“Wat als mijn baas denkt dat ik het niet kan?!” Metaperceptie als katalysator voor de relatie tussen transformationeel leiderschap, psychologische empowerment en werktevredenheid

Employees attach great importance to how they think their supervisor sees them. Such metaperceptions color how employees interpret their supervisor’s behavior and strongly determine their behavior and motivation. In this article we address recent calls to integrate research on leadership and metaperception to examine the role of metaperception as a potential lever for the effectiveness of leadership. Transformational leadership has long been seen as a silver bullet for job satisfaction, but is not always equally powerful. We expected that the metaperception of competence – e.g., “I think my supervisor thinks I do a great job” – would be an important moderator. In a field study among 340 employees of organizations across different industries we found a positive relationship between transformational leadership and job satisfaction via psychological empowerment. As predicted, this indirect relationship was moderated by the metaperception of competence, suggesting that transformational leadership is especially effective for employees who believe their supervisor finds them competent. The findings add to the growing body of literature on the influence of metaperceptions in the workplace. In light of the global labor shortage, keeping employees satisfied is of great importance, and knowledge about metaperceptions brings us a step closer in leveraging the positive effects of transformational leadership.