The Effect of Secure-base Leadership on Work-related Flow: A Moderated Mediation Model

Secure-base leadership encourages employees to take risks and challenges and highly cares for them, which can improve employees' psychology, attitudes, and behaviors, and is beneficial for organizations to cope with the uncertainty of future development. Based on the cognitive appraisal theory of stress, which incorporates perceived stress and emotional intelligence, this study collected data from 568 questionnaires, and used hierarchical regression to explore the mechanism of action of safe-base leadership on employees' work immersion and the moderating role of emotional intelligence. The study showed that secure-base leadership significantly and positively affects work-related flow; secure-base leadership promotes work-related flow by decreasing employees' perceived stress; emotional intelligence negatively moderates the relationship between perceived stress and work-related flow, and further moderates the mediating role of perceived stress in the relationship between secure-base leadership and employees' work-related flow. The results of this study confirmed the intrinsic mechanism and boundary conditions between secure-base leadership and employee work-related flow, and provided worthwhile lessons and guidance for leaders to effectively promote employee work-related flow.