The study found leaders’ emotions often crossed over indirectly to employees, influencing wellbeing, attitudes and workplace behaviour.
Leadership behaviour was frequently interpreted through gendered expectations, Associate Professor Carys Chan from the Department of Management at Griffith Business School, says.
“A lot of research from 20 to 30 years ago has already shown that leader emotions do cross over to their subordinates,” Chan tells EducationHQ.
“When leaders experience job stress or other psychological strain, their emotions and behaviours can influence how employees feel and respond at work.
“What our research attempts to show is that it actually crosses over quite differently for male and female leaders.
“So with behaviours like irritability, withdrawal and dismissiveness, all this actually tended to impact employees negatively, reduced trust, leads to disengagement, more stress, and leads some employees to think about leaving.”
Chan says that when employees were presented with a scenario of a leader who was showing irritability, withdrawal and dismissiveness, it was women leaders who faced stronger repercussions.
“For example, the employees remarked that they expected the female leaders to be warm, to provide support, and it was quite a surprise when they didn’t, whereas for male leaders, when they were presented with such scenarios, the responders mentioned that maybe the male leader 'had a bad day', so they were more tolerant of such negative behaviour from the male leaders.”
Both female and male participants were more tolerant of male leaders who displayed lower levels of emotional support, the academic says.
“This suggests male leaders may be given greater flexibility when emotional support is limited, while female leaders may face stronger expectations to provide emotional care.
“And so the female leaders were actually judged a lot more harshly than the male leaders.”
The study found female employees showed greater appreciation for emotional and relational support from female leaders, while male employees placed greater value on task-focused support and goal alignment from male leaders.
“Regularly checking in with employees about their wellbeing can shape how leadership behaviour is perceived and experienced,” Associate Professor Carys Chan says.
Positive leadership behaviours generated higher levels of job satisfaction, motivation, engagement and trust among employees.
Emotionally aware leaders were more effective at fostering supportive workplace environments, regardless of gender.
Chan says the research has implications for women in school leadership positions.
“For female leaders themselves, on a personal level, in one-on-one interactions or in moments you have with your employees, just be aware that whatever your emotions that you bring to the table or you show up to work with, a lot of employees will interpret that quite differently.
“Female leaders should be aware that their employees have a higher expectation that they should be exhibiting positive emotions and support.”
Chan says in a school setting, female leaders can build a more supportive culture because whatever they are facing, their female staff members, generally speaking, would also be expected to exhibit positive emotions.
“This is the invisible label that’s present in schools and organisations, so if you really want to combat that, you can start with having a more positive culture so that there are fewer occurrences of negative emotions happening in the workplace and fewer occurrences of female leaders and teachers being judged negatively.
“But at the same time, that full responsibility has to be shared across the board.”
Chan says a school setting is obviously quite unique in terms of the crossover of teachers, parents and children.
“All of them actually will interpret emotional cues quite differently,” she explains.
“If schools want to promote a healthy emotional culture, that starts with some sort of cultural or emotional intelligence training.
“Negative emotions are not necessarily because you did something bad, sometimes people might be having a hard day. Likewise, positive emotions don’t stay forever and so it’s about managing the highs and lows.”
For a healthy workplace, Chan suggests leaders must learn to foster a culture of forgiveness and empathy amongst staff, where people know that emotions don’t stay forever. They come and they go.
“And sometimes there will be bad and good days, but as long as we treat one another with respect, we move on from a negative incident.
“I think that’s something we can learn from very basic emotional regulation workshops or training.”
Employees who consistently received support from above were also more likely to empathise when leaders showed signs of stress, the study showed.
“Regularly checking in with employees about their wellbeing can shape how leadership behaviour is perceived and experienced,” Chan shares.
Leaders also need to nurture their own wellbeing, so their emotions, behaviours and body language in the workplace are positive, and help employees to feel supported, Chan notes.
“This includes making time for pleasurable recovery activities after work and learning how to manage stress effectively.
“Leaders can be trained to be aware of their emotional states and develop strategies to manage their behaviours and experiences.
“With an empathetic culture, people don’t become very punitive, they’re more forgiving, and when you have an empathetic culture, people are also better able to regulate their emotions – they also are more forthcoming and transparent than say an unempathetic culture where people will hide their emotions.
“Over time, that actually becomes quite toxic,” Chan says.
