EMOTIONAL DISPLAYS IN LEADERSHIP:
HOW DO LEADERS’ POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EMOTIONAL
DISPLAYS INFLUENCE SUBORDINATES’ PERCEPTIONS OF
CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP?
Master thesis, Msc Human Resource Management University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
June, 2010
ILLIANA C. MIJARES CHAN
Antillenstraat 1, 9714 JC Groningen, The Netherlands Student number: 1849611 tel.: +31 (0)649618477 e-mail: illiana_m@hotmail.com Supervisor: F. Walter Co-assessor: F. A. Rink
2 TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT 3
INTRODUCTION 4
HYPOTHESES 8
Emotional Displays and Perceptions of Charismatic Leadership 8
METHODS 11
Participants and Design 11
Procedure 12
Manipulation of Leader Affect 13
Measuring Instruments for Dependent Variables 13
Perceived Charisma 14
Vision and Articulation 14
Unconventional Behavior 15
RESULTS 16
Perceived Charisma 16
Vision and Articulation 17
Unconventional Behavior 18
DISCUSSION 19
Practical Implications 21
Limitations and Future Research Lines 22
CONCLUSIONS 23
REFERENCES 24
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HOW DO LEADERS’ POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EMOTIONAL DISPLAYS
INFLUENCE SUBORDINATES’ PERCEPTIONS OF CHARISMATIC
LEADERSHIP?
ABSTRACT
Scholars have widely recognized that the leader’s displays of affect constitute a basic ingredient in charisma perceptions along with leadership effectiveness. In this sense, charismatic leadership is characterized for promoting among followers the acceptance of an inspirational vision and encouraging them into actions towards the communal goals, generally through the appealing of emotions. Hence, emotions directly influence the way that subordinates perceive their leaders, up to the point that the leaders’ affective tone has a greater impact on followers than does the objective content of their message. The present study examines how leader’s positive and negative emotional displays influence the followers’ perceptions of charisma and the judgments about the leader per se. Moreover, it analyzes the simultaneous interaction of these expressions (both positive and negative) and their implications on attributions of a charismatic leadership. Results from a scenario experiment revealed that when leaders expressed positive affect their charisma attributions were enhanced, in contrast with the conditions where they displayed negative emotions. Nevertheless, negative emotional expressions showed a significant effect on the perceptions of a leader’s unconventional behavior and uniqueness in the leadership style. These findings broaden the current evidence on the emotional dimensions of charismatic leadership and outline potential guidelines for future research.
Keywords: charismatic leadership, inspirational vision, unconventional behavior, emotional
4 INTRODUCTION
In today’s competitive world, being a successful leader has become a demanding challenge. It is here where we find one of the truest examples of leadership’ s complexity, given that as Giampetro-Meyer et al. (1998) note, more and better leaders are needed in order to develop appropriate managerial practices and to be capable of overcoming the actual business problems.
In general terms, leadership can be seen as a dynamic social process of influence, where one person (the leader) is able to elicit supportive actions from others (the followers) towards the accomplishment of a common task or goal (Chemers, 2000). Along with the growing attention placed on leadership processes, abundant studies describing the attitudes (e.g. Bommer et al., 2004; Seo, Jin & Shapiro, 2008), emotions (e.g. Shamir, House & Arthur, 1993; Fredrieckson, 2003; Conger & Kanungo, 1998; Brief & Weiss, 2002) and behaviors (e.g. George & Brief, 1992) required for the maximization of leadership’ s potential benefits, can be encountered. Hence, in this context an efficient leadership can offer significant rewards in encouraging the followers as to achieve the leader’s communalobjectives.
In this line, charisma perceptions have shown to be especially significant (Judge et al., 2004), thus leading scholars to an increased interest in the antecedents of such perceptions and to the emphasis of the affective dimensions for some leadership styles. Such is the case of
charismatic, visionary and transformational leadership (Walter & Bruch, 2009). Furthermore,
charismatic leaders have shown to be particularly successful in promoting the acceptance of a shared vision among followers, as well as in creating inspiration and encouragement for actions towards common objectives, through the appealing of emotions (Avolio & Bass, 1988; Conger & Kanungo, 1987; Shamir, House & Arthur, 1993).
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Leadership theories referred to as charismatic, inspirational or transformational have been classified within this same leadership paradigm. Although there is no unanimity on whether these concepts are fully equivalent or not (Judge & Piccolo, 2004), similarities and findings among them generally converge (Judge, Woolf, Hurst & Livingston, 2006; Shamir et al., 1993; Walter & Bruch, 2009). For the purpose of the present study, attention will be focused on the body of literature from charismatic /inspirational /transformational leadership as a same one and will be referred to as with the term charismatic leadership.
It is relevant to acknowledge previous findings which identify leadership’ s nature as an intrinsically emotional process in which leaders’ affective displays are accountable for evoking particular reactions among followers (Glaso & Einarsen, 2008). Besides, emotions influence directly the way that subordinates perceive their leaders, up to the point that the leaders’ emotional tone generally has a greater impact on followers than does the merely objective content of leaders’ message (Newcombe and Ashkanasy, 2002). It is therefore likely that messages accompanied by leader’ s positive or negative emotional expressions may be interpreted differently among followers within a same context, consequently fostering diverse perceptions and judgments about the leader per se.
In this context, special attention has been given to the affective dimensions of charismatic leadership. Several scholars have widely affirmed that the leader’ s displays of affect constitute a basic ingredient in charisma perceptions as well as in leadership effectiveness (Cherulnik, Donley, Wiewel & Miller, 2001; Johnson, 2008; Shamir et al., 1993; Bass, 1985; Bono & Ilies, 2006; Conger & Kanungo, 1998; Sy et al., 2005). In this scope, most researchers have drawn their interest to the study of positive emotional expressions and their relationship with the leader’ s attributions of charisma (Bono & Ilies, 2006; Gaddis, Connelly & Mumford, 2004; Newcombe & Ashkanacy, 2002). Conversely, to a lesser extent, some other theorists have argued that
negative emotional expressions may also enhance charisma perceptions, although empirical
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Overall, even though there is a wide body of research relating to the role of emotions in leadership, there are also some relevant weaknesses that must be addressed. First, as stated before, empirical studies on charisma attributions still remain rather limited. As an exception to the lack of practical research in this subject, studies like the one performed by Damen et al. (2008) can be found. However, in this, the author’ s main findings are still restrained to the leader’ s transfer of positive emotional displays, which are examined in a high aroused state and linked with charisma attributions.
Second, since the existing literature is frequently oriented towards the study of the positive emotional dimensions of leadership, it narrows the available data that may well provide us with a deeper knowledge on the topic of the leaders’ negative emotional expressions. Subsequently, more and wider research is still required as to have a clear understanding of the implications that leaders could achieve through the use of different emotional displays, both positive and negative, directly varying upon the attributions of charisma assessed by their followers.
For the arguments discussed above and in an attempt to fill the existing gap on empirical studies of both positive and negative emotional displays from a comprehensive and concurrent perspective, this study addresses three key objectives:
- First, it intends to contribute to the existing theory (e.g. Damen et al., 2008) by empirically examining the relationship of leader’ s expressions of positive affect with followers’ charisma attributions to the leader.
- Second, it extends the narrow body of research on the negative emotional dimension of charismatic leadership, by discussing and empirically examining the role of negative affective expressions and their link with charisma perceptions, which I suggest to be of a positive influence when managed appropriately.
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In sum, a main contribution of this study relies on the exploration through empirical and theoretical research, of followers’ perceptions on charismatic leadership when emotions (positive and negative) are expressed by the leader either separately or simultaneously.
For the operationalization of this study, I have focused on two specific emotions, namely “enthusiasm” and “anger” . The reason for this selection is grounded on the high levels of arousal that both emotions present, which have successfully proven to be associated with charismatic leadership perception, as charismatic leadership is characterized by action-driven performance and the energizing of followers through aroused states (Damen et al., 2008; Bryman, 1992; Conger & Kanungo, 1988). Besides, enthusiasm and anger have been previously identified as essential emotions in situations where leadership is present (e.g. Conger & Kanungo 1998; George, 1995; Lewis, 2000; Tiedens, 2001). In order to examine the corresponding relationships of enthusiasm and anger expressions with charisma attributions from a practical approach, a scenario experiment will be conducted and complemented with assessment questionnaires.
Based on the above, this study aims to present consistent findings as to answer the following research question:
How do leader’s positive and negative emotional displays influence subordinates
perceptions of charismatic leadership?
Hence, the relationships relevant for this study are presented in the theoretical model shown in Figure 1.
……… Insert Figure 1 here
8 HYPOTHESES
Emotional Displays and Perceptions of Charismatic Leadership
Given the relevance of positive emotions in organizational contexts, a vast body of research has been dedicated to the studying of positive affective displays and its role for leadership (e.g. Bono & Iles, 2006; Awamleh & Gardner, 1999; George, 1995; Newcombe & Ashkanasy, 2002; Johnson, 2008; Shamir et al., 1993). Specifically, charismatic leaders are characterized for using a large amount of positive emotional expressions (Bono & Iles, 2006). Indeed, literature tells us that positive moods and emotions are perceived as strengthening components of a charismatic leadership (Ashkanasy & Tse, 2000; W.L. Gardner & Avolio, 1998; George, 2000). Furthermore, evidence suggests that leader’s positive emotional displays are likely to match the followers’ expectations of a charismatic leadership, hence deriving in the attributions of charisma with ease (Damen et al., 2008).
Notably, other sources of empirical research have been successful in determining a relationship between pleasantness and charismatic leadership (e.g. Seo et al., 2008). In the same line, an extensive use of leader’ s positive emotional displays has been linked to the perceptions of a charismatic vision (e.g. Bono & Ilies, 2006) and to charismatic behaviors (e.g. Erez, Misangyi, Johnson, LePine & Halverson, 2008). Similarly, studies have showed that positive affect is also related with perceptions of effectiveness and further practical outcomes of leadership, such as employee disposition and increased levels of effort and performance (e.g. Motowidlo & Van Scooter, 1994; Gaddis et al. 2004; George, 1995; Newcombe & Ashkansy, 2002).
Based on these arguments, I propose that leader’ s emotional expressions, specifically articulated with the emotion of enthusiasm (viz., a highly energetic, aroused type of positive emotion), which has proved to be effectively associated with charismatic leadership (Damen et al., 2008), are positively related with attributions of charisma:
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Although little attention has been given to negative affect within charismatic leadership theory, the expressions of negative feelings have also been suggested to play a significant role in the leadership influence process. As noted by Bono (2006), for example, charismatic leaders may frequently rely on negative emotions to motivate their followers, in particular when going through tough times.
With respect to the role of emotions in leadership, disagreement can be noticed specially when concerning on the effects of negative affective displays. While some scholars theorize that the intense use of negative expressions may hinder the leader’ s skill to create a trusting environment among followers, which may later result in a damaging effect for followers’ attributions of charisma to this leader (George, 2000); others argue that all leaders, including the most charismatic ones, may rely upon the use of negative emotions which, if focused in the correct direction, will aid in energizing and inspiring their followers (Bono & Ilies, 2006: 320; Antonakis, 2003). Moreover, negative emotions have revealed a stronger and longer lasting impact among individuals, in comparison to the positive emotions (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkernauer & Vohs, 2001).
Within the organizational context, negative emotional expressions such as anger are frequently associated with strength, dominance and intelligence (Bass, 1990; Bucy & Newhagen, 1999; Gallois, 1993; Tiedens et al., 2000). In this line, theory shows that anger displays may foster a notion where the individual expressing them is perceived as a strong and effective person, hence persuading followers to their compliance (Tiedens, 2001; Sutton, 1991). Also, further contributions in the political context have suggested that leader’s using negative emotions through facial expressions are suggestive of higher perceptions of honesty, trustworthiness and credibility than those of positive emotions (Bucy 2000).
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Hypothesis 2: Leader’s expressions of anger are positively related with followers’ charisma perceptions.
A growing body of literature acknowledges the wide use of emotions and their central role in charismatic leadership, especially when referring to the transmittal of communal visions and goals through the use of appealing messages to which subordinates may be willing to commit to (Ashkansy & Tse, 2000). Although, up to date there is no unanimity among research findings regarding the interrelation of positive and negative emotion expressions as elements of charismatic leadership, I suggest that charisma attributions are not exclusively limited to positive emotions or negative emotions separately, but instead I explore on the possibility of their joint interaction in influencing charismatic leadership perceptions.
Existing literature proposes that the correct management of emotional outbursts in leadership may be “useful, symbolic, and engender follower identification and trust” (Antonakis, 2003: 359). Emotions have shown to influence the judgments of individuals, perceptions of progress towards success or failure, and charisma attributions (e.g. George, J., 2000; Damen et al., 2008; Sy et al., 2005). Hence, while negative emotions may be seen as valuable among leaders who dealing with complex threatening problems, they could also be perceived as barriers as to foster good relationships with the followers (Jones & George, 1998). On the other hand, through the use of positive affective displays, charismatic leaders may influence their followers by painting an optimistic future (Bass, 1985), but may neglect complexities and problems potentially encountered in achieving the leader’s vision.
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Hypothesis 3: Leader’s expressions of positive (enthusiasm) and negative (anger) emotions interact to influence follower’s charisma perceptions. Charisma perceptions are more pronounced when both positive and negative emotions are expressed concurrently, as opposed to
situations where only one of the emotions or none of the emotions is expressed.
METHODS
Participants and Design
Data were collected from randomly selected participants located in the city of Groningen, Netherlands. Participants consisted of 80 Graduate and Undergraduate students who collaborated voluntarily in the scenario experiment. The participants were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions: leader’s positive affective expression, namely enthusiasm; leader’s negative affective expression, namely anger; leader’s neutral affect (i.e., no affective expression), and the interaction of leader’s negative and positive affective expression, with a combination of both enthusiasm and anger displays (Table 1).
……… Insert Table 1 here
……….... The sample included 38 men and 42 women ranging in the ages of 19 to 36 years old, with an average sample age of 24.64 years (sd = 2.63). Personal data of the respondents was kept in anonymity for confidentiality purpose. This study, including the empirical part, was entirely designed in English. Hence, in order to assess the precision of the participant’s English understanding, an item for self-evaluation on English language proficiency was integrated to the questionnaire design. This item was introduced in the form of the following statement:
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Under this scope, omission of questionnaires was not required, as the totality of respondents possessed a sufficient level of language proficiency with a general mean of 4.48 among the sample participants. Moreover, from all respondents, only 1 questionnaire was omitted from the analyses because of incomplete data in the survey questions.
Procedure
Participants were approached personally and asked to participate in a Management study. They were briefly introduced to the nature of the study and description of the case scenario presented. After this, they were asked to read carefully the scenario text and proceed to answer the survey. It was remarked the importance of participants to picture themselves in the described scenario. The core situation introduced in all four scenario manipulations was kept the same: a leader, in this case the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of an airline company, communicating a speech to all employees during times of a challenging and rough industrial environment. The speech was allegedly transmitted through the company’ s intranet and participants were asked to imagine themselves as an employee in the Marketing Department of the company who listened to the CEO’ s speech.
Text on the case scenarios started with a brief description of the Airline Company’ s background and the specifications where the participant is to depict himself/herself as an employee of the firm. Participants read a fragment of the speech in which the leader presented and evaluated the company’s quarterly results. Depending on the manipulation, the leader presented his speech with different affective expressions (viz., positive or negative), a combination of both positive and negative affective expressions, or no affective expressions, when referring to the challenges affecting the company, the obtained results, and the future courses of action.
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attached to men than women and consequently, how leadership is assumed as a more congruent element in a masculine role than in a feminine role (Eagly & Karau, 2002; Garcia-Retamero & López-Zafra, 2002, 2006; Powell, 1999).
Once participants had read the case scenarios, they completed a short questionnaire to assess their reactions on charismatic leadership perception (i.e., the dependent variables). Finally, participants were debriefed and thanked for their participation.
Manipulation of Leader Affect
In the four conditions tested, the choice of words for the leader’ s core message remained alike, except for the indicative expressions of affective tone for each manipulation. Dependent on the condition, the leader expressed enthusiasm, anger, a combination of both emotions, or no
emotions in his speech. To distinguish each of the corresponding affective states, specific
wording was used for every condition. Hence, to describe a positive affect (PA), the leader mentioned words such as “enthusiastic”, “thrilled”, “happy” and “excited” when referring to the quarterly results and challenges coming. On the opposite, for the negative affect condition (NA), terms included “angry”, “irritated”, “upset” and “mad”. In a third scenario, a balanced combination of positive and negative emotional displays was contained in the speech message. The final manipulation excluded the use of emotional words, that is to say, the speech consisted merely of the core text used in all four scenarios. It is worth noting that emotional terms employed in this study have shown to be useful and reliable when communicating affective states to others, especially in the use of simulated scenarios (e.g., Damen et al, 2008; Van Kleef, De Dreu et al., 2004a, 2004b, 2006).
Measuring Instruments for Dependent Variables
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that was presented with the following general question: How would you evaluate this leader
(CEO)?
Perceived Charisma. First, in order to test the proposed Hypotheses (H1, H2, H3) overall
leader’ s perceived charisma was measured through five items that go along with Damen et al. (2008) efforts in assembling the similarities of operationalization from previous research studies in charisma perceptions (Bass, 1985; Conger and Kanungo, 1987). These items were introduced with the phrase “ This leader …” and followed by expressions such as “ moves people towards a goal” , “ has a vision” , “ inspires me” , “ dares to take risk” and “ elicits a feeling of involvement in me” (Damen et al., 2008). Cronbach’s alpha for this overall charisma evaluation was 0.79.
Nevertheless, previous literature has widely acknowledged that charismatic leadership can also be identified with an extensive range of dimensions (e.g. Bass, 1985; Berlew, 1974; Katz & Kahn, 1978; House, 1977; Conger & Kanungo 1987; Martin & Siehl, 1983). Hence, in an attempt to gain a further comprehensive scale for charisma measurement, I included several descriptive items from the Conger-Kanungo (1987, 1988, 1992, 1994) model, which has proven to be an effective measurement scale in the assessment of behavioral dimensions in charismatic leadership at the organizational context. According to this model, attributions of charisma are interpreted through the leader’ s perceived behaviors. Overall, charismatic leaders engage in several distinguishable behaviors, and I chose to focus on two further specific behavioral dimensions. Thus, charismatic leaders particularly differ from other kinds of leaders for effectively formulating and articulating an inspirational vision and for the unconventional means and actions deployed to achieve their missions (Conger et al., 1997).
Vision and Articulation. Scholars have acknowledged vision as an element of
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change (Bass, 1985; Conger and Kanungo, 1987; Shamir et al., 1993). Hence, charismatic leaders will be perceived as talented individuals worthy of recognition and imitation. Opposite to this, noncharismatic leaders will formulate more unexciting, less innovative goals that are perceived in a less inspirational manner (Conger et al., 1997).
Furthermore, in the present research, vision and articulation is measured through four items adapted from Conger & Kanungo model (1994) in which participants rated their leader’s ability to be “ an exciting speaker” , to “ appear to be a skillful performer when presenting to a group” , to “provide inspiring strategic and organizational goals” and to “consistently generate new ideas for the future of the organization” . Cronbach’s alpha was 0.82.
Unconventional Behavior. Charismatic behaviors are measured through the followers’
perception of the leader being engaged in unconventional actions in order to achieve the communal goals, therefore revealing uniqueness and innovation in his leadership style. Through engaging in innovative strategies and actions, charismatic leaders are able to transcend the existing order and to enhance their perceptions of an effective and exceptional expertise (Conger et al., 1997).
For the assessment of this dimension, the following items adapted from the Conger & Kanungo model (1994) were used to measure if the leader “ engages in unconventional behavior to achieve organizational goals” , “uses no-traditional means to achieve organizational goals” and “exhibits very unique behavior that surprises other members of the organization” . Cronbach’s alpha was 0.86.
16 RESULTS
In Table 2, you will find the resulting data from the overall means and standard deviations of the dependent variables of “ perceived charisma” , “ vision and articulation” , “ unconventional behavior” and “ does not maintain the status quo” by each of the four affective conditions.
……… Insert Table 2 here
………....
Perceived Charisma
Results for overall charisma as the dependent variable are graphically depicted in Figure 1. Hypothesis 1 argued that leaders’ expressions of enthusiasm are positively related to charisma perceptions. And in fact, results from a 2x2 ANOVA demonstrated that there was a significant main effect of positive affect (i.e., expressions of enthusiasm) on respondents’ overall charisma perceptions (F = 9.45; p < 0.01). In addition, as shown in Figure 2, the cell means for both conditions involving positive affective expressions (PA high/NA low = 3.56; PA high/NA high = 3.59) were higher than the cell means for both conditions not involving positive affective expressions (PA low/NA high= 2.88; PA low/NA low=3.24). Therefore, these data support Hypothesis 1 on overall charisma perceptions.
……… Insert Figure 2 here
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enhance the followers’ perceptions of charisma. Results do not support this notion. ANOVA results demonstrated that expressions of Negative Affect (NA) did not significantly influence perceived charisma (F = .94, p = ns).
As for Hypothesis 3, I predicted that leader’ s expressions of positive (enthusiasm) and negative (anger) emotions interact as to enhance the followers’ perceptions of charisma. For this hypothesis the 2x2 ANOVA demonstrated no significant interaction effect (F = 1.35, p = ns). Therefore, Hypothesis 3 is not supported for overall charisma perceptions as the dependent variable.
Vision and Articulation
In addition, ANOVA results obtained for the dependent variable of vision and articulation (see Figure 3), which is seen as a key element in charismatic leadership (Conger & Kanungo, 1998), revealed a positive main effect for leaders’ expression of positive affect (F=4.82, p < 0.05). This shows that enthusiastic leaders are perceived as more successful when creating an encouraging vision for the future and communicating it in an exciting manner that engages followers’ attention. Again, as shown in Figure 2, the cell means for both conditions involving of positive affective expressions (PA high/NA low = 3.12; PA high/NA high = 3.18) were higher than the cell means for both conditions not involving positive affective expressions (PA low/NA high=2.61; PA low/NA low=2.81). Hence, these findings further enhance what was initially proposed in Hypothesis 1 of enthusiastic leaders to be positively related with attributions of charisma.
……… Insert Figure 3 here
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ns). As for the outcome variable overall charisma perceptions, Hypotheses 2 and 3 were
therefore rejected for vision articulation. Unconventional Behavior
Results for unconventional leader behavior as the dependent variable are depicted in Figure 3. A 2x2 ANOVA demonstrated that there was no significant main effect of positive affect on this variable (F = .29; p = ns). Hence, Hypothesis 1 was rejected for unconventional leader behavior.
As shown in Figure 3, however, the cell means for both conditions involving negative affective expressions (PA high/NA high = 2.90; PA low/NA high = 3.43) were higher than the cell means for both conditions not involving negative affective expressions (PA high/NA low=2.77; PA low/NA low= 2.46). Accordingly, ANOVA results revealed a main effect of negative affective expressions (F = 6.75; p < 0.05). Hypothesis 2 was therefore supported for unconventional leader behavior.
Finally, ANOVA results also revealed a significant interaction effect of positive and negative affective expressions on perceptions of unconventional leader behavior (F = 4.02; p <
0.05). As shown in Figure 4, leaders expressing negative affect and no positive affect were
perceived as more unconventional than leaders expression both positive and negative affect, or than leaders not expressing negative affect. Hence, it seems that negative affect is particularly important for subordinate perceptions of unconventional leader behavior if positive affect is not present. I note that these interaction results do not support Hypothesis 3. Nevertheless, this pattern of results seems very interesting, and I will elaborate on it in more detail in the discussion section.
……… Insert Figure 4 here
19 DISCUSSION
The purpose of this study was to broaden the available evidence on the emotional components of the charismatic leadership domain. In line with the growing body of literature on affective components in leadership processes, the present study extends earlier research by examining not only leader’ s displays of positive affect per se, but suggesting that also negative affective displays may have an effect on attributions of charisma.
Moreover, previous studies on leaders’ affective expressions have not attuned their attention to the concurrent use of emotions in leadership. Hence, a key contribution of this research is that it explicitly focuses on the potential interplay of the leader’ s positive and negative emotional expressions (i.e. enthusiasm and anger) and the perceptions of a charismatic leadership.
In order to examine these issues, I formulated and tested through an experimental instrument three hypotheses. Overall, with the results obtained, it can be affirmed that:
First, an ANOVA on perceived charisma reveals a significant main effect for the positive affect manipulation. The results show that enthusiasm was the only affective manipulation related to perceived charisma, in contrast with the expressions of anger or an interaction of anger/enthusiasm. Moreover, ANOVA results for the dependent variable of vision and articulation also show to be significant on the ratings for enthusiastic leaders and their ability to communicate an inspiring, shared vision. Consequently, it can be stated that leaders expressing positive emotions such as enthusiasm are viewed as charismatic, in general, and as inspirational and visionary, in particular. Expressions of negative emotions such as anger, by contrast, seem to be largely irrelevant in this respect.
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also linked to several of the ideal outcomes of a charismatic leadership, such as followers’ increased motivation, effort and performance (e.g. Kanfer & Ackerman, 1989; Erez & Isen, 2002; Ilies & Judge, 2005).
Interestingly, the findings obtained for another aspect of charismatic leadership, namely leaders’ unconventional behavior, were rather different. Anger expressions showed a significant effect on perceptions of a leader’s non-traditional behavior. This outcome suggests that leaders who externalize negative emotions are perceived as possessors of a unique, unconventional and sometimes surprising leadership style used for the achievement of the common organizational goals. These predictions go in line with the Conger and Kanungo model (1994), which suggests that charismatic leaders are characterized as innovative and users of unconventional means for achieving their vision.
Moreover, the present findings add to previous studies on negative emotions in leadership, some of which describe anger expressions as a fruitful element for targeting and engaging in actions but moreover, to encourage subordinates for taking a desired behavior (e.g. Madera, 2009; George, 2000). Whereas expressing negative emotions may not be fruitful for attaining charismatic leadership status, in general, expressions of such feelings may nevertheless help leaders in creating the impression, among followers, that the leader is engaging in unconventional acts. Hence, as some scholars suggested (e.g., Antonakis, 2003), there may indeed be situations when angry outbursts are instrumental for leadership.
21 Practical Implications
There is an extensive body of literature regarding the emotions in human and organizational relationships which proposes that the emotional dimension should be recognized as a central element in leadership (e.g. Fineman, 1993; Forgas, 1995). In this sense, and due to the high possibilities of leaders to use emotions as to persuade on the judgments and perceptions of their subordinates (George, 2000), it is of particular relevance to have a closer look at these affective states and their impact on the leadership process from a practical perspective.
The acknowledgement of the different emotional expressions and their effects upon charismatic perceptions has practical implications. First, because of the affective nature of charismatic leadership, the understanding of emotions may guide leaders towards the best practices for effective leadership. Based on the presented findings, it can be stated that including enthusiasm expressions in leadership may result not only in a more charismatic perception of the leader per se; but it may also have relevant implications linked to the energizing and motivation of followers (George, 1996, p. 162).
Nevertheless, for numerous reasons, leaders may also experience negative affective states in their workplace. Results of this study show that negative emotions such as anger should be expressed with care as they do not generally aid in creating perceptions of charisma. However, anger expressions may be particularly important in circumstances where they convey potential benefits like the enhancement of attention to detail, recognition of problems and a heightened systematic information processing (Isen et al., 1985, 1987; Salovey et al., 1993; Sinclair & Mark, 1992). Moreover, negative emotions may be helpful to redirect attention towards complex problems which need immediate action (Frigda, 1988) and where an unconventional leadership behavior is desired.
22 Limitations and Future Research Lines
Despite the contributions of this research, there are some limitations in the current findings. First, with respect to the empirical instrument used, it is worth noting that although the verbal statements employed in the experiment’ s setting have shown to be successful in the transmittal of emotional states within simulated scenarios (Damen et al., 2008; Johnson & Tversky, 1983; Sinaceur & Tiedens, 2006; Van Kleef et al. 2004a, 2004b, 2006), due to the nature of the experiment carried, it was not possible to include the nonverbal side of emotional displays, such as facial expressions nor body language. Evidence has shown that people also base their perceptions to create images of others on the basis of facial affective displays (Montepare & Dobish, 2003). Hence, it would be interesting to include in future empirical studies the leader’ s facial expressions, as it may provide participants with an interesting source of information, giving them notions of the antecedents, thoughts, courses of actions and/or desired actions that the expresser wants the perceiver to engage in (Ekman, 1997).
Second, the focus of the present study is concerned with positive and negative emotions, delimiting its scope with two further specific emotions, namely enthusiasm and anger, which were selected for their high levels of arousal and their correlation with the concepts of charismatic leadership (e.g. Damen et al., 2008; Bryman, 1992). However, while these emotions are representative of the positive and negative affective dimensions within leadership, it would be valuable to extend the current findings by exploring on a wider range of other emotions and their interactions. To my knowledge this is a dimension of charismatic leadership that has not been deeply investigated up to date. Hence, future research on the conjunct use of emotions may foster a better insight on the interaction effects of the leaders’ affective displays and would reinforce the arguments found in the current literature with a more realistic point of view.
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organizational level (e.g. employees or business people). The results were also limited by the relatively small size of the sample. Therefore, testing this model with a larger and more varied sample could increase the statistical power to detect interactions as well as the study’s degree of generalizability and applicability on work settings. And in this way, it would aid to extend firm conclusions on the findings presented through a field study.
Lastly, as the present study was performed in totality in the Netherlands, there is a chance of cultural influence among the information presented. In this sense, Dutch society is identified with high femininity, and consequently, an increased attention on the emotional perceptions and affective relations (Hofstede, 1980). Besides, feminine cultures have been associated to a higher frequency of positive emotions, such as enthusiasm, and to a lower frequency of negative emotions, such as anger (Basabe et al., 2002). Consequently, in contexts where society’s characteristics differ to the Dutch population (i.e. high masculinity), generalizing the conclusions of this study in a cross-cultural way may be questionable. Hence, it might be interesting for future research to examine the influence of culture on the relation between emotional displays and perceptions of charisma.
CONCLUSIONS
Though the role of emotional displays in charismatic leadership remains of limited knowledge, the current study contributes with theoretical and empirical fundaments by demonstrating how leaders’ expressions of affect influence the way that leaders are perceived from a charismatic dimension. Despite the discussed limitations, this study has shown practical implications that may be of use for managers wishing to take a charismatic leadership style. Hence, with the rising international markets, charismatic leaders are highly valued for their innovative, inspirational and action driven styles which further facilitate the organizational changes needed for maintaining competitiveness in our time.
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31 FIGURES AND TABLES
Figure 1. Research model: Interaction of leader’s emotional displays and charismatic leadership perceptions
Figure 2. Perceived charisma per condition
M= 3.56 SD= 0-75 M= 2.88 SD= 0.70 M= 3.59 SD= 0.74 M= 3.24 SD= 0.81 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4
PA high, NA low PA low, NA high PA high, NA high PA low, NA low
32
Figure 3. Perceptions of vision and articulation per condition
Figure 4. Perceptions of unconventional behavior per condition
M= 3.12 SD= 0.85 M= 2.61 SD= 0.93 M= 3.18 SD= 0.93 M= 2.81 SD= 0.85 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5
PA high, NA low PA low, NA high PA high, NA high PA low, NA low
V is io n a n d A r ti c u a ti o n M= 2.77 SD= 1.02 M= 3.43 SD= 0.55 M= 2.90 SD= 1.10 M= 2.46 SD= 0.97 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4
PA high, NA low PA low, NA high PA high, NA high PA low, NA low
33
Table 1. Manipulation of affective conditions
CONDITION EMOTION SURVEYS
PA high, NA low Enthusiasm 20
PA low, NA high Anger 20
PA low, NA low None 20
PA high, NA high Enthusiasm and Anger 20
Table 2. Overall means and Standard deviations (s.d.) for variables by condition
