How can servant leadership mitigate negative emotions and restore the beliefs of employees during a major global crisis? The case of Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the aviation sector, resulting in adverse effects on the emotional well-being of employees and their belief in their organization's ability to recover. Nevertheless, the presence of supervisors who fulfill the role of servants might potentially make a difference. These leaders prioritize the well-being of their employees and strive to meet their most important needs, therefore assisting them in managing negative emotions throughout these challenging circumstances. Moreover, servant leaders with the ability to dream great dreams and create more intuitive decision-making and planning, which are crucial in the fast-paced uncertainty of a crisis, can restore employees's belief in the recovery capacity of their organization in times of crisis. In addition, by instilling servant behaviors in followers, they can motivate their followers to remain flexible, adapt creatively to the changing environment, and nurture a positive workplace spirituality, which in turn helps them successfully address pandemic times, especially if these employees have a higher level of proactive personality. Therefore, this study aims to explore the role of servant leadership in alleviating negative emotions and enhancing belief restoration among employees during COVID-19 via the mediating roles of employee creative adaptability and workplace spirituality. Using structural equation modeling to analyze an example of 314 aviation employees in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, this study found that servant leadership directly decreases negative emotions and enhances belief restoration among employees. Unlike our expectations, while workplace spirituality mediates the effects of servant leadership on both negative emotions and belief restoration among employees, creative adaptability, among the dual effects of servant leadership, does not mediate the relationship between servant leadership and employees' negative emotions. The findings also reveal that when these employees are more proactive, the influence of servant leadership on both creative adaptability and workplace spirituality is stronger. New light is thus shed on how servant leadership is effective in reducing negative emotions and enhancing belief restoration among employees in times of severe changes such as those produced by the COVID-19 pandemic.