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One of several studies that explored the relationship between leadership and sleep deprivation. This looked at how sleep influences charismatic leadership via two controlled lab studies that manipulated the sleep of either leaders or followers.

Providing background it’s said:

·        Charismatic Leadership (CL) is defined as “inspiring followers through intellectual stimulation which fosters an impression that the leader and their mission are extraordinary” (p1191)

·        CL is associated with many positive outcomes like leader performance, retention, organisational effectiveness, and follower outcomes like job satisfaction, helping behaviour and job performance

·        The emotional labour model of leadership holds that leader emotional displays, which can be authentic emotional displays and emotional displays manipulated through emotional labour—influence followers and follower perceptions of leader charisma

·        Emotional displays (affect) include verbal and nonverbal expressions of positive emotion, like smiling or a warm tone of voice. This can occur through positive affect experiences or expending emotional labour as indicated above

·        Emotional labour includes surface acting and deep acting. Surface acting “entails modifying affective displays without changing the underlying affective experience” whereas deep acting “entails modifying affective displays themselves to match a desired display” (p1192)

·        Therefore, “leaders can authentically display positive affect, engage in deep acting to display positive affect, or engage in surface acting to display positive affect, and any of these can aid perceptions of charisma” (p1192)

·        Regarding affect, the prefrontal cortex and amygdala are said to be particularly important for the experience and regulation of affect. Sleep deprivation has been shown to disrupt activity in the amygdala and “alters the functional connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala” (p1192), thus disrupting the display or interpretation of affect

·        Moreover, they note that sleep deprived individuals “notoriously underestimate the effects of their sleep deprivation” (p1193) and may attribute their own low levels of affect to more “salient” or obvious external factors, like their leaders rather than their sleep deprivation

·        Further, when followers interact with their leader and experience a low level of positive affect, they may also attribute the low positive affect to a lack of charisma or personality traits of the leader rather than situationally sleep related

·        In all, they hypothesise that sleep deprivation will be a hindrance to the leader’s engagement in charisma and to the follower’s social judgement of leader charisma

Results

The results found that “leader sleep deprivation reduced the charismatic leadership via reduced deep acting” and sleep deprivation in followers “lowered attributions of leader charisma via reduced follower state positive affect” (pp1198-96).

Additionally, sleep deprivation in followers also reduces follower attributions of leader charisma, suggesting that “it is more difficult for leaders to inspire sleep deprived followers” (p1196, emphasis added).

They note that existing relationships show how the experience and display of affect by leaders influences the perceptions of charisma among followers, but importantly sleep is an important driver of charisma through emotion-based processes.

Thus, and easier said than done,  “In order to avoid being perceived as less charismatic by their employees, leaders should reduce not only their own sleep deprivation but also that of their employees” (p1196).

Further the authors note that organisations should aim to increase the level of state positive affect across both leaders and followers.

Leaders should “not only engage in deep acting to induce their own and followers’ positive affect, but also reduce the awestruck effect” (p1196). The awestruck effect describes the “magnetic effect” that leaders can have on followers and thereby lead to followers suppressing their own emotions in response to the magnetic and charismatic leadership (which at the same time doesn’t individually consider needs of followers). This can come about by nurturing employees to share and experience their own individual positive affect.

Authors: Barnes, C. M., Guarana, C. L., Nauman, S., & Kong, D. T. (2016. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(8), 1191.

Study link: https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/apl0000123

Link to the LinkedIn article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/too-tired-inspire-inspired-sleep-deprivation-ben-hutchinson