Most people can recall a manager who made them feel supported enough to take on new challenges, and one who did not. As workplaces grow more complex and uncertain, understanding how leaders shape employees’ experiences at work has become a pressing question for organisations.
New research from Spain suggests that leaders who act as a secure base for their teams are associated with higher employee well-being. In turn, that well-being appears to be closely connected with engagement, opportunities to learn, and a sense of inclusion.
The research, published in Psychology International, was carried out by Francisco Javier Fras Manero, Ana Laguía, and Juan Antonio Moriano of the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) in Madrid. The team drew on attachment theory, which proposes that people seek out trusted figures in times of stress and feel freer to explore when they feel secure.
In the workplace, secure base leadership describes managers who provide both a safe haven, offering support and emotional availability under pressure, and a secure base that encourages autonomy, learning, and growth. The researchers wanted to know whether employee well-being links this style of leadership to wider organisational outcomes.
Data came from a single large multinational organisation, with employees mainly from Europe and Latin America. A company-wide climate survey in March 2024 measured well-being, engagement, learning and development, and diversity and inclusion, while a separate survey in December 2024 asked employees to rate their immediate manager’s secure base behaviours.
After matching the two surveys, the final sample included 115 leaders in the early stages of their managerial roles. Leadership ratings came from 372 employee responses and the climate measures from 504 responses, with scores averaged for each leader.
The analysis showed that secure base leadership was positively linked with employee well-being, although it explained a modest 11% of the variation. Well-being, in turn, was strongly linked with engagement, perceived learning and development opportunities, and perceptions of diversity and inclusion.
The indirect pathways from leadership through well-being to all three outcomes were statistically significant. The effect was slightly stronger for learning and development, and the authors describe the inclusion pathway as one of the most novel findings.
The authors are careful to point out an important limitation. Because the climate survey took place before the leadership survey, the results should be seen as theory-driven associations rather than proof that leadership causes changes in well-being.
They also note that all measures relied on employee perceptions, that the study involved just one organisation, and that the reliability of the averaged leadership ratings was modest. Future work using longitudinal designs or before-and-after evaluations of leadership training could help clarify the direction of these relationships.
Even so, the findings carry practical messages for employers. Rather than treating engagement, learning, and inclusion as separate initiatives, organisations might invest in developing secure base behaviours among leaders as a shared foundation.
The researchers suggest realistic practices such as predictable check-ins, psychologically safe feedback, clear escalation channels, and structured development conversations. Smaller firms without formal leadership programmes could build similar habits into regular one-to-one meetings and fair, transparent decision-making.
