Work 41 (2012) 5671-5673

DOI: 10.3233/WOR-2012-0915-5671 5671

IOS Press

Emotions and leadership. Reasons and

impact of emotions in organizational context
Meike Siebert-Adzic
Department of Human and Organizational Engineering and System Design, University of Kassel, Mechanical
Engineering, 34132 Kassel, [email protected], Germany

Abstract. Emotions as reasons for dissatisfaction, decreasing job performance or physical and mental strain at work are be-
coming more and more important. Especially psycho-social interactions with conflicts between employees and managers,
caused by leadership behavior, as a source of negative emotions are relevant in this context [1]. Which relevance emotions can
have in order to influence human behavior and in order to influence work climate will be demonstrated by two qualitative field
surveys in the automotive and the energy sector. The study in the energy sector will explain which leadership behavior fosters
an improved employee behavior concerning occupational health and safety. A second study in the automotive industry shows
that leadership behavior which causes positive emotions is essential for successful teamwork.

Keywords: leadership, emotion, psycho-social interaction

1. Introduction action is becoming more and more important in lead-

ership research and practice [4] which is outlined in
The number of mental illnesses in Germany has Figure 1.
been rising in the last years from 3,8 cases in 1986 to
12,8 cases per 1000 assured people in 2008 [2].
Moreover the average duration of disease runs up to
22,6 days per case [3]. This underlines the impor-
tance of mental strain factors.
In this coherence, emotions as psycho-social strain
factors, caused by superior’s leadership behavior, is
moving in the focus of interest.
Definitions of leadership are so numerous that it is
not possible to focus it on one definition and so are
the included tasks like: motivating, delegating, orga-
nizing, coaching, consulting etc. The aspect which is
missing in the list of tasks so far is the aspect of “…
guarantee and satisfaction of emotional needs of em-
ployees like appreciation, contact, social affiliation
…” [4]. This underlines the importance of emotions:
Hinterhuber [5] describes for example that change
processes are mainly led by emotions and intuitions.
Under these aspects the understanding of leader-
ship, its tasks and influences is beginning to change. The perspective from which emotions are consid-
Additional to leadership duties like coaching, dele- ered in the two existing studies is its influence on
gating, motivating, communication, listening, decid- organizations. In professional life emotions can have
ing etc. consideration and management of emotions an important impact. Supervisors for example can
and emotional needs in the leader-membership inter- use emotions to motivate their employees or they can
1051-9815/12/$27.50 © 2012 – IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved
5672 M. Siebert-Adzic / Emotions and Leadership

use them in a negative way to generate pressure in The results of both studies make clear that leader-
order to influence the employees’ behavior [6]. Re- ship behavior which causes positive emotions is con-
search results underline the impact and importance of nected with the aspects affiliation, appreciation, su-
emotions in the work context. Fischbach [7] has ob- periors support, praise and feedback, trust, positive
served a positive coherence between the realized fre- leadership behavior, work climate, communication
quency of the supervisors’ positive emotions and the and openness.
employees’ personal job engagement. In contrast to Moreover both studies show that positive emotions
this Fischbach [7] could testify such a coherence be- caused by leadership behavior have positive impact
tween supervisors’ negative emotions and the level of on improvements of work related behavior (occupa-
employees negative job satisfaction, motivation, the tional health and safety) and on the improvement of
individual power of concentration and job perform- teamwork.
ance [8]. Furthermore research results in the area of
emotions and physical consequences prove that man- 2. Experiment design
agers’ leadership behavior is a very relevant reason
for absence from work due to illness [9]. Moreover The study in the automotive industry includes sev-
results from emotion-research show, that negative en two hours lasting interviews with managers (n=7)
emotions like frustration and anger can influence the in that sector to identify leadership behavior which
heart rate in a negative way with possible conse- causes positive emotions in order to improve team-
quences of increasing stress experiences or blood work. The study in the energy industry in form of
pressure in contrast to positive emotions like appre- half-structured interviews with n=37 employees and
ciation or appraisal. Figure 2 shows heart rhythm n=32 managers followed the aim to identify leader-
characteristics under the influence of frustration/ an- ship behavior which causes positive emotions in or-
ger and appreciation. der to improve employee-behavior in context of oc-
cupational health and safety.

3. Critical evaluation

By running a qualitative content analysis [11] the

data were evaluated. The identified leadership behav-
ior which causes positive emotions and well-being in
the automotive sector from the managers’ point of
view are: emotional positive atmosphere (positive
mood, positive humor), positive leader-employee-
relationship, positive relationship between team
members, appreciation, superiors’ ability to be em-
phatic, trust, openness, communication in the leader-
employee-relation, feedback and praise. The aspects
emotional positive atmosphere, positive leader-
employee and team-member-relations were men-
tioned by all interviewees (100%) followed by feed-
back and praise (85,7%). Moreover appreciation,
ability to be emphatic, trust, openness and communi-
cation were mentioned by 71,4% of the superiors.
The results make clear that managers are aware of
the emotions’ importance, especially in social leader-
employee-interactions, and its influence in leader-
employee-relationships in organizational context.
The purpose of the two underlying studies which The findings of the second study in the energy sec-
were conducted in this context was to identify leader- tor confirm the relevance of social leader-employee-
ship behavior which causes positive emotions in or- relations (see Figure 3). The interviewed managers
der to make clear, which effects positive emotions in and employees specify social needs for appreciation,
leadership contexts can have. affiliation and teamwork, superiors’ support and
 M. Siebert-Adzic / Emotions and Leadership 5673

positive feedback as relevant to improve employee- by leadership-behavior will be identified by running

behavior in context of occupational health and safety. quantitative half-structured interviews in a first step
and by conducting a survey on a quantitative basis in
a next step. The second phase will include an ex-
perimental analysis with the method of eye-tracking
movement and heart rate development. Both methods
will identify in direct interactions, which behavior
can cause mental-emotional strain and how this strain
can be identified by analyzing eye-movement and
heart rate development. The results will be trans-
ferred into a leadership training which sensitizes
managers for emotional strain causing behavior and
for the changes of eye-movements in these situations.
With this knowledge managers will be able to realize
emotional strained employees by their eye-movement
and how to react appropriate to improve the situation.

References
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In the first phase of a planned research project the

reasons and impact of mental-emotional strain caused