The Emotion of Admiration Improves Employees’ Goal Orientations and Contextual Performance

Abstract

Admiration is the other-praising emotion elicited by the display of outstanding skills, talents, or achievements. Most leadership theories state that effective leaders are ad mired role models that fo llo wers emu late. Nevertheless, no dem- onstration has been provided so far about the actual role of ad miration in the leader-follower relationship. This paper shows that leaders who display technical and managerial co mpetences motivate employees by means of the positive emotion of admiration they elicit. Specifically, we hypothesized and demonstrated that admirat ion elicited in employees by their leader's skills increases both their goal orientation to prove and imp rove their own skills and their contextual performance. In a first field experiment on 137 sales representatives we observed an indirect positive relationship between leader's skills and followers' state-goal orientations. Admiration mediated the positive effect o f leader's skills on emp loyees' motivation. In this study, we also observed a direct and detrimental impact of leaders' skills on employees learn ing and proving goal orientations. In a second, cross-sectional, study on 146 full-t ime teachers we observed that admiration -co mpared with happiness and gratitude- is the best predictor of state-learning-goal orientation and organizat ional citizenship behaviors. Implications and limits are d iscussed.