Relationships Between Leaders' and Subordinates' Emotion Regulation and Satisfaction and Affect at Work

Abstract

The study examined relationships between leaders' emotion regulation and leaders' and subordinates' work-related outcomes. Fifty-one school directors and 281 teachers reported on their strategies of emotion regulation (reappraisal, suppression), job satisfaction, and affect at work. For subordinates, suppression was negatively related to job satisfaction and was positively related to negative affect and emotional exhaustion, and reappraisal was positively related to job satisfaction and negatively to negative affect. In contrast, multilevel analyses found that directors' use of reappraisal was negatively related to subordinates' job satisfaction, and directors' use of suppression was positively related to subordinates' positive affect. Leaders' suppression interacted with group cohesion to predict subordinates' negative affect. This is one of the first studies to find evidence for the possible tension between leaders' emotion regulation competencies and organizational-role interests.