A great deal is known about the favorable outcomes of family supportive supervision for both organizations and their members. However, the full scope of family-relevant leader behaviors that employees experience which may shape their evaluations of family supportive supervision remain less clear. Contrary to the prevailing social support paradigm, which emphasizes the actively positive behaviors presumed to matter most for family “supportive” supervision, we consider how a wide range of leaders’ family-relevant behaviors are appraised in combination as helping and/or hindering one’s work-family experience and management. Using a vignette-based experimental design, we find unique effects of consistent (pro-family or anti-family) and inconsistent (mixed pro-family and anti-family) leader behaviors in predicting three different measures of family supportive supervision. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
