Psychological Capital for Leader Development

Abstract

The continual development of leaders is one effective strategy for organizations to compete in today’s rapidly changing society. Despite awareness of this need, human resource professionals and managers find it challenging to promote or encourage ongoing development among leaders. Addressing the need for continuous learning, we extend the construct of psychological capital to the context of leader development. Specifically, leader development psychological capital (LD PsyCap) is defined as an individual’s motivational propensity to develop as a leader and consists of efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience toward leader development. Using an online survey of 120 leaders, we found that LD PsyCap predicted leader development behaviors beyond other individual differences. We also found that LD PsyCap mediated the relationship between learning climate, organizational support, social support, and workload on leader development behaviors. Promoting LD PsyCap can help facilitate ongoing leader development in organizations.