Leadership Pathways & Outcomes
External empirical finding · Supporting · 2015
Poorer leader sleep quality was indirectly linked to more abusive supervision and lower team engagement
Across 606 matched daily observations from 88 supervisors and their work units over 10 workdays, poorer reported sleep quality, but not shorter sleep duration, was indirectly associated with lower daily team engagement. The estimated pathway ran through greater leader self-control depletion and more abusive supervisory behavior reported by subordinates.
Research basis
Multisource experience-sampling field study. 88 supervisors and their work units observed across 10 consecutive workdays.
What it supports
A concrete leader sleep to behavior to team-engagement pathway and the importance of measured mediators.
Boundary
This was a multisource daily field study, not an experiment. The timing and mediation analysis support the proposed sequence but do not establish causation. The outcome was daily work-unit engagement, not team execution, financial performance, or enterprise performance, and the supervisors were not specifically C-suite executives.
BOL relevance
Provides direct workplace evidence for behavior and engagement as pathways between a capacity-relevant driver and a team outcome.
Source class
Peer-reviewed research
Role in BOL
Supporting
Population context
Leaders or executives
Evidence basis
Objectively measured or experimentally assessed
Sample
606 matched daily observations
Endpoint
Daily work-unit engagement, leader self-control depletion, and subordinate-reported abusive supervision
Important null or boundary finding
Sleep quality carried the reported indirect pathway; sleep duration did not.
Source record checked 26 July 2026.