“One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.”
Arnold Glasow

A study published in the European Management Journal proposed that pressure in the workplace is related to instances of bullying behavior.

This study was conducted by a team of researchers including Kari Wik Ågotnes, Anders Skogstad, Jørn Hetland, Olav Kjellevold Olsen, and Ståle Valvatne Einarsen at the University of Bergen, in Norway, and Arnold B. Bakker at Erasmus University Rotterdam and University of Johannesburg. 

Supervisors and managers often take on different styles of leadership. Transformational leaders inspire, motivate, and intellectually stimulate their followers, whereas more avoidance-based laissez-faire leaders often fail to respond to their followers’ needs. While transformational leadership has been found to promote positive outcomes like active learning and problem solving, laissez-faire leadership has previously been linked to more negative outcomes like workplace bullying behaviors. 

Pressure in the workplace, like heavy workloads and tight deadlines, can also create the ideal environment for workplace bullying to flourish. In such settings, it is in the hands of the supervisor to provide support and guidance to buffer against the development of these negative behaviors.

The main focus of this research was to determine the influence of leadership style in a high-pressure work environment and how it relates to experiences of workplace bullying behaviors. 

The researchers proposed that on days where increased work pressure is present, it is more likely for conflicts to arise, creating unstable relationships between supervisors and followers and between coworkers. They hypothesized that daily work pressure would be positively associated with daily exposure to workplace bullying behaviors, and that different leadership approaches would play a role in moderating this relationship.

To test this hypothesis, the researchers recruited a group of naval cadets in a training program involving manually navigating a tall ship across the Atlantic Ocean. This environment provided a unique opportunity to examine workers in a continuous and isolated work environment relatively free from influences of the outside world. 

Participants completed daily questionnaires regarding the workplace pressure they experienced, their supervisors’ leadership styles, and their exposure to bullying behaviors. 

Day-to-day experience of transformational leadership was assessed with questions like: “During the last 24 hours, my closest supervisor was absent when needed” and “avoided making decisions”. 

The results revealed that on days participants experienced a high degree of work pressure, they were more likely to also experience instances of workplace bullying behaviors. Interestingly, on days when participants were exposed to laissez-faire leadership, the relationship between workplace pressure and bullying behaviors was even stronger. Participants’ daily experiences of transformational leadership did not play a significant role in moderating the relationship between stressors and bullying behaviours.

Overall, the researchers found partial support for their hypothesis: while a transformational leadership style was not found to buffer against workplace bullying in high-pressure situations, a more laissez-faire leadership style was found to exacerbate it. This research contributes to a more nuanced view of the role of a supervisor’s leadership (or lack thereof) in the relationship between work pressure and bullying behaviors.