Abstract

Leader emotional expressions have profound implications for team members. Research has established that how frequently leaders express positive and negative emotional expressions shapes team member performance through conveying critical social-functional information about team member social worth. Yet, this social-functional approach to emotions has not fully considered how the timing of leader emotional expressions during a team’s lifecycle can also shape the information conveyed to individual team members about their social worth. In this paper, we integrate the social-functional approach to emotions with imprinting theory to propose that the temporal context of leader emotional expressions has performance implications for individual team members through two distinct facets of social worth: respect and status. Specifically, our imprinting framework explains how positive leader emotional expressions during the early team phase have the most beneficial performance implications through imprinting respect in individual team members. We then propose that these positive implications are amplified by more frequent than average negative leader emotional expressions during the midpoint phase. When filtered through earlier positive expressions, negative emotional expressions during the midpoint phase may signal opportunities for respect and status gains rather than respect and status losses. We find general support for our model in a pre-registered four-wave longitudinal archival study of consulting teams at a leading professional services company and a four-wave longitudinal field study at a NCAA Division 1 sports program. Our work highlights that the temporal context of leader emotional expressions is an important performance predictor through social worth.

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.