Releasing pressure but increasing concerns: A daily investigation of supervisors' social sharing of stress and supervisors' well-being

The literature reveals the effectiveness of social sharing in unburdening stressed employees; however, the question of how the social sharing of stress in superior–subordinate dyads can affect supervisors' well-being remains unanswered. By integrating self-disclosure theory and conservation of resources theory, we develop a model to explore the influence of supervisors' daily social sharing of stress with their subordinates on the actors' work-related well-being, especially job satisfaction. By conducting a 10-day experience sampling study, we find that supervisors' daily social sharing of stress can promote their state of recovery from stressful working conditions and thus improve their daily job satisfaction. However, supervisors' daily social sharing of stress can trigger concerns about losing control over their subordinates, which can decrease their daily job satisfaction. Furthermore, the strength of the two effects is bounded by the supervisors' motives behind social sharing (i.e., expressive orientation and instrumental orientation), respectively. Specifically, expressive orientation can strengthen the impact of supervisors' daily social sharing of stress on their state of recovery, and instrumental orientation can weaken the influence of supervisors' daily social sharing of stress on their concerns about losing control over subordinates. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings and propose future research directions. • Supervisors’ social sharing of stress with subordinates has both beneficial and costly effects on their job satisfaction. • Supervisors’ state of recovery explains the beneficial effect; supervisors’ expressive orientation strengthens this effect. • Supervisors’ concerns about losing control over subordinates explain the costly effect; supervisors’ instrumental orientation weakens this effect.