Abstract
Emotion regulation is advocated to be an important factor underlying effective leadership given the task demands and interpersonal stressors facing organizational leaders. Despite the recognition of emotion regulation processes in leadership literature, there is a need for additional theorizing and empirical research on the specific cognitive and behavioral strategies utilized by leaders. This effort attempts to address this gap by examining individual tendencies in four emotion regulation strategies, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive reappraisal, and suppression, and their association with leadership task performance. Using an undergraduate student sample, this correlational study assessed the relationship between emotion regulation tendencies and performance in emotionally-relevant domains of leadership. Results provide partial support, suggesting that situation modification and cognitive reappraisal are positively related to leadership performance, whereas suppression was found to relate negatively with performance. Emotion regulation strategies were also found to account for variance in leadership performance above and beyond other emotion-related individual differences. Taken together, these findings suggest that certain regulation processes may be more functional for leaders and extend emotion regulation research in the leadership domain. Theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.
Highlights
Emotions are a central feature of workplace experiences and the tasks and interpersonal demands faced by leaders often arise in emotion-laden contexts
Situation modification and cognitive reappraisal appear to be beneficial emotion regulation strategies given their positive association with performance, whereas suppression appears to be harmful as a tendency to suppress emotions and was negatively related to performance
We investigated the relationship between individual differences in emotion regulation strategies and performance on leadership tasks
Summary
Emotions are a central feature of workplace experiences and the tasks and interpersonal demands faced by leaders often arise in emotion-laden contexts. Leaders may need to deliberately modify their emotional experiences and expressions to exercise influence over followers (Humphrey, 2012). Leaders may need to manage their emotions to facilitate performance on day-to-day tasks (Gooty et al, 2014). Many domains requiring effective leadership, including ethical dilemmas, interpersonal conflicts, and organizational crises (Connelly et al, 2014), call for appropriate emotional responses. Given the considerable influence that emotions have on judgment and behavior (Weiss and Cropanzano, 1996; Kiefer, 2005; Seo and Barrett, 2007), effectively managing emotions is key for successful leadership. Emotion regulation is the “process by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions” (Gross, 1998, p. 275) and, represents a critical competence contributing to leader performance (Haver et al, 2013)
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