Emotional Contagion from Followers to Leaders, and its Effect on Leadership Effectiveness and Speed

Emotional contagion has been defined as a tendency to mimic the emotions and non-verbal expressions of others, thus becoming ‘infected’ with another’s emotional state. In an organisational context, emotional contagion has been examined from both a group and leadership perspective. Previous authors have examined emotional contagion from leaders to followers, but no study to date has examined emotional contagion from followers to leaders. In the present study, therefore, we examine the possibility that leaders could ‘catch’ emotions from their followers, and what implications this has for leadership capabilities. We found that leaders did catch both positive and negative from their followers, and that positive mood fully mediated the effect of follower’s mood on leadership effectiveness and speed.