The study is co-authored by Jochen Menges, University Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at Cambridge Judge Business School and Professor of Leadership at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany.
While charismatic leaders may stir the heart, they cause followers to suppress emotions and this can harm companies through increased strain, lower job satisfaction and reduced information exchange among employees, according to a new academic study.
“Charismatic leaders should be aware of their emotionally suppressive effect on followers,” says the study published in The Leadership Quarterly, noting the potentially “perilous consequences” of emotion suppression. “Although putting followers in awe may reinforce the leaders’ standing in the group, awestruck followers are unlikely to benefit the group in the long-term.”
The study also finds that leaders who show individual consideration tend to encourage followers’ emotional expression; while this may circumvent the negative implications of emotion suppression, at “rampant” levels such expressiveness can be detrimental because it violates workplace norms and can thus cause conflict and harm employee coordination.
The study was conducted by Jochen Menges, who is on the faculty of both WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany and University of Cambridge Judge Business School in the UK; Martin Kilduff of University College London; Sarah Kern of WHU – Otto Beisheim; and Heike Bruch of University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.
The study – entitled “The awestruck effect: followers suppress emotion expression in response to charismatic but not individually considerate leadership” – is based on responses to various leadership scenarios by several hundred research participants at universities and companies in Germany and Switzerland.