1-s2.0-S0120053415300017-main

Rev Latinoam Psicol. 2015;47(1):1-15

Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología

www.elsevier.es/rlp

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Winning the hearts and minds of followers: The interactive

effects of followers’ emotional competencies and goal setting types on trust in leadership*

Lucas Monzania,*, Pilar Ripolla and José María Peirób

a

b IDOCAL, University of Valencia, SpainIDOCAL and IVIE, University of Valencia, SpainReceived 31 October 2013; accepted 18 July 2014

KEYWORDS

Emotional

competencies;

Goal setting types;

Two-wave experiment;

Trust in leadershipAbstractFollowers’ trust is essential for effective leadership. While initial approaches to trust focused on trust-related information, recent findings suggest that trust also has an affective component. Therefore, emotional competencies such as emotional attention, clarification and repair could predict trust in leadership, in early stages of the follower-

leader relation. However, as this relation develops in time, trust-related judgments may

shift from followers’ emotions towards leaders’ behaviors such as goal setting practices.

As goals can be set in either a directive or participative way, followers with different

levels of emotional competences should have distinct emotional responses towards these

goal-setting types. On this rationale, we evaluated a possible interactive effect between

goal setting types and emotional competencies on followers’ trust in leadership. For this,

we conducted a two-wave experiment, randomly assigning 228 participants to two

possible experimental conditions (directive vs. participative goal setting) or a control

group (unspecific “Do your best” goals). We used multivariate regression analyses to test

our hypotheses, controlling for demographic factors (participants age, biological gender

and previous work experience) and stable personality traits. While there were no

differences in trust in leadership across experimental conditions, followers’ emotional

competencies at work session 1 had positive main effects on followers’ trust in leadership.

At work session 2, significant interaction effects between directive goal setting type and

both emotional clarity and repair indicate that only setting goals in a directive way will

compensate low levels of followers’ emotional clarity and repair.

Copyright © 2013, Konrad Lorenz University Foundation. Published by Elsevier España,

S.L.U. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons

CC BY-NC ND Licence (http://wendang.chazidian.com/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).

*Correspondence author.

E-mail address: Jose.M.Peiro@uv.es (J.M. Peiró).

*Premio al mejor artículo del número.

0120-0534/Copyright © 2013, Fundación Universitaria Konrad Lorenz. Publicado por Elsevier España, S.L.U. Este es un artículo de acceso abierto distribuido bajo los términos de la Licencia Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND (http://wendang.chazidian.com/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).

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PALABRAS CLAVE

Competencias emocionales; Tipos de

establecimiento de metas; Experimento longitudinal;

Confianza en el líder

L. Monzani et al

Ganando la mente y el corazón de los seguidores: El efecto interactivo de las

competencias emocionales de los seguidores y el tipo de establecimiento de metas sobre la confianza en el líder

Resumen

La confianza de los seguidores es un elemento esencial de un liderazgo eficaz. Las aproxi-maciones tempranas a la formación de la confianza hacia los líderes, adoptaron un enfo-que basado en evaluaciones basadas en información. Sin embargo, avances recientes en la investigación de la confianza sugiere que estas evaluaciones también contienen un componente afectivo. En este estudio proponemos que las competencias emocionales, como (1) atención, (2) claridad y (3) reparación emocional predecirán la confianza hacia el líder en momentos tempranos de la relación líder-seguidor. A medida que esta relación se desarrolla en el tiempo, las evaluaciones sobre la fiabilidad del líder cambiaran su objetivo, más precisamente de las emociones que el líder despierta a la manera en que este establece las metas. Debido a que las metas pueden ser establecidas de manera directiva o participativa, los seguidores con diferentes niveles en estas tres competen-cias emocionales, deberían presentar diferentes respuestas emocionales hacia dichas prácticas de establecimiento de metas. Basándonos en esta idea, evaluamos un posible efecto interactivo de las competencias emocionales y el tipo de establecimiento de me-tas sobre los puntajes de confianza hacia el líder de los seguidores. Para esto, realizamos un experimento longitudinal de dos sesiones de trabajo al cual asistieron 228 participan-tes. Las competencias emocionales de los seguidores en la primera sesión de trabajo tuvieron un efecto positivo sobre su confianza en el líder, mientras que se detectó un efecto de interacción entre la reparación emocional y el tipo de establecimiento de me-tas. En la segunda sesión de trabajo, solo se detectaron efectos de interacción entre la claridad y la reparación emocional y el establecimiento de metas directivo. Este resulta-do indica que el hecho de establecer metas, y no como estas se establecen es lo que compensara el efecto negativo sobre la confianza en el líder de bajos niveles de claridad y reparación emocional de los seguidores.

Copyright © 2013, Fundación Universitaria Konrad Lorenz. Publicado por Elsevier España, S.L.U. Este es un artículo de acceso abierto distribuido bajo los términos de la Licencia Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND (http://wendang.chazidian.com/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).

The idea that developing mutual trust-based relationships between leaders and followers is critical for effective leadership has become a commonplace in leadership research (Brower, Schoorman & Tan, 2000). Followers’ trust is what sustains a leader’s real authority, yet some leaders seem not to understand what a precious gift a trusting follower is (Mishra & Mishra, 2013). Thus, watered by the economic and social collapse of 2008-2009, the poisonous seed of distrust has flourished. For example, after decades of abusing their followers’ confidence, leaders of political parties now face daily demonstrations of people who are literally shouting in their faces that they have lost the faith in those whom they chose to “run the show”. On the other hand, emerging corporate scandals such as insider trading followed by massive layoffs, have ripped the fabric of an already weak psychological contract between employees and managers. As a result, negative emotions such as fear, anger and anxiety run wild, and trust has become a scarce resource in both public and private sectors.

In this adverse context, politicians and managers who are still willing to do the right thing, face the challenge of wining the trust of an increasingly number of skeptic followers. We believe that in order to build trust in their leadership, they should first have a greater understanding of what psychosocial factors are involved in winning the “hearts and minds” of their followers.

Probably the first barrier for developing trust in leadership is a lack of clear consensus about trust formation. Recent empirical research is changing our understanding of this construct, as new elements such as emotions and temporal dynamics have entered the trust formation equation.

Initial models of trust formation adopted an information perspective. These models suggested that people use different sources of information to judge whether or not someone is trustworthy (Mayer, Davis & Schoorman, 1995). For example, behaviors such as setting clear and compelling goals can be cues to followers about their leader’s ability to lead them into performing a task successfully (Burke, Sims, Lazzara & Salas, 2007). Yet, while researchers found a positive relation between goal setting and work attitudes such as commitment (Klein, Cooper & Monahan, 2013; Locke & Latham, 1990), up to now, how goals and goals setting types affect followers’ trust in leadership has not received much attention in academic research (a noteworthy exception is Crossley, Cooper & Wernsing, 2013).

On the other hand, recent findings suggest that trust formation has an affective component (Lu, 2014; Newman, Kiazad, Miao & Cooper, 2013). Followers see not only

Emotional Competencies, Goals & Trust in Leadership information process cues, but also attend to the emotions that arise before or during exchanges with their leader for making these judgments. Some scholars have stressed the importance of further exploring linkages between emotions and trust (Schoorman, Mayer & Davis, 2007; Williams, 2001). For example talking about trust in leadership, Gooty, Connelly, Griffith and Gupta (2010) stated: “While much has been done in the domain of cognitive influences on trust in leadership, much less research attention has focused upon affective influences in trusting one’s leader” (p. 1000).” Because some individuals are highly competent in perceiving, understanding and regulating their emotions (Mayer, Roberts & Barsade, 2008), exploring whether emotional competencies could influence their judgments about a leader’s trustworthiness could further expand our knowledge of the dynamics of trust formation.

After an extensive review of the trust literature, Martínez-Tur and Peiró (2009) suggest that timing plays an important role in trust formation. In their model, two or more parties mutually shape trust in specific episodes. In these episodes, both parties establish a relational exchange process, where proximal and distal antecedents of trust interact with the environment affecting trust formation and maintenance. These authors make a call for better understanding the interactive nature of individual, situational and temporal factors in the emergence and maintenance of trust.

In this paper, we seek to clarify the dynamics involved in the formation of followers’ trust in leadership. To this end, within a controlled environment, we explored the effect of followers’ emotional competencies (EC) such as emotional attention, clarity and repair on trust in leadership, at different episodes of a leader-follower relation. In addition, we tested if informational cues, such as leader’s goal setting type, interact with followers ECs in later trust episodes.Understanding the nature of trust and the dynamics of its formation is important to management because meta-analytic findings show that trust predicts citizenship behaviors, task performance, risk taking behaviors and counterproductive behaviors (Colquitt, Scott & LePine, 2007). Previous research defined trust either as a personality trait (e.g. propensity to trust; Rotter, 1967), a process (Khodyakov, 2007), an emerging state (Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1999; Jarvenpaa, Shaw & Staples, 2004) or as an attitudinal outcome of an episode (Martínez-Tur & Peiró, 2009). In spite of this conceptual fuzziness, all these definitions agree on the fact that trust formation takes place in a delimited context, between two (or more) actors (e.g. individuals, teams or organizations), which have some degree of interdependence and must take some level of risk.

On the other hand, trust in leadership is a facet of trust that is limited to the exchange relation between followers and leaders. It has a clear source (the follower), a target (the leader) and outcome (trust as an attitude of the follower). Meta-analytic data also shows trust in leadership enables follower well-being and effective leadership; it predicts positive outcomes such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and negatively relates to turnover intentions. Furthermore, it positively relates to job performance and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) such as altruism, civic virtue, conscientiousness, courtesy and sportsmanship (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002).

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Emotional competencies (EC) such as emotional attention, clarity and repair are components of an individual’s emotional intelligence. Mayer and Salovey (1993) define these competencies as the capacity to clearly perceive and assimilate (emotional attention), understand (emotional clarity), and manage (emotional repair) self and other’s emotions. In terms of trust formation, research shows that a leader’s ability to understand and manage others’ emotions elicits positive affective states in followers, which are essential for the formation of followers’ trust (George, 2000; Ilies, Morgeson & Nahrgang, 2005). On the other hand, due to excessive “leader-centric research”, the role of followers’ EC as antecedents of trust in leadership has been absent in either leadership or followership research, making our understanding of the role of emotions on trust in leadership partial and one-sided (Gooty, Connelly, Griffith & Gupta, 2010). Some empirical studies suggest that employees’ EC could positively relate to trust in leadership, as this is the case for other positive work attitudes such as organizational commitment and high-quality interpersonal relations (Nikolau & Tsaousis, 2005; Mayer, Roberts & Barsade, 2008; Johnson, 2013). In this line, a series of studies on trust found that other-based positive emotions triggers trust in strangers (Dunn & Schweitzer, 2005).

At the beginning of a leader-follower relation, a previous history between them is non-existent, hence trust-related information cues are scarce, while emotions associated to followers’ expectations towards the leader are abundant. We suggest that in early trust episodes, trusting a leader will depend more on followers’ feelings and expectancies of others’ intentions than a “calculated risk assessment”. Furthermore, the risk-taking implied in trusting and the uncertainty about the leader’s intentions should magnify the feelings of vulnerability in followers, triggering negative emotions such as anxiety, or anticipatory affective reactions such as regret (Loewenstein, Weber, Hsee & Welch, 2001; Richard, Van der Pligt & de Vries, 1996). Individuals with low levels of EC are particularly susceptible to these negative emotions, as they lack the ability to regulate them effectively. In turn, individuals with high levels of EC should be able to identify and suppress the effect of these negative emotions, quickly returning to positive emotional states (Salovey, Mayer, Goldman, Turvey & Palfai, 1995). In consequence, individuals with high levels of EC should be able to establish closer and more positive emotional bonds with their leader, trusting him or her more easily.

As leaders and followers establish a working relation, and a history develops between them, followers have more information cues available to make judgments about a leaders’ trustworthiness. Leaders’ behaviors such as setting goals in a clear and specific way allows followers evaluate to leaders, because goals which adequately adjust to followers’ resources and skills indicate a leader’s ability to judge task requirements and effectively allocate available (human) resources. Similarly, rewarding followers’ performance justly provides followers with cues as to a leader’s integrity by giving to each what is due. Furthermore, if leaders set goals in a participative way, followers will interpret this behavior as an opportunity of having a voice and will provide their input about their task. Burke et al. (2007) propose that followers will perceive this consultative

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leadership behavior as an indicator of a leader’s benevolence. In this line, research on goal setting found that participation in goal setting positively affects followers’ attitudes, such as trust, normative and affective organizational commitment (Miao, Newman, Schwarz & Xu, 2013) and even goal commitment (Klein, Cooper & Monahan, 2013). In this study, we suggest that according to their level of EC, individuals will interpret differently these behaviors depending on how goals are set.

As mentioned, individuals with low EC are more susceptible to experience negative emotions as they L. Monzani et al

6.25% were grad students. Their participation was one way to satisfy a course requirement. As an alternative, the students could choose class-related exercises to satisfy this course requirement. 67.8% of the participants were female, and 32.2% were male. Their age ranged from 18 to 47 years, with a mean of 22.75 years and a standard deviation of 4.81 years. At the time of the experiment, 65.7% of the participants only attended university, while 34.4% were employed and attended part-time university.

Materials

struggle to cope with environmental pressures. In a work situation, they tend to cope negatively and take defensive stands in decision-making (Zeidner, Matthews & Roberts, 2004). Hence, these individuals should perceive participation in goal setting as another source of anxiety, negatively influencing their levels of trust in their leader (Dunn & Schweitzer, 2005). In terms of trust related information, these individuals should judge more trustworthy a leader who unilaterally provides a clear goal than those who actively request their participation in the goal setting process.

On the other hand, the opposite should occur for individuals with high levels of EC. These individuals tend to report higher levels of self-efficacy (Chan, 2004), are more effective at communicating their ideas and intentions in an assertive way (Zeidner, Matthews, & Roberts, 2004). They will perceive participation in goal setting as a sign of leader benevolence, and not as an additional source of anxiety. In consequence, we expect them to report higher levels of trust in the leader under a participative goal setting.

The above leads to formulate the following hypotheses:Hypothesis 1: In early trust episodes, followers’ emotional attention, clarity and repair will positively predict their level of trust in leadership.

Hypothesis 2: Directive goal setting will interact with followers’ emotional competencies (emotional attention, clarity and repair) in predicting trust in leadership in later trust episodes. Specifically, individuals with lower levels of emotional competencies will report higher levels of trust in leadership in a directive goals setting condition.

Hypothesis 3: Participative goal setting will interact with followers’ emotional competencies (emotional attention, clarity and repair) in predicting trust in leadership in later trust episodes. Specifically, individuals with higher levels of emotional competencies will report higher levels of trust in leadership in a participative goals setting condition.

Method

Participants

The sample was composed of 240 students at the University of Valencia (Spain). Twelve participants were discarded due to data recording errors. The final experimental sample consisted of 228 students. All participants were psychology students enrolled in different courses related to work and organizational psychology. Of all the participants, 56.25% were in their first year, 37.5% were about to graduate and

All the participants worked individually on a PC in a common room that accommodated 14 participants per shift. To minimize experimenter interference bias, the first author used Microsoft Access 2007® and Visual Basic for Applications® (VBA) to design a software that made all the assignments to conditions, manipulations, work sessions, task feedback and questionnaires. All data were stored in a university server to which only the researchers had access (figures 1 and 2).

Pilot testing

For pilot testing purposes, 10 students from a post-graduate master in Work, Organizational and Personnel Psychology undertook the experiment as participants. All the participants provided feedback on their experience in the experiment. Based on their feedback, minor changes were made in the software and the order of the trials.

Design and Procedure

Three experimental conditions were necessary to test the hypotheses. We manipulated the variable “goal setting type” following the goal setting literature to obtain three levels. One level, with unspecific goals (control), another level with a unilaterally directive goals and a third level with a participative setting condition, in which participants could set their own goals, in terms of expected outputs and required time (Unspecific or “Do your best” vs. directive goals vs. participative goal setting). After removing the 12 lost cases due to missing data, the final sample included 75 participants in the unspecific goal setting condition; the directive goal condition had 77 participants; and the participative goal setting condition had 76 participants.No information about goals was displayed in our reference group under the unspecific goal condition, and participants were just indicated to do the best they could. Participants in the directive goal setting condition were told how many ideas were required as an output and what time available they had for performing each task, not being able to allocate extra time to a particular trial or decrease the number of expected ideas. Finally, in the participative goal setting condition, participants could allocate more time to a single task at expense of the overall work session time or increase their expected output in the brainstorming exercises.

The experiment consisted of three parts: an initial baseline measurement and two work sessions, with seven days between each session. After each session, the experimenter administered post-session questionnaires.

Emotional Competencies, Goals & Trust in Leadership

5Figure 1. Examples of task-specific goal setting type manipulation.