaders too. First, a practical implication of our finding that leaders'
affect is an important antecedent to their engagement in transformational leadership is that how leaders are treated (not just how
leaders treat their subordinates) emerges as an important consideration in determining the likelihood of transformational leadership.
For example, treating organizational leaders well so that they experience more pleasant feelings at work in an ongoing manner may be
key in determining how transformational leaders will be. This suggests the need to potentially re-examine the role of various organi-
zational practices – job characteristics, working relationships, payment, etc. – that directly affect organizational members' affective
experiences. Unless leaders are happy at work, they are not necessarily going to engage in transformational leadership.
Secondly, an important practical implication of our finding is that leaders' affective organizational commitment partially mediates
the tendency for more positively-affected leaders to engage in transformational leadership. Specifically, our findings suggest that in-
creasing leaders' affective organizational commitment may be pivotal in determining their likelihood of engagement in transforma-
tional leadership. Although the results of this study also suggest that one important antecedent of leaders' affective organizational
commitment is their pleasantness at work, organizations can consider various other ways to increase leaders' affective organizational
commitment in order to promote transformational leadership. The importance of more organizationally-committed leaders in foster-
ing transformational leadership in organizations also suggests that it is time for organizations who seek transformational leaders to do
one of two possible things: (1) consider actions other than selection (e.g., identifying leaders with certain personality types or indi-
vidual traits) and/or (2) supplement selection-strategies with actions that increase the affective organizational commitment of the
individuals they seek as transformational leaders.
We note, however, that leaders' personality traits and other individually invariable characteristics explained approximately 5% of
variability in transformational leadership, whereas their individually variable, state-like characteristics - affect, job satisfaction, and
affective organizational commitment explained additional 4% of its variability. These results indicate that the effects size of leaders'
state-like characteristics including their pleasant affective experiences at work is relatively small in magnitude, but almost as strong
as (slightly less strong than) the effects size of leaders' trait-like characteristics including their personality traits. Thus, we suggest that
state-like and trait-like characteristics need to be simultaneously considered in promoting transformational leadership in workplaces
with tempered expectations of their practical implications.
Limitation and future research directions
As with all studies, this one is not without limitations. Before identifying those, we think it is important to note our study's
strengths too. Specifically, we assessed leaders' affective experience, job attitudes, and transformational leadership behavior from dif-
ferent sources to avoid common-source biases (Dionne, Yammarino, Atwater, & James, 2002), and used the experience sampling pro-
cedure to minimize the possible mood contagion effects. Therefore, despite the limitations of our study, we believe our findings enable
us to meaningfully advance understanding about the effect of leaders' pleasantness on transformational leadership.
First, although we argued and provided some indirect supports that leaders, by their own behavioral choices, are more likely to
engage in transformational leadership when they experience more pleasant feelings at work, our current study design does not
allow us to completely leave out possible alternative mechanisms, in particular, to what extent the relationship is mediated by emo-
tion contagion (e.g. Bono & Ilies, 2006, Sy et al., 2005) or other types of perceptual biases in subordinates' assessment; our empirical
approach in assessing leaders' emotions in a continual (day-to-day) manner rather than solely at the moment of leader-subordinate
interaction helps us to “see” emotional/affective dynamics that are different from contagion-effects. Future research is needed to ex-
plore the precise underlying mechanisms through which leaders' pleasantness leads to their transformational leadership. In particu-
lar, future research should refine our initial test of how leaders' affective experiences are linked to their work contexts and
transformational leadership such that different sources of affective experiences are examined (i.e., trait-like versus state-like). We
note that the latter comparison, though not our study's purpose, can help clarify if the affective dynamics uncovered in our study
can best be attributed to state- versus trait-like sources. Hopefully, our study will stimulate additional work to pursue these kinds
of questions and others that regard the need to better understand (affective, job attitude-related) motivational antecedents to trans-
formational leadership.
A second limitation of our study regards the fact that there are several potential contextual variables that might influence the re-
lationships we examined; such variables need to be incorporated in theorizing and empirical measures in future research. For exam-
ple, the relationship between pleasantness and transformational leadership should be re-examined with considering the potential
interaction between pleasantness and job contexts; leaders may not necessarily engage in negative behaviors (e.g., lower levels of
transformational leadership) when they feel more negative toward their organization; and that people in leader-roles (rather than
outside of these roles) will likely feel a greater need to not do this since this would be irresponsible. Also it has been found that affec-
tive experiences tend to have a greater impact to cognitive and behavioral processes when tasks are more complex and non-routine
(Forgas, 1995; Forgas & George, 2001). The relationship between job satisfaction and transformational leadership, which was not sig-
nificant in this study, should be also re-examined in other contexts where initiating transformational changes is an important aspect
of leaders' work role so that their job satisfaction may not necessarily lead to their contentment with their status quo. As another ex-
ample, the relationship between leaders' affective organizational commitment and transformational leadership, which was significant
in this study, may be less likely to be observed in work situations where leaders anticipate impending layoffs (including their own),
and thus in situations where long-term commitment to organizations may be less relevant. Similarly to this, the relationship we ex-
amined in this study should be also re-examined considering the role that subordinates plays in leadership emergence and
effectiveness (cf. Fiedler, 1964; Kerr & Jermier, 1978). For example, leaders with pleasantness and affective organizational commit-
ment may still fail to engage in individualized consideration when their subordinates don't express or realize their own problems
and needs, and thus the leaders may not be able to identify their subordinates' developmental opportunities. Therefore, future re-
search should be extend the current scope of our study, which is leader-centered, into the more contextual and subordinates-
focused leadership study.
A third limitation is that our study's cross-sectional design prevents us from testing causality. Although we hypothesized that
leaders' pleasantness will lead to more transformational leadership and measured both variables at different times (e.g., we started
measuring the participants' pleasantness about four weeks before measuring their transformational leadership and job attitudes),
the causal relationship can be reciprocal, since transformational leadership behaviors can lead to greater experience of pleasant feel-
ings. Thus, a future study with a longitudinal (e.g., a time-lagged design, a cross-lagged design) or experimental design may provide a
better understanding of the causal relationship between leaders' pleasantness, job attitudes, and their transformational leadership
behavior.
Finally, the raters of the leader participants' transformational leadership were self-selected by the leaders based on their own judg-
ment regarding the raters' ability to assess their leadership behaviors at work, which may be subject to possible selection and assess-
ment biases. A better approach is to randomly select the raters based on objective criteria (e.g., the length of working relationship).
Further, although we focused the core affective dimension of pleasantness to predict the degree of transformational leadership that
leaders generally engage in at work, there are other aspects of affective experiences that may also influence transformational leader-
ship but in different ways. For example, discrete emotions tend to be intense but short-lived in nature and involve very specific ap-
praisal and behavioral tendencies (e.g. Lazarus, 1991; Lerner & Keltner, 2000). Thus, unlike the general dimension of pleasantness,
discrete emotions such as excitement or joy can predict specific components of transformational leadership, such as inspiration or in-
tellectual stimulation, at the moment that leaders experience those specific emotions. Hopefully, this study's theorizing and findings
will prompt such future investigations to occur.
Conclusion
Transformational leaders may be born or made. In either case, however, our findings suggest that leaders' on-going experience of
pleasant feelings at work is also important in order to lead others transformationally. This study suggests two important antecedents
of transformational leadership: leaders' affective experience at work and their affective organizational commitment. Unlike previous-
ly studied trait-like antecedents, these factors are more malleable and more transient; and as such, can be more directly improved by
various organizational practices. Hopefully, our paper's theorizing and findings will provoke leadership scholars to further explore the
role of these affect-based, transient antecedents of transformational leadership.
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LEAQUA-01088; No of Pages 21

The Leadership Quarterly xxx (2015) xxx–xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

The Leadership Quarterly

Do happy leaders lead better? Affective and attitudinal

⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 978 837 5414.

Fig. 1. Hypothesized model.

Literature review and hypotheses

Pleasantness and transformational leadership

Pleasantness fosters positive recalls and expectations

Pleasantness elicits acceptance and explorations of new ideas

Pleasantness encourages helping behavior with enhanced coping capabilities

The indirect role of leaders' job attitudes

Pleasant feelings foster positive job attitudes

Positive job attitudes foster transformational leadership

The degree of pleasantness of the leaders

Transformational leadership of the leaders

Job attitudes of the leaders

Model χ2 df χ2/df Δχ2 (Δdf) CFI TLI RMSEA SRMR

Conﬁrmatory factor analysis

1. Age 28.48 4.08

S. Jin et al. / The Leadership Quarterly xxx (2015) xxx–xxx

Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Transformational Job satisfaction Affective Transformational

Analyzing with additional controls

Variables Indirect effect; ab s.e. Percentile 95% CI BC 95% CI

Lower Upper Lower Upper

Job satisfaction 0.000 0.006 −0.024 0.000 −0.027 0.000

Mood contagion vs. motivational mechanism

1. Idealized inﬂuence 0.053⁎ 0.008 0.000 0.018 0.000 0.019

Exploring alternative causal relationships

Model χ2 df χ2/df CFI TLI RMSEA SRMR AIC BIC

Limitation and future research directions

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