Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Vol 30(6), Dec 2025, 382-400; doi:10.1037/ocp0000413
Formal leaders have long been recognized as shaping the work–home outcomes of organizational members. However, far less is known about leaders’ own work–home outcomes and how these are shaped by their relational experiences at work. Drawing on the work–home resources model, we propose that transient leader loneliness has negative downstream effects on leaders’ withdrawal behaviors both at work and at home, which in turn reinforce loneliness on subsequent days. Integrating boundary theory with the work–home resources model, we theorize that family identity salience functions as a stable resource that protects leaders from the cross-domain spillover of loneliness-induced withdrawal. Our hypotheses were supported by two empirical studies. Study 1, an experience sampling study with 174 U.K. managers (1,351 days, 4,053 data points), showed that daily loneliness predicted next-day loneliness via leadership withdrawal (i.e., task withdrawal, relational withdrawal from followers) and home withdrawal. Family identity salience thereby attenuated the spillover from leaders’ work-related task withdrawal to home withdrawal. Study 2, a recall experiment (N = 185 U.K. managers), replicated the positive link between transient loneliness and leadership withdrawal. Moreover, findings did not support the notion of an adaptive function of transient loneliness; rather, loneliness was negatively associated with relational engagement. Overall, our findings highlight transient loneliness as a hidden but consequential barrier to effective leadership, while demonstrating that a salient nonwork identity can serve as a powerful resource to disrupt the cycle of leader loneliness across work and home. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)