The Impact of Leadership on Talent

“People will forget wtih you said. They will forget what you did. But they will never forget how you made them feel.”

Maya Angelou

We all know that leaders make a significant difference in talent enagement, retention and level of stress ((Nowack, K. (2005). Leadership, Emotional Intelligence and Employee Engagement: Creating a Psychologically Healthy Workplace. Unpublished manuscript)) but what are the effects of leaders on emotions at work?

Leaders always have a power differential that influences the relationship they have with their direct reports. leaders have the ability to limit autonomy and decisional control that affects levels of stress in all employees.  They also provide evaluations of performance that truly affect pay, promotions and careers.

So, just how do leaders affect the emotions and feelings of talent?

A recent study revealed  ((Miner, A., Glomb, T. & Hulin, C. (2005).  Experience sampling mood and its correlates at work.  Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 78-171-193)) that employees report that, on average, 20% of their interations with their managers are “negative.”  However, the effects of negative interactions with one’s manager on employee mood is 5 times the effects of positive interactions.  So even if 80% of the interactions are pretty positive, it’s the negative ones that have a potent and lasting impact on perceived stress on talent at all levels.

In a very recent longitudinal study from health care workers followed 4 times a day for 2 weeks, employees with managers high on a measure of “transformational leadership orientation” experienced significantly more positive emotions throughout the day.  More importantly, these positive emotions also had a “spill over” affect on customers and peers within their work group ((Bono, J., Foldes, H., Vinson, G., & Muros, J. (2007).  Workplace emotions: The role of supervision and leadership.  Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 1357-1367)). 

Leaders who have a “transformational” rather than transactional orientation to their approach to supervision and management focus less on short-term goals and more about the needs of talent translating into enhanced engagement and connection to the vision of the organization.  In three unpublished studies utilizing our own measures of emotional intelligence, leaders who are charcterized as being higher on EI also are signifcantly higher on all scales of several well known measures of transformational leadership (e.g., MLQ; Avolio & Bass).

Interestingly, research by others using our Emotional Intelligence View 360 (EIV360) assessment based on Dan Goleman’s EI constructs indicate a very strong correlation with diverse measures of transformational leadership.  It is quite possible that our measure (and others) are essentially overlapping with a leadership orientation that focuses on creating a climatge where talent are engaged, committed and learning resulting in enhance performance and retention.

Taken together, these studies really demonstrate just how powerful leaders have on the emotions of employees. The positive emotions generated by emotionally intelligent leaders with a transformational orientation apparently have the potential to affect both engagement of talent and their behavior with internal/external customers.

I have no doubt that talent will respond in a manner consistent wtih the way they are being treated by leaders….Be well……

Ken Nowack

Kenneth Nowack, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist (PSY13758) and President & Chief Research Officer/Co-Founder of Envisia Learning, is a member of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. Ken also serves as the Associate Editor of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. His recent book Clueless: Coaching People Who Just Don’t Get It is available for free for a limited time by signing up for free blog updates (Learn more at our website)