Thesis
Exploring leaders' strategies for managing negative emotions of sales people
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 2016
- Thesis identifier
- T14338
- Person Identifier (Local)
- 200964635
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to explore the practice of leader strategies to manage and influence employees' emotions and its implications. Emotion has emerged as a key field in organisational behaviour, particularly pertaining to leadership. Managing followers' emotions is critical for leaders since employees' emotions are directly related to job performance. Most studies focus on measuring the high level relationship between the constructs of emotions and leadership and there is little research on how leaders deliberately manage the emotions of their followers.This qualitative study explores sales leaders' practices for managing followers' negative emotions through a case study method using semi-structured interviews and critical incident technique. 32 sales leaders are interviewed from one of the top logistics companies; 89 critical incidents are identified where these leaders were challenged with managing their followers' emotions.The findings of this research show that leaders consider changing employees' negative emotions a key function of leadership. The critical incidents demonstrate that leaders face both business and personal problems. Dealing with business situations requires strategies that involve more changing the problem or its meaning, while personal situations require strategies for reducing the intensity of the emotions.The findings also demonstrate that the existing models of emotion regulation do not cover all of the strategies that leaders use to effectively manage followers' emotions. Therefore, a proposed comprehensive set of strategies that leaders can use is presented together with contextual factors that leaders should consider when managing followers' negative emotions, including the use of short-intermediate strategies and person focused strategies.This study is among the first to qualitatively explore how leaders actually manage followers' negative emotions. A recommended set of strategies is presented to help leaders regulate and deal with negative or dysfunctional emotions. The findings provide clarification on what strategies leaders can use and how this practice can be improved.
- Resource Type
- DOI
- Date Created
- 2016
- Former identifier
- 9912525289802996
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