In spite of the growing attention to leader perfectionism, extant research has predominantly focused on an interpersonal perspective and examined its impacts on employee and team outcomes, leaving the intrapersonal lens unclear of how leader perfectionism is activated to manifest in different leadership behaviors. To address this critical question and based on the feature of perfectionism, we propose a contingent dual-path model to investigate the relationships between leader perfectionism and responsible leadership as well as abusive supervision. Grounded in trait activation theory and self-regulation theory, we posit that leader perceived LMX quality is a crucial contextual factor in activating the perfectionistic leader’s distinct leadership behaviors. Specifically, when leader perceived LMX quality is higher, leader perfectionism fosters responsible leadership through leader work engagement. Conversely, when LMX quality is lower, leader perfectionism catalyzes abusive supervision through leader resource depletion. Our pre-registered two-wave, multi-source survey study, which collected data from 279 leader-follower dyads from China, supported our hypotheses. Theoretical contributions to the literature on leader perfectionism, LMX, and leadership as well as practical implications are also discussed.
