Background

The two years of the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in deterioration of the mental health and increased anxiety. On the other hand, we live in a VAST World that requires to be daring, fast-acting and responsive, which is the opposite of procrastinating and being anxious. Procrastination lowers well-being and self-efficacy (Çelik & Odaci), and raises job stress (Metin et al., 2018). A counterbalance to the unpredictable outside world can be a predictable and safe workplace (Heitzman, 2020). Safety gives employees the courage to undertake activities (Chen et al., 2019) and engage in voice behaviours (Xu et al., 2019). Therefore, I assume that psychological safety decreases the feeling of anxiety and the attempt to avoid the action and leader's transgression raises it.

Aims

In an attempt to reduce anxiety and procrastination I look at its determinants. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the direct effect of leader's transgression on follower's procrastination and anxiety as well as indirect effect mediated by the psychological safety.

Method

I use the data from daily diary study of 60 dyads of leader-follower (120 respondents, 10 observations per respondent) and apply multilevel modelling to test the hypotheses.

Results

The results confirmed that transgressive leader behaviour reduces psychological safety of the follower and rises the procrastination and anxiety of the followers. The effect of the transgression on procrastination and anxiety is mediated by psychological safety in a way that psychological safety lowers the level of both consequences. 

Conclusion

In a changing world of work the feeling of safety is more important than ever because it enables employee to meet the requirements and to work without procrastinating and anxiety. The role of the leader is crucial in here. Leader must remember that through transgressive behavior is depriving employee’s psychological safety and at the same time pushing them into procrastinating and feel of anxiety.