The Perceptive Leader: The Congruence of Leader’s

Emotion Recognition with Staff Member’s Emotional Experience

Presenter: Jeremy YipSupervisor: Stéphane Côté

Organizational Behavior and Human Resource ManagementJoseph L. Rotman School of Management

Emotional intelligence (EI) pertains to the ability to carry out accurate reasoning about emotions and use emotional knowledge to enhance thought

Ability model of EI EI is related to various types of performance

Emotional Intelligence

Of the various domains of EI, emotional perception may be critical for the performance of effective leadership behaviors

The research on ERA focuses on the ability to decode others’ emotions through nonverbal channels

There is informational value communicated through moods and emotions that influence judgments

Emotion Recognition Ability (ERA)

Leaders recognize emotions in followers to better gauge appropriate leader behaviours

Executives who were higher on EI, specifically the capacity to perceive emotions, tended to be more effective leaders

Leader Effectiveness & Emotional Intelligence

Positive association between supervisory status and the recognition of nonverbal cues

Emotion recognition ability positively predicted transformational leadership behaviour and this association was moderated by extraversion

ERA and Positive Workplace Outcomes

No correlation between emotion recognition and counselling outcomes

The Absence of the Association Between ERA and Workplace Outcomes

In certain instances, the information gleaned through nonverbal channels can mislead the perceiver, causing him or her to “read too much” into peripheral social cues

The Downside of Accurate Emotion Recognition

How can we account for these inconsistent findings? Emotion recognition is the most reliably validated

component within the construct of emotional intelligence

However, Roberts and his colleagues (2006) concluded that emotional intelligence and emotion recognition tests may suffer from imperfect validity

The Research Problem

Let’s Take a Look at an Example

HappySadAngryAfraid DANVA

Dynamic nonverbal information is not conveyed Lack of realism that corresponds to a social interaction Only one part of the dyadic process

Limitations of the Current Approach

One alternative to the use of static performance-based assessments of emotion recognition is the use of behavioral role-play exercises

The accuracy of emotion recognition is computed on the basis of how similar the emotion that a perceiver recognizes in a target and the actual emotion reported by the target

Purpose of the Present Study

Consideration is the degree to which a leader shows concern and respect for followers

Initiating Structure is the degree to which a leader defines and organizes his role and the roles of followers

Leader Performance

It is hypothesized that a more accurate perception of emotions, as measured by emotional congruence from the perspective of the leader, is positively predictive of leader performance

Hypothesis

226 MBA students participated in a role-play case study

Randomly assigned to roles Emotion Recognition

◦ Leaders were asked to what degree certain emotions were present in a staff member at the end of the meeting

◦ Staff members were asked to what degree certain emotions were experienced at the end of the meeting

Observers rated the leader on performance

Participants and Procedure

Predictor variables:◦ Affect scale ◦ Ex. “Happiness”, 7-point scale◦ High internal consistency and temporal stability

Outcome variables:◦ Leader Behaviour Description Questionnaire ◦ Ex. “ The leader was friendly and approachable (C)” and “The

leader scheduled the work to be done (I)”, 7-point scale◦ α = .81; moderately strong validity

Measures

Congruence is determined using difference scores between two component measures to predict an outcome

We used polynomial regression equations

Congruence Analysis

Index Algebraic Difference Squared Difference

Constrained Equation

Unconstrained Equation

Testing Difference Scores

eYXbbZ )(10

eYbXbbZ 210

eYXbbZ 210 )(

eYbXYbXbYbXbbZ 254

23210

eYbXYbXbYbXbbZ 254

23210

Results: ERA and ConsiderationHierarchical regression analyses yielded the following:

Model 1

Model 2

Model Sig.

1 .037 .035

2 .035 .092

2R

*07.03.81.15 StaffLeaderionConsiderat

eYbXYbXbYbXbbZ 254

23210

Results: ERA and Initiating StructureHierarchical regression analyses yielded the following:

Model 1

Model 2

Model Sig.

1 .047 .011

2 .003 .917

2R

*18.04.26.37 StaffLeaderStructure

No support found for ERA, as measured by congruence, as a predictor for leader performance

Why?◦ Low inter-rater reliability of the outcome measure (.21

and .19)◦ Observers based their assessments on the staff member’s

emotional state through backtracking◦ One-time meeting with no future or repeated interactions◦ Time constraint may have resulted in leaders giving in to staff

members’ demands and observers may have felt rushed

Discussion

No experimental manipulation precludes our ability to determine causation

Sample consisted of students in a role-play exercise rather than employees involved in on-going working relationships

Artificial time limit

Limitations

There is still value in behavioural assessments, but we should consider the following:◦ Train observers◦ Avoid the use of concurrent predictor and outcome measures

in order to reduce the likelihood of any observer backtracking errors

◦ Allow longer time frames for interactions

Implications

jeremy.yip06@rotman.utoronto.ca

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