Anxiety is pervasive in contemporary work environments and commonly expressed in interpersonal interactions. This includes the expression of anxiety by followers to their leaders (FAE). While the extant literature centers on how such negative emotion affects themselves or how anxiety from leaders affects their followers, we shift the literature to understand how followers’ expression of anxiety affects leaders’ outcomes. Drawing on the emotions as social information (EASI) framework, we theorize that FAE may impact leaders through both negative (affective) and positive (cognitive inference) pathways. Specifically, we propose that FAE increases leader anxiety but also makes the leader feel trusted which has countervailing impacts on leader insomnia and effectiveness. We also suggest that servant leadership functions as a critical contingency that amplifies the impact of FAE on the negative and positive pathways to leader outcomes. Our results from a pre-registered two-wave, multi-source field survey study of 286 leader-follower dyads and a pre-registered experiment from188 leaders showed the countervailing effects of FAE on leader insomnia and effectiveness. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications for research on anxiety, emotion expression, and leadership.

This research has been conducted in conjunction with Xin Liu and Bo Lv of Renmin University as well as Long Zhang of Hunan University.