Research indicates that leaders are often approached by followers with help requests for task-related and personal problems. In addition, theories of leadership recognize that providing support and encouragement to followers is an important leader behavior. Little research, however, has examined how helping followers may affect leaders despite theoretical arguments that helping may deplete self-regulatory resources. Drawing on Ego Depletion Theory, I propose that leader reactive helping - defined as helping in response to direct requests for assistance by followers - depletes leaders' self-regulatory resources. I also propose that helping with personal problems is more depleting than helping with task-related problems. Depletion, on the other hand, is expected to harm leaders' work engagement and creativity because these activities require self-regulatory resources. Helping role perceptions and prosocial motivation are proposed to moderate the effects of reactive helping on depletion; whereas prosocial impact and trait self-control are proposed to moderate the effects of state depletion on work engagement and creativity. An experience sampling methodology is utilized to test these research questions in a sample of middle and senior managers.
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