Workplace Emotions: The Role of Supervision and Leadership

Joyce E. Bono, Hannah Jackson Foldes, Gregory Vinson, and John P. Muros
University of Minnesota

In this experience sampling study, the authors examined the role of organizational leaders in employees’
emotional experiences. Data were collected from health care workers 4 times a day for 2 weeks. Results
indicate supervisors were associated with employee emotions in 3 ways: (a) Employees experienced
fewer positive emotions when interacting with their supervisors as compared with interactions with
coworkers and customers; (b) employees with supervisors high on transformational leadership experi-
enced more positive emotions throughout the workday, including interactions with coworkers and
customers; and (c) employees who regulated their emotions experienced decreased job satisfaction and
increased stress, but those with supervisors high on transformational leadership were less likely to
experience decreased job satisfaction. The results also suggest that the effects of emotional regulation on
stress are long lasting (up to 2 hr) and not easily reduced by leadership behaviors.

Keywords: emotional regulation, mood, stress, job satisfaction, leadership

Over the past 2 decades, there has been a growing interest in
affective and emotional experiences at work (Brief & Weiss,
2002), including interest in the role of mood and emotions in
employee motivation (Erez & Isen, 2002), job performance (Law,
Wong, & Song, 2004), creativity (George & Zhou, 2002), and job
attitudes (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). Emotional regulation at
work has also received attention, especially given evidence that
regulating emotions is associated with cardiovascular system ac-
tivation (Gross & Levenson, 1993, 1997), stress, emotional ex-
haustion (Pugliesi, 1999), and physical symptoms such as head-
aches (Schaubroeck & Jones, 2000).

There has also been interest in emotions in the leadership
domain. Most influential theories of transformational and charis-
matic leadership (e.g., Bass, 1985; Conger & Kanungo, 1998;
House, 1977; Shamir, House, & Arthur, 1993) posit emotional
links between leaders and followers, yet there is little empirical
research linking managers and their leadership behaviors to em-
ployees’ emotions. A few studies have been conducted, but these
studies have not fully elucidated emotional links between leaders
and followers because they either manipulated leader emotions
(Sy, Côté, & Saavedra, 2005); used simulated leaders and follow-
ers (Bono & Ilies, 2006); or used a single-time, single-source
survey to assess follower emotions and leader behavior (McColl-
Kennedy & Anderson, 2002). Therefore, the primary purpose of
our study was to examine the effects of supervisors and managers
on employees’ emotions in a natural work setting. First, we ex-

amined the direct effe