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

Abstract

Emotions and leadership are intimately bound concepts. Understanding leadership, therefore, requires an understanding of the role emotion plays at all levels of organizational functioning. This is addressed in three parts. In Part 1, leadership and emotion are linked at five levels of organizational analysis, going from affective events and within-person emotional fluctuations, to individual differences and emotion communication in interpersonal relationships, and then to consideration of emotion in groups and the organization as a whole. Part 2 deals in detail with three topics that arose from Part 1: leaders as managers of members' mood states, emotional intelligence, and the emotional underpinnings of charismatic and transformational leadership. Part 3 takes this line a step further, arguing that good leadership necessarily incorporates emotional labor.