Walking the talk? The importance of personal leader credibility for employee motivation when transformational leadership is exerted

Abstract

Leaders are credible when their employees believe they will act in accordance with their stated intentions. The question therefore is: Does employee-perceived personal leader credibility affect employee motivation? We examine this by conducting a survey experiment in which we expose 817 MTurkers to different video vignettes that manipulate a fictive leader’s personal credibility when they exert transformational leadership. The results reveal significant differences in perceived leader credibility. These differences affect both self-reported motivation and time spent on performing tasks for the leader. We contribute to leadership research by showing that it is possible – in an experimental setting – to affect employee perceptions of personal leader credibility and furthermore that perceived personal leader credibility affects the motivation of the respondents. We encourage further investigation, as leader credibility seems to be an important concept.