Follow the leader: the impact of situational and attitudinal factors on employee behaviors

Racial microaggressions in the workplace have been associated with negative employee outcomes, including risk for poor mental health and decreased work productivity. Leadership has been shown to influence a positive climate of diversity and impact pro-social workplace behaviors. However, it is not known what effect leadership style has on bystander confrontation behaviors. Thus, the present study examined whether 1) perceptions of diversity climate would mediate the relationship between leadership style and intent to confront microaggressive remarks, and whether 2) individual’s attitudes about the acceptability of microaggressions would moderate the relationship between leadership style and confrontation intention. One-hundred and seventy-four adults aged 18-65 years (M=30.7, 76% female) completed an online survey measuring perceptions of their supervisor, the diversity climate, confrontation intention and general attitudes about the acceptability of color-evasive racial microaggressions. Results from the PROCESS add-on for SPSS (Hayes, 2018) showed that transformational leadership style predicted a more positive diversity climate than transactional leadership style. However, the indirect effect of leadership style on confrontation intention through diversity climate, was nonsignificant. Additionally, participant’s acceptance of color-evasive microaggressions did not moderate the relationship between leadership style and confrontation intention. However, given the mixed effects of the manipulation, exploratory analyses were conducted using regression analyses. Results revealed that after accounting for leadership style, greater acceptability of racial microaggressions significantly predicted less confrontation intentions. These findings provide support for the predictive nature of leadership style on diversity climate and contribute to bystander intervention literature. The findings suggest that increasing transformational leadership may be an effective strategy for increasing a positive climate for diversity and subsequent employee outcomes. Additionally, future studies should examine whether decreasing the perceived acceptability of racial microaggressions in bystander intervention training contributes to an increase in confrontation behaviors.