Boss, I am Anxious! Understanding the impact of Follower Anxiety Expression (FAE) to the leader on the leader’s own outcomes

***M.Sc. Students, these seminars can count towards the six mandatory Telfer Research Seminars Series required for your program (MGT 6191/ MGT 6991 / MHS 6991) (4 seminars for MSc Project-based students).***

While anxiety is pervasive in contemporary work environments, extant literature primarily focuses on how anxiety affects an individual’s own outcomes or how anxiety from leaders affects followers. However, the way in which the expression of anxiety by followers to their leaders (FAE) affects leader outcomes is not well understood. Extending such perspectives, we integrate the emotions as social information (EASI) framework, to propose that FAE increases leader anxiety but also makes the leader feel trusted which has countervailing impacts on leader insomnia and effectiveness. We also suggest that servant leadership functions as a critical contingency that amplifies the impact of FAE on the negative and positive pathways to leader outcomes. Our results from a two-wave, multi-source field survey study of 286 leader-follower dyads and a pre-registered experiment from 188 leaders showed the countervailing effects of FAE on leader insomnia and effectiveness. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications for research on anxiety, emotion expression, and leadership.