Leader self-regulation

Abstract

In this dissertation, I discuss leader self-regulation from several perspectives, with a specific focus on leader emotion regulation and leader self-leadership. Firstly, I develop a theoretical framework, which is based on both control theory (Carver & Scheier, 1998) and the four levels of self-regulation described by Lord et al. (2010). This framework serves to disentangle the four related concepts of self-regulation, emotion regulation, self-control, and self-leadership. Secondly, I use the framework to provide a clear definition of successful self-leadership, which is based on the concept of successful emotion regulation (e.g., Aldao et al., 2015; Bonanno & Burton, 2013). Thirdly, I describe a new rationale for operationalizing successful self-regulation, which I then apply to successful emotion regulation and successful self-leadership within the work context. Both new scales showed mostly satisfactory psychometric properties, test-retest reliabilities, as well as convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity. Fourthly, I report the results of a mixed-source study in which the two new scales were used to assess the consequences of leaders’ emotion regulation and self-leadership skills. Using a sample of N = 315 leader–follower dyads, I found that both leader emotion regulation and self-leadership had significant positive associations with the constructive leadership style of instrumental leadership, as well as having significant negative associations with active destructive leadership. Additionally, self-leadership had a significant negative association with passive destructive leadership (i.e., laissez-faire leadership). Furthermore, both types of leader self-regulation were indirectly associated with follower job satisfaction via instrumental leadership. Finally, I examined the potential relationships between three heart rate variability measures, including cardiac coherence, and self-reported emotion regulation in a sample of N = 37 students. However, even though the model of neurovisceral integration predicts a positive association between heart rate variability measures and the capacity for emotion regulation (Thayer & Lane, 2000, 2009), I could not detect any associations between emotion regulation and the three heart rate variability measures used in this study.