A Profile Analysis of Leader Interpersonal Emotion Management Strategies

Research on interpersonal emotion regulation has illuminated how leaders can use four interpersonal
emotion management (IEM) strategies—situation modification, cognitive change, attentional deployment,
and modulating the emotional response—to help regulate subordinates’ emotions and manage their work
outcomes. However, this literature remains theoretically incomplete, because it has largely examined these
strategies in isolation, overlooking the extent to which they coexist and interact in shaping subordinates’
attributions and behaviors. To address this limitation, we adopt a person-centered approach to examine
how leaders combine IEM strategies in distinct dyadic patterns (i.e., profiles) within leader–subordinate
relationships. Drawing on the social role framework of interpersonal affect regulation and attribution theory,
we further investigate the antecedents and outcomes of these patterns. Across four studies, we identify five
stable dyadic IEM patterns—adaptive, moderate, inactive, pragmatic, and moderate–pragmatic—with the
first four patterns emerging consistently across all four studies, and all five patterns emerging in three of the
studies. We find these patterns are distinguished by dyadic-level leader IEM motives (i.e., coaching,
compassion, and instrumentality motives) and are associated with distinct subordinate behavioral responses, such as organizational citizenship behavior and interaction avoidance toward the leader. Given
the widely acknowledged prevalence and significance of emotions in the workplace, these findings have
vital implications for theory and practice on IEM within organizations.