Impact of leadership styles on Emotional regulation strategies of followers in leader-follower relationship

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in incidents of disobedience, fratricide, dissatisfaction within the society in general and the uniformed organization in particular, as a direct fallout of high levels of stress, which has resulted in a number of psycho-medical difficulties for those involved. Given this context, there is a pressing need to explore emotional regulation (ER) and leadership in today’s fast-paced, stress elevated environments such as that prevailing in the uniformed organizations. What follows therefore is an empirical study with special focus on Para-military forces; the Study contributes to the growing body of research on emotional regulation strategies by analyzing the impact of leadership styles on emotional regulation startegies of followers in leader-follower relations and how leadership styles affect followers' emotion control domains in the context of paramilitary forces. A sample of 250 officers and 16 leaders from the paramilitary forces has been collected through structured pre-established scales. The results indicate that there is a significant difference in the expressive suppression and no significant difference in the cognitive reappraisal strategies among followers subjected to the two leadership styles viz Authoritarian and Democratic.