The awestruck effect: Followers suppress emotion expression in response to charismatic but not individually considerate leadership

This study examines how followers regulate their outward expression of emotions in the context of two types of leadership that are commonly associated with transformational leadership, namely charismatic leadership and individually considerate leadership. Based on new theorizing and a series of three studies involving experiments and field work, we show that the two types of leadership have different effects on followers' emotional expressiveness. Specifically, we find that followers under the influence of leaders' charisma tend to suppress the expression of emotions (we call this the “awestruck effect”), but followers express emotions when leaders consider them individually. Awestruck followers may suffer from expressive inhibition even as charismatic leaders stir their hearts.     

Followership,leadership and social influence

Traditional research in leadership has largely relegated followers to the role of passive recipients or, at best, moderators of leader influence and behaviors. However, recent work in the area of followership has begun shifting this focus and emphasizing the possibility that followers actively have an influence over leaders, in particular leader behavior. This paper revisits traditional areas of the leadership literature and builds on the emerging followership literature to reintroduce followers as part of the social context of leaders. In an attempt to build theoretical rationales for how followers influence leader behavior we draw on the social influence (e.g., Social Impact Theory, Latane, 1981) and the power literature to suggest individual (e.g., strength and immediacy of followers) and group level (e.g., number of followers and unity of the group) characteristics that influence leader behaviors as a function of a leader's informational and effect dependence on followers.     

The downside of transformational leadership when encouraging followers to network

Network scholars argue that one responsibility of leaders is to help their followers develop social capital. We suggest that one way leaders do this is by encouraging followers to engage in networking behavior. However, we argue that such encouragement is more effective when leaders are seen as less transformational, because followers are then less able to benefit from their leaders’ social capital. We support our arguments with a study of 142 followers and their leaders. Our findings show that followers engage in greater networking behaviors when encouraged by their leaders to do so, but this association is moderated by leaders’ transformational leadership style such that it is stronger as transformational leadership behaviors decrease. We thus introduce an unrecognized cost of leaders’ transformational leadership behaviors. Our findings contribute to research on networking behavior by investigating the role of transformational leadership style, and suggest avenues for research linking social capital and leadership.     

Revisiting followership through a social identity perspective: The role of collective follower emotion and action

We review the concept of followership, with a specific focus on how followers actively influence leadership outcomes. We examine in particular research from four key areas: social identity perspectives on leadership, intergroup emotion theory, collective action, and reciprocal affect within leader–follower interactions. Our central proposition is that followers engage in actions, driven by both cognitive and affective-based processes, which affect leadership outcomes. Moreover, because leaders are part of the groups they lead and therefore embedded within the social context of a group, we propose that any action that affirms or threatens the salient group will trigger both cognitive and emotional responses from followers towards leaders. These include the extent to which a leader engages in actions that are perceived as (1) self-sacrificial, (2) procedurally fair, and (3) expressing emotions congruent with that of their group. We also propose that the extent to which followers translate their perceptions and emotions towards collective action towards their leaders will be moderated by individual-level group identification and group-level shared identity. To conclude, we highlight theoretical implications in light of these propositions and suggest areas for further research on followership.     

The susceptible circle: A taxonomy of followers associated with destructive leadership

While leadership scholars increasingly acknowledge the influence of followers in the leadership process, less attention has been paid to their role in the destructive leadership process. Specifically, the current debate lacks a broad-based understanding of different susceptible follower types that synthesizes related research across academic domains. Expanding on Padilla, Hogan, and Kaiser's (2007) toxic triangle model of destructive leadership, we integrate research and theory across various academic literatures to derive a cohesive taxonomy of vulnerable followers that we call the susceptible circle. We describe the core characteristics of each follower type, drawing on Barbuto's (2000) theory of follower compliance to highlight the psychological processes that motivate each follower to comply with destructive leaders. We then conclude by discussing theoretical and practical implications, as well as avenues for future research.     

A SOCIAL IDENTITY MODEL OF LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS IN ORGANIZATIONS

Research into leadership effectiveness has largely overlooked the implications of the fact that leadership processes are enacted in the context of a shared group membership, where leaders, as group members, ask followers, as group members, to exert themselves on behalf of the collective. In contrast, the social identity model of organizational leadership, proposed here, emphasizes the characteristics of the leader as a group member, and the leader’s ability to speak to followers as group members. In salient groups with which group members identify, leadership effectiveness rests on the extent to which the leader is prototypical of the group (i.e. representative of the group’s identity) and engages in group-oriented behavior (i.e. behavior perceived to benefit the group). Explicating the added value of our model and going beyond contemporary approaches to leadership effectiveness, we discuss how our model extends, and may be integrated with, three major contemporary approaches to leadership effectiveness (charismatic leadership theories, Leader-Member Exchange theory, and leadership categorization theories). In addition, we outline how our model provides a viable framework to integrate future developments in research on leadership such as a growing attention to leader fairness and the role of emotions in leadership effectiveness.     

Perceptions of leadership success from nonverbal cues communicated by orchestra conductors

Research has suggested that people can extract information relevant to leadership from thin slices of behavior. Nearly all of this research has been conducted in the context of large organizations where the relationships between leaders and followers are relatively indirect, however. We therefore examined here whether participants could extract similar information about leadership success from contexts with direct leader–follower interactions: conductors of orchestras. We found that perceivers could accurately discern conductors' success from brief video clips and that perceptions of expressiveness and age formed the basis for this accuracy. Thus, the current work demonstrates that leadership success is perceptible from nonverbal cues not only for the leaders of large organizations, but also in the context of groups where leaders and followers must continually and dynamically interact to produce successful outcomes.     

Predicting followers' preferences for charismatic leadership: the influence of follower values and personality

Existing research on charismatic leadership focuses primarily on the traits and behaviors of charismatic leaders and the effects of charismatic leaders on their followers. One issue that has been neglected, and others, is the disposition of the followers who form charismatic relationships with their leaders. To investigate this topic, we conducted a laboratory study in which participants' values and personality dimensions were used to predict participants' preferences for charismatic leadership vs. two other leadership styles: relationship-oriented and task-oriented leadership. The results showed that values and personality were useful in predicting leadership preferences. More research is needed to gain further insights into the active role of followers in the formation of charismatic relationships.     

The relationship between transformational leadership and follower sickness absence: the role of presenteeism

The impact of transformational leaders on employee health and well-being has received much attention. Less research has focused on the relationships between transformational leaders and followers’ sickness absenteeism. Transformational leaders promote a group climate that may lead to absenteeism, especially among vulnerable employees (those with high levels of presenteeism). In the present study we examined the relationships between presenteeism, group-level transformational leadership and sickness absence rates in a three-year longitudinal study of postal workers and their leaders in Denmark (N?=?155). Group-level transformational leadership in year 1 predicted sickness absenteeism in year 2, but not in year 3. In examining conditions under which transformational leadership may be linked to higher levels of sickness absenteeism, we found that presenteeism in year 1 moderated the link between transformational leadership in year 1 and sickness absenteeism in year 3, such that followers working in groups with a transformational leader and who were high in presenteeism reported higher levels of sickness absenteeism. Our results suggest a complex picture of the relationship between transformational leadership and sickness absenteeism; transformational leaders may promote self-sacrifice of vulnerable followers by leading them to go to work while ill, leading to increased risks of sickness absence in the long term.     

When the victim becomes vicious: Combined effects of pseudo transformational leadership and epistemic motivation on contempt and deviant behaviors

Utilizing affective events theory (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), the current study unravels how and when pseudo-transformational leaders promote contempt, avoidance, and aggression. Specifically, we examined whether pseudo-transformational leadership enforces feelings of contempt, which, in turn, fosters interaction avoidance and covert aggression in followers. We hypothesized that contempt also has an indirect effect that is contingent on levels of epistemic motivation of followers. By adopting a multi-wave research design, we gathered data from 277 employees of the service sector of Pakistan. The results signified that followers of pseudo-transformational leaders feel contemptuous of them and respond with interaction avoidance and indirect aggression. Further, we found that the impact of pseudo-transformational leadership on contempt was more pronounced in individuals with higher levels of epistemic motivation. We believe that this study opens up a new avenue in the pseudo-transformational leadership literature by highlighting the mechanism and conditions under which such leaders are deleterious for organizations.     

Implicit theories in organizational settings: A systematic review and research agenda of implicit leadership and followership theories

Implicit theories play important roles in many areas of human life. In this review, we focus on implicit leadership and followership theories, i.e. implicit assumptions of (good) leaders and followers, respectively. We provide a framework for categorizing the existing research in this field. We use this framework to show the current state of research and to illustrate the gaps in the literature. More precisely, we review which types of prototypes of leaders and followers have been studied, the effects of comparisons between the actual leader (respectively follower) with these activated prototypes as well as the contextual factors that influence prototype activation and prototype fit. We conclude by outlining implications for human resource management and for future research, thereby focusing on research questions that can be used to integrate the distinct paths in implicit leadership and followership theories.     

Ethical leadership and follower organizational deviance: The moderating role of follower moral attentiveness

The literature on ethical leadership has focused primarily on the way ethical leaders influence follower moral judgment and behavior. It has overlooked that follower responses to ethical leaders may differ depending on the attention they pay to the moral aspects of leadership. In the present research, we introduce moral attentiveness as an important moderator for the relationship between ethical leadership and unethical employee behavior. In a multisource field study (N = 90), we confirm our hypothesis that morally attentive followers respond with more deviance to unethical leaders. An experimental study (N = 96) replicates the finding. Our paper extends the current leader-focused literature by examining how follower moral attentiveness determines the response of followers to ethical or unethical leadership.     

License to fail? How leader group prototypicality moderates the effects of leader performance on perceptions of leadership effectiveness

Leadership often serves as an explanatory category for performance outcomes (i.e., failure and success). This process can strengthen or weaken leadership effectiveness, because contingent on their performance leaders may gain or lose follower endorsement — the basis of leadership. Drawing on the social identity analysis of leadership, we hypothesized that leader group prototypicality and performance information interact to predict followers' perceptions of leadership effectiveness. Because group prototypical leaders are more trusted by their followers, we hypothesized that group prototypical leaders are evaluated as more effective after failure information than non-prototypical leaders. In contrast, we predicted that both prototypical and non-prototypical leaders should receive similar evaluations of leadership effectiveness after success. We found support for our predictions in a scenario experiment, a cross-sectional field study, and a laboratory experiment.     

When managers become leaders: The role of manager network centralities,social power,and followers' perception of leadership

We explore how formal managers' centralities in both positive and negative networks predict followers' perceptions of their leadership. By incorporating social networks and social ledger theory with implicit leadership theories (ILTs), we hypothesize that formally assigned group leaders (managers) who have more positive advice ties and fewer negative avoidance ties are more likely to be recognized as leaders by their followers. Further, we posit that managers' informal networks bring them greater social power, an important attribute differentiating leaders from non-leaders. We conducted two survey-based studies in student and field teams to test the hypotheses. Based on nested data in both studies, we found support for our hypotheses. These results remain robust across the two studies even though they used different designs (cross-sectional versus longitudinal), different samples (field versus students) across different countries (United States versus India), and a host of control variables at both the leader and follower levels. We find that managers who are central in the advice network are socially powerful and are seen as leaders by individual followers. In contrast, managers who are avoided by followers lack informal social power are not seen as leaders. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and the ways in which our theory and results extend ILTs and social network theory.     

Assassination and leadership: Traditional approaches and historiometric methods

Research on the assassinations and attempted assassinations of leaders seems warranted, as leaders and their interactions with extreme followers (e.g., fanatics) and non-followers (e.g., assassins) can have tremendous consequences not only for the leaders but also their larger collectives (e.g., nations, social movements). Based on the traditional and established leadership approaches of power orientation and outstanding leadership, we explored whether particular types of leaders were more likely victims of assassinations and targets of assassination attempts. Using historiometric methods, we found that socialized as well as pragmatic and ideological leaders were the most frequent victims of assassinations; but personalized as well as pragmatic and ideological leaders were the most frequent targets of assassination attempts; and for U.S. Presidents, socialized charismatics were the most frequent victims of assassinations and targets of assassination attempts. Results regarding leader paranoia, regions of the world, and assassins operating alone or as a group in relation to assassinations and leadership approaches also are presented. Implications of these findings for future leadership research involving leaders and their extreme followers, non-followers, and larger collectives are discussed.     

Ethical leadership and follower voice and performance: The role of follower identifications and entity morality beliefs

Previous studies have established the relationship between ethical leadership and a variety of positive follower outcomes. Follower organizational identification has been found to mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and follower job performance. In this research, we incorporate a second distinct and theoretically important type of social identification process, relational identification with the leader, along with organizational identification, and examine their mediating effects on follower performance and voice outcomes. Further, we bring the implicit theory of morality to the behavioral ethics literature and examine follower morality beliefs as a moderator. Using a Romanian sample of 302 followers under the supervision of 27 leaders, we found that ethical leadership has an indirect effect on follower job performance and voice (through the mediating mechanisms of both organizational and relational identifications) and that these relationships are stronger for followers who held the implicit theory that a person's moral character is fixed.     

领导与权力分界视野下威权领导本质的探索研究

深入探讨了领导与权力二者在影响员工方面的本质差异,并在此基础上分析和揭示了威权领导的本质。研究结果表明:领导是通过构建领导者和追随者的共同目标来激励追随者积极主动地为实现共同目标而努力的过程,它和运用权力的行为有着本质的区别;威权领导在本质上是充分运用正式权力影响下属的行为。因此,威权“领导”与领导的本质相背离,不应纳入领导行为的范畴。     

Leveraging transformational and transactional leadership to cultivate the generation of organization-focused ideas

We investigate how transformational and transactional leadership motivates employees to commit to an organizational ideation program so that they subsequently generate ideas that benefit the organization. To resolve the mixed and contradictory findings of earlier studies about these leadership styles, we propose that more attention needs to be devoted to the leader's personal beliefs. Specifically, we study the degree to which a leader identifies with an organization and how this possibly unlocks the effects of transformational or transactional leadership. Using multilevel data collected in a large multinational company, our findings reveal that both transformational and transactional leadership is effective in motivating followers to commit to the goals of an ideation program. Increased commitment, in turn, is associated with more ideas that followers generate. In contrast to the effect of transactional leadership, however, the effect of transformational leadership is contingent on how strongly leaders identify with the organization.     

Facing the situation: Testing a biosocial contingency model of leadership in intergroup relations using masculine and feminine faces

Using an evolutionary psychology framework we propose that leadership and followership are evolved traits to solve recurrent group coordination problems. We argue that adaptive problems such as those concerning intergroup conflict or cooperation activate different cognitive leadership prototypes, and the face conveys diagnostic information about the suitability and emergence of intergroup leadership. Consistent with hypotheses we find that followers expect masculine-faced leaders to behave competitively and feminine-faced leaders cooperatively in intergroup relations. Furthermore, individuals prefer leaders whose facial cues match the adaptive problem. For example, a masculine-looking leader is preferred in a competitive intergroup setting. Also, this match between face and situation is reinforced with a consistent leadership message such as a masculine-looking leader expressing the need for competition. An evolutionary perspective provides a deeper understanding of the biological aspects of leadership and generates many novel hypotheses about how markers such as the human face affect leadership emergence and effectiveness.     

Effective leadership and the allocation and exercise of power in organizations

We experimentally investigate whether delegation can be an effective leadership behavior to motivate followers. In particular, we study how the allocation and exercise of power – the right to choose projects – by leaders affects the subsequent implementation of the chosen projects by followers. To isolate the pure motivational effect of delegation, we focus on whether the amount of effort that followers exert to implement the exact same project depends on who has chosen the project and on what information was available when making the project choice. We find that followers implement projects efficiently if they have chosen them themselves, but reduce implementation effort if the same projects are imposed on them by leaders. But this motivational effect of delegation is persistent if and only if followers must implement projects that they themselves would not have chosen.