Including Managers in the Job Crafting Process: Cognitive Clarity through Motivational Interviewing

A perspective that recognizes the role of managers and leaders is reflected in research looking at leadership styles as antecedents of job crafting. So far, a variety of leadership styles have shown positive associations with job crafting, including empowering leadership (i.e., a style that enhances meaningfulness of work, fosters participation in decision-making, expresses confidence in high performance, and provides autonomy from bureaucratic constraints; Audenaert et al., 2020; Kim & Beehr, 2018; Thun & Bakker, 2018; Zhou et al., 2024), transformational leadership (i.e., leaders who transform norms and values of employees by articulating a clear vision, setting value-consistent examples, fostering group goals, setting high performance expectations, and providing individualized support; Chen et al., 2024; Hetland et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2017), servant leadership (i.e., leaders adopting a people-centered style that stresses personal integrity and care for others; Harju et al., 2018; Kahn et al., 2020; Yang et al., 2017), leader humility (i.e., leaders who express a willingness to view themselves accurately, appreciate others strengths, and are open for feedback; Chen et al., 2020), employee-oriented leadership (i.e., leaders who care about employees’ individual needs and well-being; Lichtenthaler & Fischbach, 2018), engaging leadership (i.e., leaders inspiring and connecting employees through fulfilling their psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness; Mäkikangas et al., 2017), and need-supportive styles (i.e., strategies used by leaders to support psychological need satisfaction of subordinates, including autonomy-, competence-, and relatedness-supportive styles; Wu et al., 2023; Slemp et al., 2021a).

Next to leadership styles, emerging evidence points to specific leader behaviors—particularly autonomy support—which shows positive associations with employee job crafting (Slemp et al., 2015, 2021b). Autonomy-supportive leadership involves a cluster of behaviors, such as taking interest in an employee’s perspective, giving them opportunities to make their own choices, encouraging them to take self-initiative, and avoiding the use of sanctioning behaviors (or external rewards, e.g., Slemp et al., 2021b). Autonomy-supportive behaviors are also a critical behavioral component in MI interventions. More importantly, these leader behaviors impact self-determined types of employee motivation and work engagement (Slemp et al., 2018). For example, Slemp et al.'s (2018) meta-analysis of 72 studies showed positive associations between leader autonomy-supportive behaviors and autonomous/intrinsic motivation (r = 0.39), general employee well-being (r = 0.41), job satisfaction (r = 0.49), work engagement (r = 0.28), and employee performance (r = 0.27). Thus, job crafting is a potential mechanism that could explain why leader autonomy support positively impacts employee well-being outcomes (Slemp et al., 2015).

As shown, various leadership styles (and some particular leader behaviors, i.e., autonomy support/need supportive behaviors) have shown positive associations with job crafting. A key problem, however, with leadership styles is that they tend to be defined in terms of positively-valenced intentions that positively impact follower outcomes (Fischer & Sitkin, 2023). These definitions are problematic because they confound a leadership style with its intended outcome (Fischer & Sitkin, 2023), making it unclear what specific leader behaviors create these favorable employee outcomes (Banks et al., 2018). For example, a commonly used conceptualization of transformational leadership includes dimensions like idealized influence (i.e., employees perceiving the leader as instilling pride, trust, and respect), inspirational motivation (leaders communicating an inspiring vision), and intellectual stimulation (i.e., behaviors that stimulate problem-solving in employees). These three dimensions include not only leader behaviors but also implicit assumptions about their effects on employees and how well they are executed (Van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013). Yet, this creates a problem of causal indeterminacy: a leader’s behavior might be labeled as “transformational” only if it leads to positive outcomes in terms of employees being inspired and motivated. Thus, many leadership style definitions tend to conflate leader behavior with its effectiveness (e.g., achieving motivational outcomes), which makes it difficult to discern what the leaders actually do that results in these positive employee changes (Fisher & Sitkin, 2023). Scholars are increasingly criticizing that leadership styles need to separate what leaders do (i.e., leadership behaviors) from evaluative aspects of leadership behaviors (i.e., how well they execute this behavior, why they do it, or how effective the behavior is; Fischer & Sitkin, 2023; Van Knippenberg et al., 2013). Related to this problem is that existing measures of these styles tend to strongly converge: most of these leadership styles suffer from construct redundancy and have only minimal unique explanatory power (Banks et al., 2018; Eva et al., 2024). An interesting finding is that measures of more tangible leader behaviors, particularly leader autonomy support (i.e., a crucial element of MI interventions), also show positive relationships with employee well-being outcomes and job crafting behaviors (e.g., Slemp et al., 2018).

With the emergence of job crafting research, needs and values were often mentioned as motivators for job crafting (e.g., need for personal control over work, need for a positive self-image, and/or the need for human connection with others; Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Indeed, the need for a positive self-image has been shown to predict some forms of job crafting (Niessen et al., 2016) and the needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence have also been related to job crafting (Bakker & Oerlemans, 2019; Bindl et al., 2019). Furthermore, it has been argued that a perceived needs discrepancy is a likely motivator for job crafting (Clinton et al., 2024; De Bloom et al., 2020). Need satisfaction, in turn, has been studied as an outcome of job crafting (Bakker & Oerlemans, 2019; Slemp & Vella-Brodrick, 2014; Van Wingerden et al., 2017a, 2017b).

In addition to needs, values have also been identified as predictors of individual behavior (McClelland, 1985). Values are defined as subjective and stable beliefs about preferred end states or behaviors that guide behavior and decision-making (Meglino & Ravlin, 1998; Rokeach, 1973). When individual values align with organizational values, this match or congruence in values is argued to satisfy basic psychological needs (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Value incongruence represents a mismatch between individual and organizational values and is associated with need deprivation, which is detrimental to employees (Baumeister & Leary, 1995).

In summary, existing research strongly points to the idea that managers can positively impact job crafting (through either their leadership styles or specific leadership behaviors). Existing research also points toward the importance of employee needs and values as motivators of job crafting. However, job crafting interventions that more specifically isolate behavioral aspects and that inform managers how they can stimulate job crafting behaviors within their employees could be more effective, to which we turn next.

Most job crafting interventions follow a standard structure, characterized by the following aspects: (1) participants are familiarized with job crafting (i.e., What is it? What are the benefits?); (2) they then map their job tasks (i.e., job analysis), (3) reflect on their job analysis through exercises, (4) identify opportunities for job crafting, (5) experiment with job crafting behaviors back at work, and (6) meet one more time to discuss their experiences with job crafting (cf. Berg et al., 2008; Demerouti et al., 2019; Silapurem et al., 2021; Van Wingerden et al., 2016). Job crafting workshops generally last half a day or a couple of hours (Silapurem et al., 2021), and measures of job crafting and outcomes are taken before and at the end of the intervention, usually after 3 to 4 weeks (e.g., Demerouti et al., 2020; Knight et al., 2020). Oprea and colleagues (2019) conducted a meta-analysis of 14 published job crafting intervention studies to assess whether these interventions increased job crafting behaviors, work engagement, and job performance. Small but positive increases were found in overall job crafting and the two job crafting dimensions increasing challenging job demands and decreasing hindering job demands, but not in increasing job resources. Similarly, a small but positive effect size was found for the impact of job crafting interventions on work engagement, whereas the results for performance were inconsistent.

Other job crafting intervention reviews also indicate that the effects of job crafting interventions are generally small (De Devotto & Wechsler, 2019; Demerouti et al., 2019) and suggest that these findings may be due to the small sample sizes and homogeneous groups (e.g., Gordon et al., 2018; Van Wingerden et al., 2017a, 2017b), the difficulty of quantitatively capturing the idiosyncratic ways in which participants can craft their jobs, and the lack of manager involvement in how and when to craft when back at work (e.g., Demerouti et al., 2019). Managers can support or undermine job crafting efforts (Fong et al., 2021), which may arise from a misunderstanding of the needs and values of the employee (Tims & Parker, 2019). To improve the effectiveness of employee job crafting, managers should play a role in the job crafting process. In the next section, we discuss an intervention approach that would allow managers to engage with their employees in job crafting conversations.

Job crafting emerges when employees perceive a mismatch between their needs, values, and motivations and the type of tasks and relationships that their work environment provides them. Here, we suggest a way forward and show how managers can have conversations with employees that allow them to explore and understand their needs and motivations much better. Job crafting (if initiated by the employee alone) requires effort and can drain energy resources (Bakker & Oerlemans, 2019). Without managerial support, employees who invest energy into job crafting might accidentally increase their own and colleagues’ burnout risk by potentially increasing their workload (Harju et al., 2021; Tims et al., 2015), or they may not perceive opportunities to engage in job crafting (Schüler et al., 2023). Given that existing job crafting interventions have no protocol that explicitly involves managers, we suggest MI as an intervention that gives managers a structured and behaviorally anchored approach for conducting these conversations.

MI is “a particular way of talking with people about change and growth to strengthen their own motivation and commitment” (Miller & Rollnick, 2023, pp. 12–13) and has been developed into a well-researched evidence-based intervention within the helping professions (Marshall & Nielsen, 2020; Miller & Rollnick, 2023). A job crafting MI conversation would involve a conversation between a manager (i.e., the ‘interviewer’ role) and their employee (i.e., the ‘interviewee’ role). The manager uses both a ‘following style’ and a ‘guiding style’ to understand their employee’s needs, values, and motivation. The following style uses person-centered communication by exploring a person’s motivation, using specific questions paired with reflective listening (Rautalinko & Lisper, 2004; Rogers, 1951). The guiding style is more directive and uses evocative techniques that encourage employees to think and talk about their reasons for making changes (Marshall & Nielsen, 2020; Miller & Rollnick, 2023). The guiding style allows managers to gently move a conversation toward a specific focus, e.g., by listening well and asking questions that tap into the employee’s motivation (Marshall & Nielsen, 2020). Skillful MI conversations involve two critical features, namely, a relational and a behavioral component¹ (Magill & Hallgren, 2019; Miller & Rose, 2009), which we outline next.

The relational MI component involves building a strong interpersonal connection, for example, by expressing empathy (a genuine interest in someone’s perspective) and using an interpersonal style that values collaborative problem-solving, a desire to understand a person’s underlying motivation, and respects their autonomy in making decisions (Miller & Rollnick, 2023). Collaboration means that managers should not dominate, but should provide space for employees to be agentic in the conversation. Managers should avoid using overtly directive behaviors (e.g., giving advice, orders, persuading)—particularly to reduce sanctioning behaviors or telling others what to do. Instead, by elaborating on employee needs (Miller & Rollnick, 2023), managers help employees develop intrinsic motivation to initiate changes rather than purely following external advice or incentives (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Slemp et al., 2018).

Skillful MI also incorporates a behavioral component, which involves the use of evocative questions, a skillful form of reflective listening, and demonstrating autonomy-supportive behaviors (Magill et al., 2019; Magill & Hallgren, 2019; Pace et al., 2017). The acronym OARS highlights some of these behavioral elements (Klonek & Kauffeld, 2015; Magill & Hallgren, 2019)—that is, asking Open questions, providing Affirmations, engaging in Reflective listening, and using Summaries. In particular, the use of reflective listening and summaries allows managers to rephrase what the employee has said, helping them hear their own motivations and needs.

Evocative techniques encompass questions that draw out employee motivation and values (e.g., “What things do you value about your job?”), while reflective listening helps to understand incongruences between needs (e.g., the need for social connection) and behaviors (e.g., not working in teams) that can motivate job crafting (see Table 1). As a result, evocative techniques elicit and reinforce employee language about change (Magill et al., 2019). For example, in a conversation, an employee might say: “I really value social connections,” to which their manager could respond with ‘reflective listening’: “On the one hand, you said you are working from home most of the week, which leaves you a bit isolated. On the other hand, you say that you value social connections.” During the unfolding conversation, reflective listening operates like a mirror that managers can use to highlight incongruencies or issues that employees had been unaware of (i.e., blind spots). When done well, employees hear their own motivation and needs. For example, upon hearing the reflection from their manager, the employee might respond: “This is true. Maybe working from home does not allow me to connect with colleagues and I should consider coming into the office more often.” This insight can help them to explore other ways to job craft and achieve better need alignment.

First, the model propositions should be tested. This will require conducting sound empirical intervention studies that measure both proximal psychological mechanisms (employee clarity about their needs, values, and motivation, and managerial clarity about employee needs and clarity of person–job fit), as well as behavioral outcomes (i.e., employee job crafting and managerial behavior in terms of formal job redesign). Before these intervention studies can be conducted, sound scientific measures that are able to provide valid operationalizations of key constructs (e.g., mechanisms and behavioral outcomes) from our model are needed. That is, valid measurements for capturing cognitive clarity about needs and cognitive clarity about person–job fit should be developed. With respect to model outcomes, researchers can draw on validated measures of job crafting. However, measures of managerial behavior in terms of work redesign are still an area of research that remains underdeveloped. Although Parker et al. (2019) have developed a vignette-based measure of work design behavior, the authors used a hypothetical scenario asking respondents to make decisions that affect job enrichment. Yet, this measure was context-free, and we still need validated measures of managerial work redesign that are applicable to a field study.

Furthermore, sound intervention studies require a comparison with a control group. Here, we see a possibility to compare different types of interventions. For example, whether the MI job crafting intervention is superior to existing job crafting interventions. Currently, job crafting interventions show small effects on increasing challenging job demands and reducing hindering job demands, but not on increasing job resources (Oprea et al., 2019), showing that training transfer to the workplace is limited. As argued here, it may be expected that managerial involvement results in more successful job crafting. Thus, it is also important to explore potential moderators that constrain or enhance the effectiveness of an intervention, to which we turn next.

It is likely that a MI job crafting intervention might not work equally well across all employees. That is, an intervention can have much stronger effects for some employees than for others. Thus, future research needs to investigate what interindividual differences in employees and their managers could enhance (or reduce) the effectiveness of the intervention (cf., Slemp et al., 2021a, 2021b). Concerning employee-related moderators, we have already recognised factors like employee proactivity, the extent to which employees have job autonomy, and their level of task interdependence as potential moderators. Concerning manager-related moderators, we suspect that some managers might already exhibit elements of MI as part of their leadership style. For example, managers with an empowering leadership style (Tuckey et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2016), managers who exhibit autonomy-supportive behaviors (Slemp et al., 2021a, 2021b), or who show individual consideration and intellectual stimulation for their employees (subdimensions of transformational leadership; Hetland et al., 2018) may more naturally use MI techniques, as they place particular focus on the psychological needs of followers. On the flipside, bringing MI into job crafting conversations could also draw attention to variability in the success of job crafting conversations, particularly in explaining low success rates for managers who show directive or autonomy-restrictive behaviors that are inconsistent with the MI behavioral and/or relational components. The MI literature suggests that interviewers who use MI-inconsistent behaviors tend to undermine a person’s motivation and might even increase resistance (Klonek et al., 2014). This also calls for studies that evaluate how MI skill acquisition relates to changes in positive leadership styles per se. It might be possible that managers who learn MI might also increase the extent to which they are perceived as more empowering or transformational leaders.

Future research could also investigate multiple process outcomes, including proximal outcomes of this intervention (employee and managerial cognition), intermediate intervention outcomes (employee job crafting efforts; manager formal job design efforts), and distal outcomes (improved job design, person–job fit, and employee performance). This would also require longitudinal studies since we proposed that the involvement of managers in the process of job crafting is likely to allow for more top-down job redesign efforts with more sustainable and long-term effects.

Given that the use of MI to guide job-crafting conversations is novel and has not been explored so far, our work also calls for empirical research that investigates the specific processes and episodes of skillful listening that occur during successful MI conversations between managers and employees. This type of ‘process research’ is different from the evaluation of the intervention itself and rather calls for more fine-grained process methods (e.g., recorded conversations) to better understand the conversational dynamics that occur in these conversations. This type of research is currently underused in management research, but it is valuable because it allows researchers to look ‘under the hood’ of an intervention. Existing process research on MI from clinical psychology has developed observational coding measures that allow researchers to pinpoint interviewer behaviors that are characteristic of MI and that often explain variability in the success of an intervention (Miller & Rose, 2009). Existing taxonomies and process measures like the MI skill code or the MI treatment integrity (MITI, Klonek et al., 2015) provide a solid basis for the analysis of MI behavior within job crafting conversations.

Future research could also investigate how job redesign is sustained over the long versus short term. We proposed that employees with a better cognitive representation of their needs, values, and motivations are more likely to engage in job crafting. These employee-initiated changes can focus on different aspects of their work environment as they depend on the identified need discrepancies through MI conversations. For example, an employee who purposefully increases their social job resources may start to approach colleagues for advice or seek more social interactions (e.g., joining a team project that requires close collaboration). In this case, job crafting effects may be more likely to be short-lived. Wrzesniewski and Dutton (2001) already wrote about the “everyday altering of jobs that individuals do” (p. 181) that is “improvisational rather than planful” (p. 189). When a needs discrepancy is encountered while working, employees—aware of this misfit as a result of an MI job crafting conversation—may take immediate action to satisfy the need. Yet, it is not clear whether the increase in social resources at work can be maintained over the long term or whether approaching colleagues is a short-lived intervention that requires employees to continually craft for social interactions to maintain or obtain these relationships at work.

In addition, employees trying to satisfy the need for autonomy through approach crafting might look for a specific project rather than for more autonomy in the job in general and for the long term. This also likely holds for avoidance crafting in which employees might react to a particular situation by avoiding energy-draining people or demanding tasks (Bruning & Campion, 2017), which might not be possible for the long term if these tasks or persons are part of the work role. As such, employee-initiated changes to their own work design are less likely to have long-term effects. Overall, future research should explore whether manager-initiated work redesign produces more enduring effects than job crafting, which may only persist while the employee continues to engage in it.

To conclude, our process model highlights that job crafting researchers and practitioners could benefit from paying more attention to the role of manager–employee conversations in creating well-fitting jobs. We propose that managers who use MI can better identify needs, values, and motivations of their employees and, thus, support them with job crafting and job redesign efforts, so that employees are more engaged, motivated, and productive.