A multi-level view of leadership and emotions: Leading with emotional labor

The idea that emotions play an important role in management and leadership is not really all that new. Mastenbroek (2000), for example, detailed how emotion has been a central feature of organizational management for over 2000 years. In the leadership literature, Redl (1942) was the first to report on the powerful effect of leaders on the emotional makeup of work groups; and emotions are featured in the early theories of leadership and management. For example, Fayol (1916/1949) noted that leaders needed to understand all aspects of their subordinates psyche, including their emotional states. More recently, Weiss and Brief (2001) detailed how emotions at work figured prominently in the early theories of organizational behavior. Today, most theories of leadership, especially charismatic and transformational leadership, have become inherently emotional (e.g., see Shamir & Howell, 1999, on charismatic leadership; and Ashkanasy & Tse, 2000, on transformational leadership). Despite this, and as Ashkanasy and Jordan (2008) recently observed, leadership scholars have in general been slow to develop broadly-based theories of leadership that incorporate an emotional dimension. In fact, it was not until 1995 that interest in emotions and leadership began to receive mainstream attention. This was the year Ashforth and Humphrey (1995) published ‘Emotion in the workplace: a reappraisal.’ Also published in the same year was the best-selling book by Goleman (1995), Emotional intelligence: why it can matter more than IQ. The problem at that point in time, however, continued to be lack of a theoretical foundation for incorporating emotional dimensions into the prevailing theories of leadership. For example, Yukl (1999) noted that contemporary theories of charismatic and transformational leadership tended to focus on dyadic relationships, rather than trying to understand interpersonal processes such as emotion. This position began to change rapidly in the early years of the 2000s, with the appearance of theoretical models by Ashkanasy and Tse (2000), Barbuto and Burbach (2006), Caruso, Mayer and Salovey (2002), and George (2000). These were followed by a string of empirical studies, especially focusing on the role of emotional intelligence (e.g., see Gardner & Stough, 2002; Wolff, Pescosolido, & Druskat, 2002; Wong & Law, 2002), culminating in a Special Issue of The Leadership Quarterly, guest-edited by Humphrey (2002). Despite this progress, and as Ashkanasy and Jordan (2008) pointed out, the existing theories of leadership continue to emphasize isolated individual characteristics such as emotional intelligence. Ashkanasy and Jordan recommended that scholars need to broaden their perspective to include the influence of leadership at all levels of