Emotions for a Cause: How the Emotion Expression of Nonprofit Leaders Produces Follower Engagement and Loyalty

Organizational Purpose and Follower Outcomes

Organizational purpose has been fashioned as a highly motivating mechanism through which leaders motivate followers, sometimes even more influential than financial gain (Ghoshal & Moran, 1996). Conversely, the lack of meaning associated with the organizational purpose as interpreted by organizational actors is generative of unfavorable outcomes such as a lack of commitment and employee cynicism (Cartwright & Holmes, 2006).

While articulating a vision that transcends economic objectives is less challenging—perhaps even trite (Ghoshal, 2005)—enacting value-congruent behaviors is a formidable challenge for leaders, as human beings tend to satisfice (March & Simon, 1958) and select behaviors inconsistent with their values. A social-psychological study, for example, found that even individuals walking to deliver a speech about helping others were willing to ignore and even step over an ailing man in need of help, especially when they were manipulated to feel a sense of being in a hurry (Darley & Batson, 1973)—arguably the most common state of affairs for most leaders during their work day (Mintzberg, 1973). Organizational purpose seems to stimulate positive follower outcomes, especially when leaders enact behaviors corresponding with this purpose.

This phenomenon is especially prevalent in nonprofit organizations due to the social impact goals with which nonprofit missions are imbued. Previous research suggests that appealing to followers’ higher order motives is especially potent in nonprofit organizations (Riggio & Smith Orr, 2004). Individuals often elect to join nonprofits to transcend their economic self-interest and connect with their higher order values (Jeavons, 1992; Mason, 1996) distinct from those typically found in the private sector (Brainard & Siplon, 2004; Sanders, 2015). These values, when shared with other organizational members, create a collective identity (Chenhall, Hall, & Smith, 2016) that can be vital to the organization’s competitive advantage (Frumkin & Andre-Clark, 2000). For example, in a mixed-method study of nonprofit hospitals in the United States, a midlevel manager commented, “I don’t think there’s a person in this place that doesn’t believe in [the mission]” (McDonald, 2007, p. 263).

The Emotion-Related Behaviors of Nonprofit Leaders

Organizational events tend to generate affective consequences for followers (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). The leader expression of emotions that followers construe as incongruent with the leader’s declared values may be particularly harmful in organizations in which leaders promote a vision that appeals to followers’ higher order motives. Nonprofits are such organizations. As most nonprofit missions (implicitly or explicitly) emphasize the dignity and value of the individual, the leader display of negative affect, especially in its high-arousal forms such as anger, rage, or contempt, may be deemed by followers to be incongruent with the mission or organizational purpose.

This sense of inappropriateness of leader negative emotion expression is highly germane to this study, as emotions perceived as expectancy violations tend to produce adverse affective reaction in others, proportional in intensity to their perception of the deviance of the emotion, that is generative of counterproductive behavior (Van Kleef, Homan, & Cheshin, 2012). Hence, given that (a) nonprofit organizations tend to promote (implicit or explicit) organizational purposes that emphasize the humane treatment and respect of individuals, and that (b) followers tend to experience more favorable affective reactions to leader emotion expression corresponding with their perceptions of norm appropriateness, it stands to reason that the display of positive (negative) emotion by nonprofit leaders may produce beneficial (detrimental) follower outcomes. In fact, two survey studies of emotion in nonprofit German orchestras found that the display of positive emotion is a critical factor in effective nonprofit leadership (Rowold & Rohmann, 2008, 2009). These inclinations influenced this inductive process of scholarly investigation and the interview protocol.

Context

Qualitative research has been argued to be an appropriate methodological fit for the exploratory phase of investigating a thematic area in organizational research as it provides a foundation for future empirical and theoretical studies (Corbin & Strauss, 2015; Yin, 2009). In addition, the “extreme and enduring complexity of the leadership phenomenon” (Conger, 1998, p. 108) renders leadership a domain of scholarly inquiry in which an inductive approach can be useful independent of the life stage of the particular subtopic.

Given that organizational research on the emotion-related behaviors of nonprofit leaders and the organizational display norms of nonprofits is in a nascent stage of its development, a grounded theory methodology is utilized to explore the research question of this study:

Data Analysis

Theoretical sampling

To better understand how nonprofit leaders express their emotions and the resultant outcomes, the executive directors (EDs) of two nonprofit organizations were interviewed. As per grounded theory methodology, the data collection and data analysis phases of this study were iterative: initial data collection was followed by data analysis which, through in-depth coding, led to early-stage constructs (Corbin & Strauss, 2015). While reviewing the data and emergent constructs, questions about the relationships between these constructs delineated the emerging theory. These questions led to subsequent data collection. Hence, initial data collection efforts with EDs stimulated questions about how their followers might construe the emotion-related behaviors of these leaders. Without understanding follower perceptions, it became apparent, neither would the reasons leaders adapted and integrated specific emotion-related behaviors into their personal leadership styles be understood.

The evolution of the sample from (only) formal leaders to (both) formal leaders and their midlevel managerial reports (many of whom were also formal or informal leaders) and even a few lower level reports was guided by earlier work that suggests that one of the main challenges of qualitative research in leadership has been its exclusive focus on data gathering from senior managers or formal leaders. This leadership-as-highest-status emphasis is problematic, as “the research focus should be firstly on the interactions between people which result in change, rather than primarily on the behaviors or characteristics of the people themselves” (Parry, 1998, p. 99). Hence, the unique features and properties of the leadership relationship become important.

Including the direct reports of the nonprofit leaders in the sample enabled the reduction of common method biases such as common source bias and social desirability bias (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003). These methodological issues set new parameters for Phase 2 of the data collection, during which an additional 32 interviews with nonprofit EDs and two to four senior staff of each of their organizations were completed. Phase 2 took place in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia in the offices of eight nonprofit organizations with a wide range of organization sizes and organizational life stages. The 10 nonprofit organizations sampled in the two phases of the study provide full-time employment to 1,046 individuals, vary significantly in their fields of activity, and collectively generate from US$38 to US$159 million per year. More information on these organizations is available in Table 1.

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Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics of the 34 Interviewees and 10 Organizations Sampled.

Field of activity	Percent of total interviewees	Number of nonprofit organizations	Number of employees in organization	Annual budget (millions of U.S. dollars)
Social entrepreneurship	12	1	450	10-50
Domestic violence	12	1	38	3-10
Education	9	1	17	1-3
Community development	9	1	39	3-10
Youth development	15	1	225	10-50
Environment	12	1	9	1-3
Outdoors/recreation	15	1	4	1-3
Disability advocacy	15	2	50/130	3-10/3-10
Animal welfare	3	1	84	3-10

All 34 respondents were currently working for a nonprofit organization. Their tenure ranged from 6 months to 36 years (M = 7.4; SD = 8.7). In all, 56% (19) of participants were women. The 34 participants in this study manage a total of 1,216 people (one participant manages another nonprofit organization in addition to serving as board chair of one of the organizations in this study), ranging from 0 to 450 (M = 31.9; SD = 95.1). A total of 41% of the interviewees had only worked for nonprofits in their previous careers, 3% had only worked for for-profits, and 56% had work experience in both nonprofit and for-profit organizations. The similarities and differences between how interviewees perceived emotion-imbued leader behaviors and organizational display norms were examined, which strengthened the precision, stability, validity, and trustworthiness of the data (McNamee & Peterson, 2015; Miles, Huberman, & Saldana, 2014). After 34 interviews, sufficient repetition of interviewee data with respect to nonprofit leader emotion-related behaviors and display norms was experienced, which indicated a state of theoretical saturation (Corbin & Strauss, 2015; Glaser & Strauss, 1967) had been reached in which further interviews would not yield significant further insights.

Procedure

Utilizing a widely practiced interview strategy, initial questions rooted in gaps in the literature were developed for the interview protocol (Lu Knutsen & Brower, 2010; Spradley, 1979; Weng, 2016). These questions were quickly deviated from, however, using an iterative, nondirective “courtroom questioning” technique (Ozcan & Eisenhardt, 2009) to allow participants to share what they care about most (Huber, 1985), which was also what they were most likely to recount in graphic detail, generating vivid anecdotes for this study. Perhaps most fascinating about interviewing leaders and their direct reports in Phase 2 was that leader and follower statements alike were so often corroborated by the corresponding interviewee(s). Evidence of this correspondence is abundant in the data analysis section.

Each interview lasted from 60 to 120 min and was recorded and transcribed verbatim. Interview transcripts ranged from 12 to 19 pages. A total of more than 500 single-spaced pages of interviews were accumulated and subsequently reviewed and coded for a theme analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Following previous qualitative scholars (Corley & Gioia, 2004; Gioia, Corley, & Hamilton, 2012), several steps were taken to ensure the validity of the data and findings, including the meticulous management of transcripts, contact records, and field notes and the implementation of an agreement analysis of independent coders. During a series of weekly meetings with a departmental colleague, codes were developed that referred to emergent constructs. Both the most recurrent subthemes and those that seemed to tell a coherent story were parsimoniously sought, enabling the achievement of the goal of “theorized storytelling,” a critical objective for high-quality inductive research (Golden-Biddle & Locke, 2007). All informant data were then categorized as per these 11 themes, which became the constructs of this inductive study described in the subsequent sections of this article.

A departmental colleague and the author independently coded more than 90% of the socially constructed organizational events identically (the departmental colleague coded more than 16% of the total transcripts, deemed sufficient for an agreement analysis [Owens & Hekman, 2012]) and subsequently resolved discrepancies and clarified researcher biases through lengthy discussions (Creswell, 2007). All codes were cited in a minimum of 18% and as many as 91% of all interviews. The conceptual model, which reflects how the data were interpreted, reduced, and organized, is shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1.

The antecedents, contingencies, and follower outcomes of the interplay of the emotion-related behaviors of nonprofit leaders and nonprofit organizational display norms.

Cult of the Positive

An organizational emotion display norm interpretively referred to as the “Cult of the Positive” seems to prevail in the sampled nonprofits. A director of finance who previously worked in both the private sector and government reported, “I’ve seen much more expression of positive emotion here . . . more positive emotions, not necessarily more emotions.” In addition, a deputy director stated,

In general, the strong emotional leader will have more success in the nonprofit space because the people are more open and receptive to getting those types of positive emotional messages and at a very basic human level, that’s a lot of what would motivate them to continue to work and why they probably got into that space in the first place.

The Cult of the Positive organizational display norm is accordingly defined as the cognitive belief that nonprofit organizational members should predominately express positive emotions.

Proscription of the Negative

In parallel to the Cult of the Positive display norm, both leader and follower accounts elaborate the existence of another emotion display norm in nonprofits that organizational members should abstain from expressing negative emotion. This norm is interpretively referred to as the “Proscription of the Negative.” Both leaders and followers suggest that the display of negative emotion is not viewed favorably by nonprofit actors. A director of communications states,

This is not a place where anger really happens . . . If there was a lot more anger day-to-day here, it would create an environment that would be tough to be in day in and day out, having a team atmosphere here where everyone supports each other as needed makes the challenging tasks a little easier.

Both leader and follower accounts reveal the level of this proscription is very high:

The type of people that are often drawn to nonprofit work have a lower tolerance for an aggressive, and therefore perhaps negative leadership style as opposed to . . . I worked in publishing, for example, and there was not a lot of love and positive energy. It was all about . . . we were a start-up and there was a lot of pressure . . . but there was not a lot of praise and I think that the expectation was you get a paycheck every other Friday and that’s your positive energy. (An ED)

The Role of Leader Metaperceptions in the Elaboration of Leader Emotion-Related Behaviors

Numerous respondent accounts are reflective of leaders’ “metaperceptions.” In this study, metaperceptions refer to leader perceptions of follower perceptions of appropriate leader behavior. It is possible that nonprofit leaders form interpretive biases in relation to follower perceptions of how effective nonprofit leaders ought to express emotion, an important component of a follower’s implicit theories of leadership, which are cognitive biases of how a leader should act (Lord, 1985). These leaders may consequently adhere to specific emotion display norms formulated by these biases to procure favorable effectiveness ratings from their followers. These interpretive biases—which, in this case, influence leader emotion display—are referred to as metaperceptions. Due to these metaperceptions, leader emotion expression is likely to be significantly influenced by their perceptions of the “emotion demands” followers exact of them.

These interpretive biases or leader metaperceptions and their resultant action tendencies provide an interesting application of the sociological theory of structuration, in which social structure influences individual agent action, which in turn elaborates social structure (Giddens, 1979). In this case, the leader’s cognitive construal of the emotion display requirements sets parameters on the leader’s emotion expression, which in turn elaborates these display rules. This structuration process is graphically depicted in Figure 1 in the curved arrows representing leader behavior-norm congruence, which is elaborated in this meso-level framework by the bidirectional influence relationship between (individual level) leader emotion-related behaviors and (organizational level) display norms.

Frequent Display of Positive Affect

Both leader and follower accounts suggest that there is an expectation in nonprofits that leaders will adhere to the Cult of the Positive and Proscription of the Negative organizational display norms. Specifically, it appears that followers expect their leaders to predominately express positive emotion and abstain from displaying negative emotion. Sample statements include,

Most of the time [my ED expresses her emotions] in a positive way. She likes to look positively at things and she really likes to emphasize . . . that we are doing great work in the organization . . . that the staff is great, we’re doing a great job, the organization is great, etc. (A director of finance)

[My ED] is actually good at positive expression. He’s lively. I think he may be like me, like most humans, doesn’t want to have the bad discussions but he’s very good at giving the good discussions. (A deputy director)

(This ED’s unwillingness to express negative emotions, although seemingly innocuous, may produce some detrimental organizational outcomes. More on this topic in the Discussion section.)

The leader self-reported accounts of the valence of their emotion expression corroborate those of followers and reinforce the emphasis of nonprofit leaders on positive emotion display. A deputy director remarked,

I’m comfortable expressing positive emotion. I might exude negative emotion sometimes, I don’t know. But when I’m talking with co-workers, I’m much more comfortable saying, “You did a great job,” “This is fantastic,” “This is so helpful. Thank you.” That comes out of my mouth a whole lot easier.

(Each of the previous two examples reveal a nonprofit leader who may be overregulating negative emotions; see the Discussion for the possible organizational detriments of such practices.)

Infrequent Display of Negative Affect

Abundant comments from followers point to nonprofit leaders’ reluctance to display negative emotions. A community outreach director remarked about her ED, “I can’t necessarily say he really expresses negative emotions towards his direct reports.” Similarly, a program assistant exclaimed about her ED, “I don’t see the negative sides of [my ED]. I always see the positives of him in my interactions.”

The unwillingness of some nonprofit leaders to express negative affect seemed to reach incredulously high levels. According to an executive assistant who had been working for her ED for 8 years, “I’ve never seen [my ED] mad . . . or upset . . . or yell at someone, ever.” This seemingly improbable record of zero verbal negative emotion expression was corroborated in her ED’s self-reported account: “I’ve heard of people who have worked other places and said that sometimes the director yells . . . I’ve never yelled in my thirty-six years here at anyone for anything. I’ve never risen my voice to anybody.”

Perceived Organizational Social Purpose

Although there are numerous definitions of what comprises an organizational social purpose, this study takes a social constructionist position that emphasizes the perspectives of both leaders and followers (Meindl, 1995) in construing the strength of their organization’s social purpose. Interviewees conveyed the strength of their perceived organizational social purpose:

People know that we’re driving together for a common cause . . . at a nonprofit in particular, whenever you lose sight of your mission, you’ve lost sight of everything. You have to be mission driven and you want to make sure that over the course of your day, as hard as you’re working, that you’re all working towards that common goal and you want to make sure that that common goal is very consistently expressed and understood. (A marketing director)

Statements from participants suggest that nonprofit actors are acutely aware of the social purpose of their organizations, and this cognizance is generative of a general expectation exacted of nonprofit leaders to adhere to the Cult of the Positive display norm:

There is a sense of purpose, especially in the non-profit space, where people are drawn to these jobs certainly not for salary in most instances, but because of the purpose and the mission of the organization. There’s a higher expectation for the environment to be positive, to be supportive as opposed to when you’re working for a for-profit, there is maybe more of a financial transactional expectation that may be the first priority or the first expectation. (An ED)

According to this ED, the link between the strength of an organization’s social purpose and the Cult of the Positive emotion display norm is so strong as to almost become impenetrable:

I think that there is an expectation around a positive environment that’s supportive, that puts people first. If you don’t deliver that, it’s at your own peril . . . and in even perhaps more than a for-profit organization . . . can quickly spiral into a bad morale issue . . . there is a sort of “don’t penetrate the positive” mentality.

How perceived organizational social purpose and another antecedent in this study, perceived self-sacrifice, seem to operate in mutual juxtaposition will now be explored.

Perceived Self-Sacrifice

Not only do nonprofit employees earn less wages than their for-profit counterparts, but they also receive fewer bonuses and have less access to opportunities for promotion (LeRoux & Feeney, 2013). The self-report data suggest a perpetual, ongoing dialectic between leaders’ perceptions that followers do not join nonprofits for the financial rewards, and that they do join because of their construal of the organization’s social purpose. Followers linked both to the Cult of the Positive and Proscription of the Negative organizational display norms:

Nonprofits may be different because you have more people who are working for the cause as opposed to the financial aspect of it. And so, I seek out a more positive relationship with my supervisor as opposed to, “Okay, I need to earn to pay my bills.” Maybe in that situation, you tolerate the more negative leadership styles a little more . . . maybe you accept it like, “Okay, this is what it is.” (A program assistant)

The link between leaders’ metaperception of followers’ perceived self-sacrifice and the leader display of (reluctance to display) positive (negative) emotions was supported by various informants. A Board Chair of one organization and ED of another share this metaperception and link it to one of our follower outcomes, loyalty:

You can’t lose sight of the fact that too much negative [leader emotion display], somebody’s going to leave because there are other opportunities . . . The way you reward them is through feeding their need to make a difference, to feel like they are part of something larger than themselves, that they’re changing the world. That’s why people come to work for social purpose enterprises. And so, you have to really think about, no matter how pissed you are or disappointed you are, how you use that lash because you want them to know that they didn’t meet your expectations but they’re there because they view this as a life calling and you have to feed that. Absolutely.

Engagement

The most broadly accepted definition of work engagement (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1995; Rich, Lepine, & Crawford, 2010) is an employee’s full investment of their holistic self―including their physical, cognitive, and affective energies―into a work role performance (Kahn, 1990). Informant accounts suggest that in nonprofits, employee engagement is generated by the frequent leader display of positive affect and the infrequent leader display of negative affect. Substantiating the favorable influence of leader positive affect on follower engagement, a program assistant stated, “[My supervisor] is very encouraging. She’s very to the point. It’s inspiring to work with her. It encourages me to do better.” The informant accounts revealed that nonprofit leaders express positive emotion to foster follower engagement. For instance, a deputy director shared that an intention of her positive emotion display is that “when somebody walks out of my office, I don’t want them feeling bad. I imagine that they continue doing work better or at the same level than I’m reinforcing them at.”

Similarly, a finance manager shares how she manages a subordinate: “I let her know . . . when she does something good . . . I thank her, always.” Referencing her emphasis on positive emotion and reluctance to express negative emotion even when her subordinate does not perform well, she continues, “If something needs to be fixed, I always try to take care for the good part and then give my feedback about the issues that we need to fix.” When asked her intention in displaying positive emotions toward her subordinate in such situations, she referred to her objective of sustaining her subordinate’s engagement: “[So] that she will be happy . . . she will be okay doing the work that she’s doing.”

The detrimental influence of the leader display of negative emotions on follower engagement is substantiated by numerous follower reports. For example, a program director shares,

When [my ED] expresses defensiveness, anger, stubbornness . . . it’s always the negative memories that you would talk about or that continue versus the positive ones . . . And I would say that it’s poisoning the well. It kills everything because the vibe, it kills the culture, it kills the excitement and passion in everyone else. It sucks the life out of the room.

Another program director confirms the toxic effects of leader negative emotion display on follower engagement:

It becomes a problem as far as the [leader’s] expression of negative emotion . . . it causes me to shut down where I don’t even want to participate in anything going on . . . because I’m in shock that someone else would present themselves in that negative manner.

Perhaps the most vivid and poignant example of follower engagement being squashed by a leader who frequently expresses negative emotion comes from a marketing director:

When [my ED] is real stressed, I start questioning and feeling that I don’t think she believes that I am the right person for the job or that I’m doing the job. And it’s like I’m completely off my game, I can’t do a good job. . . [I] shut down. . . I reread an email ten times and I overlook things that I would never send . . . and then, my job is marketing so, I need to be creative, I need to be innovative and. . . it kind of spoils my creativity.

Loyalty

Instances of follower loyalty were noted as the cognitive belief of the interviewee that a follower is committed to the organization and does not have high turnover intention. Participant accounts suggest follower loyalty is produced by the frequent leader display of positive affect. According to a divisional director,

People end up staying with us for a few years and then perhaps longer than they would if it wasn’t that kind of environment where I care about you, I care about the work you do and I want to acknowledge it.

A community outreach director also made the connection between his ED’s frequent display of positive emotions and his loyalty to the organization:

[Our ED] is someone who’s very comfortable showing emotion in the work and especially this concept of love and family, that we’re a family, that love is a driving force in this work . . . I’m not sure if there’s another leader in this city [Washington, D.C.], no matter what they were offering . . . basically, my incentive to be here is to try to help [our ED] with this mission, succeed or fail, help her with this mission because I believe in her and . . . the calmness and serenity that I get from knowing that working with her is I’m in the right place.

The ED of this organization corroborates her community outreach director’s claim that she (the ED) emphasizes positive emotion expression and an unwillingness to display negative emotions: “I’ve always had to keep it positive and when I know that I’m knee-deep in manure, for all of us to grow beyond that, I can’t allow my neck to sink below, to sink into negativity.” Clearly, her emphasis on positive emotion expression has paid off in terms of fostering loyalty among her staff.

As anticipated, the leader display of negative emotion had a strong detrimental influence on loyalty. Another community outreach director expresses how negative emotion, even if combined with positive emotion, lingers in the minds of followers and impels them to question their loyalty to and ultimately leave their jobs:

I used to work for a tiny nonprofit. I was there for two years. And it’s a very small organization run by two recovering alcoholics, both very passionate and dynamic people but some of that drama stayed. Neither of them had drank for years but there still. . . just seemed to be a lot of drama . . . I didn’t like it at all . . . I was happy to leave.

Similarly, a development director recounts working in a previous nonprofit organization (also sampled in this study) with high turnover, which she attributed to the ED: “He’s an interesting man but he can also be a really difficult person to work with. And so, there would be a lot of senior managers that would go through and just get really frustrated with the situation.”

Self-reported data suggest that cultural forces may be at work in influencing the relationship between leader negative emotion display and follower loyalty. A Latin American finance manager, for instance, recounts a previous (also Latin American) ED who had a short fuse and often expressed anger toward a senior leadership team that was “mostly American.” As a result, “we had a lot of staff leave . . . almost all the management team left . . . it was hard to work with.” She, however, stayed: “I really didn’t have a lot of issues [with him].” (More on possible cultural influences on this study in the Discussion.)

In general, self-reported accounts support the notion that leader behaviors associated with the display of negative emotions impede both follower engagement and loyalty. According to a program manager,

You can express your disappointment in an employee to such a large extent that they feel undervalued or they feel that they’re not appreciated and then they might stop performing altogether [reduced engagement] or they might leave the organization [reduced loyalty] . . . it can have negative consequences.