The more creative, the more silent? The effect of subordinates’ creative deviance on leader silence

Purpose Silence is a commonly seen phenomenon at the workplace. However, little is known about the cause and effect of leader silence. Drawing on the affective events theory, we develop a moderated mediation model to examine the effect of subordinates’ creative deviance on leader's authoritative silence and test the moderating effect of subordinates’ political skills. Design/methodology/approach Our research adopts a novel bottom-up perspective to investigate the subordinates’ influence on leader silence. A two-wave survey study involving 196 corporate team leaders in China was employed. Findings We found that leader’s workplace anxiety mediated the relationship between subordinates' creative deviance and leader's authoritative silence and subordinates’ political skills moderated the mediating effect. Originality/value Our research contributes to the leader silence literature in three folds. First, we employ the AET framework to study leader silence from the emotional perspective. Second, this research adopts a bottom-up angle to reveal the influence of subordinates’ behavior on leader silence. Third, the political skills lens offers novel explanation of why the anxious emotions triggered by followers’ creative deviance vary among leaders.