Leadership and Emotion Management for Complex tasks: Different emotions, different strategies

Document Type

Article

Department or Administrative Unit

Management

Publication Date

2012

Abstract

Emotions in the workplace influence a number of critical cognitive tasks including information processing and decision-making. Moreover, the effect of emotion on these operations is often emotion-specific. Given these unique effects, leaders may need to learn how to manage subordinates' discrete emotions, and not just general affect. This laboratory experiment examined the effects of leaders suggesting different regulation strategies after subordinates experienced anger or pessimism. Effects of these emotions under different leader-facilitated regulation strategies were evaluated with respect to planning, a critical organizational task, and perceptions of leader effectiveness. Results demonstrated that the type of leader-facilitated regulation strategy moderates the relationships of anger and pessimism to planning. The findings imply that leaders should understand the differential effects of discrete emotions, and be prepared to help subordinates manage emotions accordingly.

Comments

This article was originally published in The Leadership Quarterly. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.

Due to copyright restrictions, this article is not available for free download from ScholarWorks @ CWU.

Journal

The Leadership Quarterly

Rights

© 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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