Transformational Leadership Moderates the Relationship Between Emotional Exhaustion and Turnover Intention Among Community Mental Health Providers

Public sector mental health care providers are at high risk for burnout and emotional exhaustion which negatively affect job
performance and client satisfaction with services. Few studies have examined ways to reduce these associations, but transformational
leadership may have a positive effect. We examine the relationships between transformational leadership, emotional exhaustion,
and turnover intention in a sample of 388 community mental health providers. Emotional exhaustion was positively related to
turnover intention, and transformational leadership was negatively related to both emotional exhaustion and turnover intention.
Transformational leadership moderated the relationship between emotional exhaustion and turnover intention, indicating that
having a transformational leader may buffer the effects of providers’ emotional exhaustion on turnover intention. Investing
in transformational leadership development for supervisors could reduce emotional exhaustion and turnover among public sector
mental health providers.