̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Jochen Menges

Why keeping it in the family can be good news when it comes to CEOs

skbf2 — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 15:37:38 +0000

̽��ֱ��stereotype of a family firm is one where nepotism is rife and talent goes unrewarded. Yet according to a new study co-authored by a Cambridge researcher, having a family CEO in charge can actually boost positive emotions in employees and lower voluntary turnover.

“Research suggests that firms with family CEOs differ from other types of businesses, yet surprisingly little is known about how employees in these firms feel and behave compared to those working in other firms,” says the study by Jochen Menges who teaches at both the ̽��ֱ�� of Zurich and Cambridge Judge Business School and colleagues from the Otto Beisheim School of Management, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the ̽��ֱ�� of St. Gallen.

Family businesses: the advantages when it comes to CEOs

̽��ֱ��research fills in this knowledge gap, busting some old myths about family firms by finding that family CEOs are better at creating an emotional connection to the business than hired professional CEOs.

“There has long been a conundrum in family business research: why do many such firms thrive despite anachronistic management structures and low investment in employees?” says Menges. “This study helps unlock that paradox by focusing on the positive role of emotions tied to family CEOs.”

Based on data from 41,200 employees and 2,246 direct reports of CEOs in 497 firms in Germany with and without family CEOs, the research finds that family-managed firms seem better able to “leverage the power of emotions for the benefit of organisational survival and success.”

“Family CEOs, because of their emotion-evoking double role as family members and business leaders, are, on average, more likely to infuse employees with positive emotions, such as enthusiasm and excitement, than hired professional CEOs.”

“These firms, especially when they are relatively small and less formalised, provide a workplace characterised by high-energy positive emotions – not despite but rather because of their seemingly outdated hereditary leadership structures that reserve the CEO role for family members. We conclude that family-managed firms are not relics of the past. Instead, they are here to stay, thriving on the positive feelings that their employees share.”

How the CEO plays a key role

̽��ֱ��study finds the role of the CEO is crucial in explaining employees’ feelings and behaviours. By integrating family science with management research, it centres on emotions rather than strategic or cognitive factors.

̽��ֱ��researchers compare the impact of a CEO who is a family member of the ownership family with a hired professional CEO (whether a firm is family-owned or not), and finds these family CEOs pass on their high-energy, positive emotions to non-family members. This may partly be because where firms have been held in family hands for generations, family CEOs often perceive such firms as their “babies” – allowing for an emotional bond to develop over an extended period. An indirect effect of a family CEO is that if employees collectively feel better at work, they should also be less likely to leave their jobs.

Emotional contagion: spreading positive feelings

Family CEOs are shown not only to be more likely to experience positive emotions, but also to express them at work, while suppressing potential negative emotions.

“We suggest that these emotions spread through firms by way of emotional contagion during interactions with employees, thereby setting the organisational affective tone,” the research says.

In family-managed firms, this spread of emotions is likely to be facilitated by the frequent interactions that these CEOs have with their employees, often forging stable, long-term relationships with those who report directly to them. This process then trickles down through the firm, by staff mimicking each other’s emotional expression, and determining how to feel by watching others express their feelings.

“Because of their hereditary claim to power, family CEOs are considered to be more powerful than their professionally appointed counterparts who can be more easily removed from the CEO position,” the study says. “Thus, family CEOs should hold greater sway over the emotions their employees feel.”

This sway is limited, however, by certain aspects of organisational structure:

Size: ̽��ֱ��larger the organisation, the weaker the relationship between the family CEO and the positive affective tone of the firm because the emotional contagion process, which relies on social interaction, is easily interrupted.

Centralisation: ̽��ֱ��more that authority and decision-making is diluted from the CEO, the weaker their effect because it fosters horizontal communication patterns rather than vertical, limiting opportunities for family CEOs to transmit their emotions.

Formalisation: Rules, procedures, instructions, and communications being formalised or written down are likely to stifle the emotional contagion effect of the family CEO because things become more regulated, less spontaneous, and are less affected by emotion.

̽��ֱ��authors suggest this study could be used by human resources managers to demonstrate the potential benefits of working for these businesses. It could also provide insight for firms needing to appoint a new family or hired CEO.

“ ̽��ֱ��research has implications for managers even outside of family firms,” says Menges. “Managers can benefit from the research by seeking creative ways to bring aspects of their own family into the workplace as a way to tap into and pass on positive emotions to others in the firm.”

Reference
Nadine Kammerlander, Jochen Menges, Dennis Herhausen, Petra Kipfelsberger, Heike Bruch: ‘How family CEOs affect employees’ feelings and behaviors: A study on positive emotions’, Long Range Planning (2022)

Adapted from an article published by Cambridge Judge Business School

Family CEOs are more likely to make employees feel positive about their workplace and stay longer, finds a new study.

Andrea Piacquadio

Business woman with laptop

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Women are ‘running with leaded shoes’ when promoted at work, says study

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 07:13:24 +0000

Women and men feel different at work, as moving up the ranks alleviates negative feelings such as frustration less for women than for men, says a sweeping new study on gender differences in emotion at work.

̽��ֱ��study, led by researchers at Yale ̽��ֱ�� and co-authored by Jochen Menges at Cambridge Judge Business School, finds that rank is associated with greater emotional benefits for men than for women, and that women reported greater negative feelings than men across all ranks.

Because emotions are important for leadership, this puts women at a disadvantage akin to running with ‘leaded shoes’, according to the study, which is based on nearly 15,000 workers in the US.

̽��ֱ��results, published in Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, tie the different ways women and men experience emotions at work to underrepresentation at every level of workplace leadership.

Little previous research on gender and workplace emotions

̽��ֱ��study notes that, while the glass ceiling for women has been extensively documented, there has been surprisingly little research on gender differences in emotions at work. Understanding this is particularly important as emotions influence job performance, decision-making, creativity, absence, conflict resolution and leadership effectiveness.

̽��ֱ��practical implications of the study are that organisations must provide support to women as they advance, including formal mentoring relationships and networking groups that can provide opportunities to deal with emotions effectively while supporting women as they rise within organisational ranks.

“It would be hard for anyone to break through a glass ceiling when they feel overwhelmed, stressed, less respected and less confident,” said Menges, who teaches at both the ̽��ֱ�� of Zurich and Cambridge Judge Business School.

“This emotional burden may not only hamper promotion opportunities for women, but also prevent them from contributing to an organisation to the best of their ability. More needs to be done to level the playing field when it comes to emotional burdens at work,” said Menges, whose research often focuses on leadership, motivation and other workplace issues.

Women feel more ‘overwhelmed, stressed, frustrated’ at work

̽��ֱ��study finds gender does make a difference for the emotions that employees experience at work. Compared to men, women reported feeling more overwhelmed, stressed, frustrated, tense, and discouraged, and less respected and confident.

Women reported greater negative feelings than men across all ranks. Although these feelings decreased for both men and women as they moved up in rank, the extent to which rank diminished negative feelings differed between the sexes. For instance, moving up rank did alleviate frustration and discouragement in both men and women, but it did so more for men than for women.

̽��ֱ��study says that because women experience more negative and fewer positive feelings in climbing the organisational ladder, this puts women at a disadvantage in attaining leadership roles.

At the lowest levels of employment, women reported feeling significantly more respected than men, yet this reverses as people climb within an organisation, resulting in men feeling significantly more respected than women at higher levels.

̽��ֱ��research used data from 14,618 adult US workers (50.7% male, 49.3% female) reflecting a diversity of race, ethnicity and industries, to test the following factors:

--Differences in the emotions that men and women experience at work.

--If gender interacts with rank to predict emotions.

--Whether the association between gender and emotions is mediated by emotional labour demands.

--If this relationship differs as a function of the proportion of women in an industry or organisational rank.

Feelings ranging from ‘inspired’ to ‘stressed’

Emotions were assessed using two different methods. Participants used a sliding scale to indicate how often they had experienced 23 feelings at work in the previous three months. ̽��ֱ��items included ten positive emotions such as “interested”, “proud” and “inspired”, and 13 negative responses including “bored”, “stressed” and “envious”. Participants were also asked to report their typical feelings about work in open-ended responses about how their job had made them feel over the past six months.

In addition, to assess positional power, participants were asked to place themselves on a ladder with ten steps representing where people stand in their organisation.

Inhibiting negative emotion is not the answer

̽��ֱ��study concludes that simply smothering emotion in the workplace isn’t the answer: Inhibiting negative emotions for a prolonged time increases burnout, and negatively impacts performance and personal well-being.

It recognises there are areas of future research which include how gender interacts with other categories of identity, such as race and ethnicity, social class, and sexuality. Women of colour face stronger glass ceiling effects than white women and have to simultaneously navigate bias and discrimination based on their gender and race.

̽��ֱ��authors also suggest further investigation to establish whether women’s negative experiences can impose an emotional glass ceiling because obstacles such as unequal treatment at work causes emotions such as feeling disrespected, which in turn can become an additional barrier to advancement.

Reference:
Christa L. Taylor et al. ‘Gender and Emotions at Work: Organizational Rank Has Greater Emotional Benefits for Men than Women.’ Sex Roles (2022). DOI: 10.1007/s11199-021-01256-z

Adapted from a story on the Cambridge Judge Business School website.

Promotion at work has greater emotional benefit for men than women, says a new study on gender and workplace emotion.

Maskot

Colleagues sitting at conference table

Yes

How emotions shape our work life

lw355 — Mon, 18 Jun 2018 10:12:03 +0000

It is important for people to feel happy rather than miserable in their work – research shows that contented employees deliver better results after all.

But some businesses regard happiness initiatives as a ‘salve’ that can be applied across an organisation to increase employee wellbeing, as Dr Jochen Menges from Cambridge Judge Business School explains.

“ ̽��ֱ��very fact that many organisations now ‘invest in happiness’ means they understand that emotions matter. But what they typically do – offering benefits like chill-out zones, free food, yoga classes – is rather blunt and does not account for the complexity of people’s emotional life.”

Working with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and the Faas Foundation, Menges is diving deeper into our understanding of emotions at work. ̽��ֱ��‘Emotion Revolution in the Workplace’ project has asked over 10,000 employees from a mix of occupations, levels, ages, genders and ethnicities in the USA not just how they feel, but also how they wish to feel at work.

̽��ֱ��results show that while some report feeling happy, many say they are stressed, tired and frustrated at work. When it comes to how people wish to feel, the study finds that most want to be appreciated, excited and happy. “There is a considerable gap between how people feel at work and how they would like to feel,” Menges explains. “Now the challenge is to find ways to close that gap.”

Although the analyses of this new dataset are still ongoing, Menges’ previous work gives some hints. He suggests that happiness may not primarily be about perks. “ ̽��ֱ��work itself, colleagues and supervisors, and the organisational structure and culture play major roles in whether or not employees are happy.”

In one study, Menges found that people experience more positive emotions in organisations that are in close touch with customers.

“These organisations tend to be more decentralised – decisions can be taken at lower levels – and they pay more attention to employees’ emotional abilities in recruiting and promotion processes. Those two factors in turn are linked to how positive the employees across an organisation feel.”

It’s not all about being positive, however.

Although most research suggests that any pleasant emotion has beneficial effects on performance, creativity and commitment, Menges and his colleagues found in a recent study that some positive emotions – pride, for example – can be a problem.

“If employees do not identify with their organisation, then pride increases their intention to leave. They think ‘I am better than this place,’ and look for new opportunities.” By contrast, if employees identified with their organisation and experienced events that made them feel angry, they were less likely to quit. “They want to stick it out and improve the situation.”

So any emotions can be a good thing, Menges suggests, even if they are unpleasant. “If managers suppress employees’ emotions, they over time create an environment of indifference. Employees just get on with work, but they are not as committed and invested anymore. A bit of emotion, a bit of up and down – that’s what makes work meaningful.”

Menges also challenges the idea that employees should pursue ‘happiness’. “I think people differ in how they wish to feel at work. Although many of us simply say ‘I want to be happy at work’, what we actually mean by ‘happy’ can differ greatly.”

Menges tries to understand how people differ in the feelings they look for at work, and whether those differences affect people’s choice of employer and engagement at work.

For example, someone wanting to feel safe is likely to look for a stable, predictable job, whereas someone looking for excitement might not care much about job security as long as the job provides a stimulating environment.

̽��ֱ��problem, according to Menges, is that most of us are not that specific when it comes to how we want to feel. “We lack the emotional vocabulary to pinpoint our desired emotions, so we just use ‘happy’. If we had better search terms, perhaps the search for happiness would not be that fuzzy and difficult.”

He suggests that organisations have a considerable influence on employees’ emotions and that employees within an organisation tend to feel alike. “Emotions are a very intimate and personal experience, and yet how we feel often depends largely on how people around us feel.

“In some places, people are enthusiastic, excited and inspired for a better future; in others, they are satisfied, calm, relaxed, easy-going. Both are positive but have very different energy levels, and that is linked to different outcomes.”

“In other places, there is aggression, stress and anxiety – or frustration, resignation and apathy. Again, both negative, but with different energy levels and outcomes.”

Places with high positive energy are at risk of losing it. Menges saw this at first hand when he studied the impact of the economic crisis of 2008–2009. “Companies were working at a frenetic pace – they increased the number and speed of activities, raised performance goals, shortened innovation cycles. They were trying to get more done with fewer people at a faster pace.”

But when performance went up, too often companies tried to make this pace the new normal. ̽��ֱ��result was that employees’ energy began to drain.

These companies were in the ‘Acceleration Trap’ – a term he and a colleague coined in an article published in ̽��ֱ��Harvard Business Review. A sobering 60% of surveyed employees in companies that were in this trap said that they lacked sufficient resources to get their work done, compared with 2% in companies that were not trapped.

“Managers in accelerated companies realised that something was amiss, but they took the wrong cure. Rather than giving employees some relief, they increased pressure. Ironically, their calls for high performance led to lower performance,” Menges says.

“ ̽��ֱ��Acceleration Trap is still a common problem. Any uncertainty, such as Brexit, can generate the conditions where companies overload and under-resource employees, and where organisational fatigue and burnout can result.”

̽��ֱ��good news is that it is possible to escape the trap. Menges looked at how leaders recognised the trap and moved their company in different directions – such as halting less-important work, being clear about strategy and changing the culture.

“When it comes to how people feel in a business, many point to the leader. And it is right that leaders play a key role in setting the mood of a place,” Menges explains. In particular, leaders with emotional intelligence – the ability to recognise emotions in oneself and others, and to regulate emotions in ways that help reach rather than hinder goals – are in a good position to steer their team’s and organisation’s collective emotions in the right direction.

“But I think we need to also look at how the organisation as a system is set up,” he says. Menges believes that some places are organised in a more emotionally effective way than others. “If companies figure out how they can institutionalise emotionally intelligent systems, they would be much better off than investing in ‘happiness initiatives’.”

Inset image: read more about our research on the topic of work in the ̽��ֱ��'s research magazine; download a pdf; view on Issuu.

Jochen Menges, an expert in organisational behaviour, thinks that emotions matter profoundly for employee performance and behaviour. His studies bring nuance to our understanding of how employees wish to feel at work.

A bit of emotion, a bit of up and down – that’s what makes work meaningful

Jochen Menges

̽��ֱ��District

Yes

Many highly-engaged employees suffer from burnout

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 00:00:01 +0000

Whereas lack of engagement is commonly seen as leading to employee turnover due to boredom and disaffection, the study finds that companies, in fact, risk losing some of their most motivated and hard-working employees due to high stress and burnout – a symptom of the “darker side” of workplace engagement.

It is concerning, concludes the study by academics working in the UK, US and Germany, that many engaged employees suffer from stress and burnout symptoms, which may be the beginning of a pathway leading into disengagement.

“Nearly half of all employees were moderately to highly engaged in their work but also exhausted and ready to leave their organisations,” said co-author Dr Jochen Menges from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. “This should give managers a lot to think about.”

̽��ֱ��study, published in the journal Career Development International, examined multiple workplace factors that divide employees into various engagement-burnout profiles. These include low engagement-low burnout (“apathetic”), low engagement-high burnout (“burned-out”), high engagement-low burnout (“engaged”), “moderately engaged-exhausted”; and “highly engaged-exhausted”.

While the largest population at 41 percent fit the healthily “engaged” profile, 19 percent experienced high levels of both engagement and burnout (“highly engaged-exhausted”) and another 35.5 percent were “moderately engaged-exhausted”.

̽��ֱ��highest turnover intentions were reported by the “highly engaged-exhausted” group – higher than even the unengaged group that might be commonly expected to be eyeing an exit.

“These findings are a big challenge to organisations and their management,” said Menges, who is a Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at Cambridge Judge Business School. “By shedding light on some of the factors in both engagement and burnout, the study can help organisations identify workers who are motivated but also at risk of burning out and leaving.”

While previous studies had looked at engagement-burnout profiles, the new study – conducted at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, in collaboration with the Faas Foundation – also focuses on demands placed on employees and resources provided to them in the workplace, and how these affect engagement and burnout.

̽��ֱ��study is based on an online survey of 1,085 employees in all 50 US states. It measured engagement, burnout, demands and resources on a six-point scale ranging from such responses as “never” to “almost always” or “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”.

For engagement, questions included “I strive as hard as I can to complete my job” and “I feel energetic at my job”. For burnout, participants were asked how often at work they feel “disappointed with people” or “physically weak/sickly”. Demand questions included “I have too much work to do”, while resources were measured by questions such as “my supervisor provides me with the support I need to do my job well”.

̽��ֱ��researchers then examined overlap of these various factors, and how they interact and influence each other, in order to draw conclusions about the different profile groups.

“High engagement levels in the workplace can be a double-edged sword for some employees,” said Menges. “Engagement is very beneficial to workers and organisations when burnout symptoms are low, but engagement coupled with high burnout symptoms can lead to undesired outcomes including increased intentions to leave an organisation. So managers need to look carefully at high levels of engagement and help those employees who may be headed for burnout, or they risk higher turnover levels and other undesirable outcomes.”

Reference:
Julia Moeller et al. ‘Highly engaged but burned out: intra-individual profiles in the US workforce.’ Career Development International (2018). DOI: 10.1108/CDI-12-2016-0215

Underlining the danger of job burnout, a new study of more than 1,000 US workers finds that many employees who are highly engaged in their work are also exhausted and ready to leave their organisations.

These findings are a big challenge to organisations and their management.

Jochen Menges

Glenn Carstens-Peters

Keyboard warrior

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Licence type:

Public Domain

̽��ֱ��myth of quitting in anger

Anonymous — Mon, 30 May 2016 23:00:01 +0000

Anger at the workplace is commonly associated with employees storming out of the office and quitting their jobs, but a new study from the Cambridge Judge Business School suggests that the picture is far more complex.

More broadly, positive emotions are usually thought to lead to constructive outcomes and negative emotions to damaging outcomes for business and other organisations.

A new academic study finds, however, that these generalisations are often a myth: when identification with a company is high, anger over job situations often decreases (rather than boosts) a person’s intention to leave because such employees want to stick it out and improve the organisation rather than walk out in a huff.

Conversely, when a person’s identity with their organisation is low, anger increases their intention to quit, says the study published in the Academy of Management Journal.

Researchers at the Cambridge Judge Business School found that for an individual highly-identified with the organisation, anger directed toward the organisation is similar to self-blame because the organisation is part of their self-definition, and hence such people are less likely to respond to negative feelings by disengaging.

̽��ֱ��practical implication of the research, the authors say, is that it is unwise for companies to broadly characterise specific emotions as beneficial or detrimental to the organisation.

“ ̽��ֱ��study suggests that company policies that are designed to promote positive emotions or minimise negative emotions may in fact not have the intended effect,” says Jochen Menges, ̽��ֱ�� Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at Cambridge Judge Business School and Professor of Leadership at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany. “So rather than seeking to suppress certain workplace emotions, companies should instead adopt practices that seek to encourage greater organisational identification.”

̽��ֱ��research focused on a large company in the pilot training and certification business, with a final dataset of 135 people employed in the United States and Europe who were evaluated over a one-year period. They were asked about their intentions to leave the company or remain, and about both general organisation issues (such as schedule and pay) and specific matters related to the job – such as events that “made you feel good at your job,” “made you feel disrespected as a pilot” or “made you feel close to other pilot instructors.”

As a follow-up, the study looked at actual staff turnover at the flight training company six months after the last survey of employees and found a significant correlation between the number of employees intending to leave the company and the actual staff turnover.

̽��ֱ��study examined guilt and pride, in addition to anger – and found here, too, a dark side of positive emotion and a bright side of negative emotion. For example, while pride is generally associated with a likelihood to remain at a company, for employees lacking in work-related identifications, a feeling of pride made them more likely to consider moving on.

̽��ֱ��research looked at a people’s identity with their occupation as well as organisation, and found that while occupational identity is not as powerful as organisational identity in staff turnover, it does play a complementary role.

Reference:
Samantha Conroy, William Becker and Jochen Menges. ' ̽��ֱ��Meaning of My Feelings Depends on Who I Am: Work-related Identifications Shape Emotion Effects in Organizations.' Academy of Management Journal (2016). DOI: 10.5465/amj.2014.1040

Originally published on the Cambridge Judge Business School website.

Anger often decreases – rather than boosts – a person’s intention to quit a job when they identify strongly with their company, says a new study.

Company policies that are designed to promote positive emotions or minimise negative emotions may in fact not have the intended effect.

Jochen Menges

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Reading the face of a leader

Anonymous — Tue, 10 May 2016 13:39:46 +0000

Past studies have shown that, in competitive settings, people prefer both male and female leaders to have masculine facial characteristics – because these are perceived as signalling competitive personality traits.

A new academic study finds, however, that low facial masculinity in women is also linked in people’s minds with competitiveness, and not only to cooperation – suggesting that traits of facial masculinity in men and women are interpreted differently.

“Whereas men in competitive settings benefit from high levels of facial masculinity, women fare well when they either look particularly masculine or when they do not look masculine at all,” concludes the study published in the journal Academy of Management Discoveries.

̽��ֱ��practical implications of these findings, says study co-author Jochen Menges, work both ways for women: while there may be less of a disadvantage to some women than previously assumed based on traditional facial-characteristic leadership theories, recruitment in competitive settings “may be biased” against women whose faces simply fit in the middle between masculine-looking and not masculine looking at all.

“This study challenges gender theory that says women with feminine facial characteristics are associated with communal behaviour and nurturing, while men with masculine features are associated with being driven and competitive,” says Menges. “ ̽��ֱ��study finds that it’s much more nuanced – that when women look very feminine people associate competitiveness with them as well.”

More masculine facial characteristics, as shown in digitally altered photos of a man and a woman in the study, include thicker and flatter eyebrows, a squarer jaw and more pronounced cheekbones.

̽��ֱ��study – entitled “Reading the face of a leader: Women with low facial masculinity are perceived as competitive” – was co-authored by Cambridge Judge PhD alumnus Raphael Silberzahn of IESE Business School at the ̽��ֱ�� of Navarra in Barcelona, and Jochen Menges, ̽��ֱ�� Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Judge Business School and Professor of Leadership at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany.

̽��ֱ��study cites Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, Hewlett Packard’s Meg Whitman and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg – three high-profile women executives – as having three particular things in common: “They are all top-level leaders in highly competitive companies, they are all women, and none of them look particular masculine.” In fact, the study finds, that in S&P 500 companies, “a greater range of facial masculinity is present among women CEOs compared to men CEOs.”

̽��ֱ��researchers based their findings on a series of studies involving hundreds of American adult participants, a mixture of men and women.

In one study, participants selected a suitable leader of a company that “has many rivals and competes heavily” from a series of images showing faces of women or men with digitally altered degrees of masculinity, while in another study participants were asked to assign certain competition-themed statements (such as “She wants it her way or you’re out” and “He treats others with respect to a degree, but mostly believes he is right”) to such modified images.

Among the results: For women leaders, more than 50 per cent of study participants associated such statements as “She was feared by those around her” or “There is only one boss, and that is her” with both a low-masculinity and high-masculinity image of the same woman. For men leaders, the statement “Coworkers consider him very driven” was associated by 64 per cent of participants with high-masculinity images compared to 33 per cent for low-masculinity images, while “Doesn’t tolerate people trying to act like they are smarter or wiser than he is” had a 63 percent link to a high-masculinity image compared to 27 per cent for a low-masculinity image.

“Our findings suggest that there has been a misalignment between past research and the reality,” says Menges, emphasizing that feminine-looking women have a better chance of being seen as leaders than previously thought.

Reference:

“Reading the face of a leader: Women with low facial masculinity are perceived as competitive” Academy of Management Discoveries, Raphael Silberzahn and Jochen Menges

DOI:10.5465/amd.2014.0070

Women (but not men) with both high and low facial masculinity are perceived as competitive leaders, finds new study co-authored by a Cambridge Judge Business School academic.

This study challenges gender theory that says women with feminine facial characteristics are associated with communal behaviour and nurturing

Jochen Menges

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Beware the ‘awestruck effect’

sc604 — Tue, 22 Dec 2015 16:19:44 +0000

While charismatic leaders may be magnetic, they can cause their followers to suppress emotions, which can harm companies through increased strain, lower job satisfaction and reduced information exchange among employees, according to new research from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

̽��ֱ��study, published in ̽��ֱ��Leadership Quarterly, found that while charismatic leaders may put their followers in awe, reinforcing the leader’s standing in the group, ‘awestruck’ followers are unlikely to benefit the group in the long-term.

̽��ֱ��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 cause conflict and harm employee coordination.

̽��ֱ��study is based on responses to various leadership scenarios by several hundred research participants at universities and companies in Germany and Switzerland.

Although previous studies had looked at how charismatic leaders influence followers’ emotional experience, the new study focuses instead on how followers regulate their emotional expressiveness in response to charismatic leaders – and does so by examining separately the effect of both a leader’s charisma and individualised consideration on followers.

“Emotion suppression is associated with a wide range of negative outcomes,” said Dr Jochen Menges of Cambridge Judge Business School, one of the study’s authors. “ ̽��ֱ��problem is that for emotions to be suppressed, our brain needs to allocate resources to self-regulation processes that allow us to appear calm and collected on the outside when on the inside we are emotionally stimulated.”

While our brain is busy keeping emotions in check, it cannot allocate resources to other mental tasks – such as memorising or scrutinising messages or coming up with new ideas. “So while we are awestruck – overwhelmed with the emotions that charismatic leaders stir and yet too intimidated to express these emotions – we are impaired in our mental abilities,” said Menges. “That makes us vulnerable to the influence of charismatic leaders, and likely impairs our own effectiveness in dealing with work challenges.”

Such inhibition of expressiveness can deploy mental resources and impair the cognitive processing capacity of followers – which may make them less able to evaluate the actual messages of charismatic leaders, and therefore make them more likely to endorse such leaders with little scrutiny.

If there is such an impairment of cognitive functioning, then charismatic leadership may carry costs for followers that have so far been overlooked. Charismatic leadership may have a dark side for followers irrespective of whether leaders’ goals are moral or immoral.

“Charisma has effects that can be harmful, but these effects can be counterbalanced by other leadership behaviours, such as individualised consideration and support as well as mentoring and coaching,” said Menges.

̽��ֱ��two styles of leadership that the researchers looked at are quite different, but they are not mutually exclusive. It is the combination of both styles that will serve the leader best, so they can bring together people for a common mission with charismatic messages from the podium, but then also solicit their advice and input when stepping down from the podium.

“While charisma can help leaders establish power and exert influence, it may be intimidating to those who look up to them for guidance and inspiration,” said Menges. “To leverage the full potential of their followers, leaders need to balance charismatic appeal with the consideration of each follower’s individual needs. And for those who find themselves awestruck by the charisma of their leader, remember that even the most charismatic person is only human.”

Reference:
Menges, Jochen et. al. “ ̽��ֱ��awestruck effect: Followers suppress emotion expression in response to charismatic but not individually considerate leadership.” ̽��ֱ��Leadership Quarterly (2015). DOI: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2015.06.002

Charismatic business leaders can cause their followers to suppress emotions, which can harm companies over the long term, according to new research.

Remember that even the most charismatic person is only human.

Jochen Menges

Pete Souza

Audience members listen to the President Obama's speech on India and America at the Siri Fort Auditorium

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