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Leadership through love and fear: an effective combination

Leadership through love and fear: an effective combination The purpose of this paper is to examine how employees’ sentiments of fear and companionate love toward their leaders relate to leader effectiveness and follower loyalty.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis uses multi-level survey data (n=728) from a professional services firm. Proposed relationships are examined using multi-level modeling, polynomial regression and response surface analysis.FindingsCompanionate love moderates the relationship between fear of a leader and leader effectiveness and follower loyalty. At high levels of companionate love, leader effectiveness and loyalty increase with fear, but at low levels of companionate love, fear negatively relates to leader effectiveness and loyalty. There are diminishing returns at relatively high levels of love and fear or when love becomes relatively much greater than fear.Research limitations/implicationsFindings suggest that employees may incorporate sentiments of love and fear into their implicit leadership theories (ILTs), though the authors do not measure ILTs.Practical implicationsLeaders may consider incorporating behaviors that elicit sentiments of both love and fear for greatest follower loyalty and effectiveness.Originality/valueThis study is the first to examine the combination of sentiments of love and fear. In contrast to the extant literature, which posits that fear has primarily negative effects, the results suggest that fear may have a more nuanced relationship with perceptions of the leader. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Managerial Psychology Emerald Publishing

Leadership through love and fear: an effective combination

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Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
© Emerald Publishing Limited
ISSN
0268-3946
DOI
10.1108/jmp-08-2018-0346
Publisher site
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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine how employees’ sentiments of fear and companionate love toward their leaders relate to leader effectiveness and follower loyalty.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis uses multi-level survey data (n=728) from a professional services firm. Proposed relationships are examined using multi-level modeling, polynomial regression and response surface analysis.FindingsCompanionate love moderates the relationship between fear of a leader and leader effectiveness and follower loyalty. At high levels of companionate love, leader effectiveness and loyalty increase with fear, but at low levels of companionate love, fear negatively relates to leader effectiveness and loyalty. There are diminishing returns at relatively high levels of love and fear or when love becomes relatively much greater than fear.Research limitations/implicationsFindings suggest that employees may incorporate sentiments of love and fear into their implicit leadership theories (ILTs), though the authors do not measure ILTs.Practical implicationsLeaders may consider incorporating behaviors that elicit sentiments of both love and fear for greatest follower loyalty and effectiveness.Originality/valueThis study is the first to examine the combination of sentiments of love and fear. In contrast to the extant literature, which posits that fear has primarily negative effects, the results suggest that fear may have a more nuanced relationship with perceptions of the leader.

Journal

Journal of Managerial Psychology – Emerald Publishing

Published: Jul 30, 2019

Keywords: Motivation; Leadership; Emotions

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