Strengths-based leadership and employee work engagement: A multi-source study

Strengths-based leadership helps employees identify, utilize, and develop their strengths. Does such leadership facilitate employee work engagement and performance? In this study, we integrate Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) and Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theories to hypothesize that strengths-based leadership is positively related to employee task performance through employee work engagement, and that this effect is moderated by LMX quality. We collected survey data at two time points – with one month interval – from 556 Chinese workers and their managers (N = 104 teams). The results of path modelling showed that strengths-based leadership was positively related to supervisor-ratings of employee task performance via employee work engagement. As predicted, the positive relation between strengths-based leadership and employee work engagement was stronger when LMX was of high-quality. However, the predicted moderated-mediation effect was not supported. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on strengths-based leadership, as well as the practical implications. •Reveals why and when does strengths-based leadership increase employees' task performance.•Strengths-based leadership at T1 stimulates task performance at T2 through work engagement at T2.•Employees with high LMX at T1 react more positively to strengths-based leaders at T1 and become more engaged at T2.•LMX does not moderate the relation between strengths-based leadership and task performance via work engagement.