What about the "Soft Factors"? Longitudinal Effects of Leadership Behaviors on Psychological Resources of Firefighters: Online Supplement

This is the online supplement for a study on leadership in fire services and its impact on the psychological resources of subordinates. Abstract: In addition to adequate training and material equipment, firefighters need robust psychological resources (e.g., resilience, self-efficacy, team spirit) to fulfill their duties and remain healthy. However, recurrent exposure to disruptive events poses a threat to these resources. This study examines how leaders in fire services can support their subordinates in maintaining high levels of psychological resources. We hypothesize that person-oriented leadership is particularly effective in this respect. Specifically, we predict that person-oriented leader behaviors increase subordinates’ psychological resources and magnify the benefits of their performance behaviors in terms of resource acquisition. In a preregistered longitudinal study (five monthly measurements) with firefighters in Germany (N = 189), we tested our hypotheses using random intercept cross-lagged panel modeling. In line with our expectations, perceived person-oriented leader behaviors predicted subordinates’ resources on a month-to-month basis, and also in an additional follow-up survey one year later. However, person-oriented leadership effects on subordinates' performance behavior did not result in higher resources among subordinates. Notably, perceived task-oriented leader behaviors also predicted subordinates’ resources, but only on a month-to-month basis. Together, our findings show that person-oriented leadership can counterweight resource-draining working conditions in the fire services. We discuss possible mechanisms and time frames of the observed effects. The study was approved by the ethics committee of the [institution anonymized for review] and pre-registered with aspredicted.org (see https://aspredicted.org/blind.php?x=bw6cz7). This online supplement includes a codebook describing all instructions and items raw data (anonymised) and analysis scripts (Note: The raw data contains only the information of persons who have agreed to the use of their data.) a file with supplemental analyses the theoretical rational and analyses of two pre-registered hypotheses not included in the manuscript