Other side of the coin: intrapersonal effects of managerial interpersonal emotion regulation

Purpose Research on the favorable impacts of leader interpersonal emotion regulation on employee and organizational outcomes has increased recently. However, an important question often goes unasked: What does this emotional work cost the managers themselves? We know little about the intrapersonal impact and intervening explanation of such effects on leaders who engage in emotion regulation in leading employees. We present new evidence showing how regulation strategies affect managers themselves and what this means for leadership. Design/methodology/approach Using the managers as sample (n = 81) of three business units of a financial company, we conducted a diary study (experience sampling, five daily surveys) and used multilevel analysis to examine the intrapersonal effects of managerial deep and surface acting on the two impaired well-being constructs – emotional dissonance and emotional exhaustion. Findings While our hypotheses about the positive relationship between surface acting and impaired emotional well-being were supported, as predicted, we did not find a significant negative relationship between deep acting with emotional dissonance and emotional exhaustion. Nonetheless, our study provides important empirical evidence suggesting that, while managerial surface acting can be bad for their well-being, deep acting is not emotionally taxing at the least. Originality/value Our study provides fresh empirical evidence with intervening logics suggesting that, at the within-person level, while managerial surface acting can be bad for their well-being, deep acting is not emotionally taxing. Our findings should encourage researchers to utilize other outcome variables, such as leader job satisfaction with appropriate mediating variable(s), to investigate intrapersonal effects of manager/leader emotion regulation.