Humble and autocratic leadership in daily work life: associations with discrete emotions and helping behavior

Purpose This study examines whether daily fluctuations in humble and autocratic leadership behaviors predict employees' discrete emotions (pride, joy, anxiety, disappointment) and whether these emotional experiences are associated with same-day coworker-directed helping behavior. Drawing on affective events theory, we focus on within-person processes to better capture how leadership shapes employees' day-to-day experiences. Design/methodology/approach Using a 10-day experience-sampling design (N = 65; 593 days-level observations), participants completed three daily surveys assessing emotions (morning, midday), leadership (midday), and helping (evening). Multilevel modeling was used to estimate within- and between-person relationships. Findings At the daily level, humble leadership was positively associated with pride and joy, whereas autocratic leadership was positively associated with anxiety and disappointment. However, these emotional responses were not related to same-day coworker-directed helping behavior. Exploratory between-person analyses revealed that higher average levels of pride were associated with more helping, whereas higher average anxiety was associated with less helping. Practical implications The findings suggest that leaders' day-to-day behaviors shape employees' emotional experiences, highlighting the importance of how leaders interact with employees in everyday work contexts. At the same time, fostering helping behavior may require more than short-term emotional fluctuations, as emotional experiences do not necessarily translate directly into immediate behavioral responses. Originality/value This study advances research on leadership and emotions by providing a within-person test of affective events theory using discrete emotions and by demonstrating that emotion–behavior relationships may differ across levels of analysis and may not unfold automatically within short temporal windows.