Introduction: Leaders face a range of challenges and significant responsibilities, including making decisions under pressure, dealing with peer conflict, and responding to external demands. These demanding responsibilities often lead to ego depletion. Given the leader'scentral role within the team, LED is likely to negatively impact team functioning and results.
Purpose: Drawing on the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory, this study investigates how leaders' ego depletion influences team performance. Team potency is proposed as a mediating mechanism between leader depletion and team performance. Additionally, we examine leaders' identification with their teams as a contingency factor that shapes the impact of ego depletion on team performance.
Method: The research model was tested using data from 282 teams in public organizations, collected from two sources across three time points with a one-month interval between each. At Time 1, leaders reported their levels of ego depletion and identification with their teams; at Time 2, team members assessed team potency; and at Time 3, leaders evaluated team performance. The measurement model was tested through Confirmatory Factor Analysis in IBM AMOS 29, while the conceptual model was tested with the PROCESS macro (model 7) in IBM SPSS 29.
Results: We found that leader ego depletion was negatively related to both team potency and team performance. In addition to the direct effect on performance, an indirect negative effect through team potency was also observed. Furthermore, the results suggest that the more strongly leaders identify with their teams, the greater the impact of ego depletion on team potency.
Conclusions: These findings highlight that leader ego depletion, apart from the known negative effects on an individual's outcomes, is also detrimental for team functioning and performance.