The Awestruck Effect: Transformational Leadership and Followers’ Emotion Suppression

This study relates two components of transformational leadership – charisma and individualized consideration – to followers’ emotion suppression. Although prior research suggests that charismatic leaders arouse emotions and stir the hearts of their followers, we reveal that followers suppress emotions when their leader exerts charisma. In contrast, followers express their emotions when leaders consider them individually. We propose a homeostatic model of transformational leadership, according to which leaders balance the emotionally suppressive effect of charisma with the emotionally permissive effects of individualized consideration. Four studies, from experiments to field studies, provide consistent evidence for our model. We conclude that transformational leaders not only elicit, but also inhibit emotional expression.

Professor Martin Kilduff:
Martin Kilduff (PhD Cornell, 1988) is Diageo Professor of Management Studies at Cambridge Judge Business School, former editor of Academy of Management Review (2006-08), and currently associate editor of Administrative Science Quarterly. Previously he was the Kleberg/King Ranch Centennial Professor of Management at the University of Texas at Austin, and has also served on the faculties of Penn State and the European Institute of Business Administration. His work focuses on social networks and includes the co-authored books Social Networks and Organizations (Sage: 2003); and Interpersonal networks in organizations: Cognition, personality, dynamics and culture (Cambridge University Press: 2008). His research relates personality to network structure (e.g., Journal of Applied Psychology, 2008), perceived networks to actual networks (e.g., Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2008), and proposes new theory concerning scientific innovation (e.g., Academy of Management Review, forthcoming April 2011). His recent publications also include a review of social networks in Academy of Management Annals (2010) and a critical examination of the dark side of emotional intelligence in Research in Organizational Behavior.

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