Abstract: Facilitating resource development and resource utilization are important mechanisms to explain the impact of leadeship behaviors on individual outcomes, but the existing researches examine the process mechanism of leader developmental feedback affecting employee task performance mainly from the perspective of resource utilization paths, without regard to resource development paths. Based on the leadership process model, this paper argues that skill development behavior and leader-member exchange as task and relationship resource development, respectively, are the mediating variables that can explain the influence of leader developmental feedback on employee task performance, and skill development behavior and leader-member exchange substitute for each other in this process. By analyzing the paired data of 498 employees and 122 leaders, this study finds that: leader developmental feedback positively influences employee task performance; skill development behavior and leader-member exchange both have a mediating role in the relationship between leader developmental feedback and employee task performance; skill development behavior and leader-member exchange have a negative interaction effect on task performance and there is an alternative role of mediation in the relationship between leader developmental feedback and employee task performance. The above findings expand the application context of the leadership process model, clarify the multi-process resource development paths of leader developmental feedback affecting task performance, refine the types of resource development in leadership process theory, and deepen the complex role of different resource development paths in leadership process theory.

Key words: leader developmental feedback, task performance, skill development behavior, leader-member exchange, leadership process model