We talk a lot about the importance of managers recognizing their employees’ emotions. But the flow often seems to go only one way. An upset employee deserves to have their discomfort noticed. An upset boss? We change the subject. In a study published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Christina Bradley and Lindred Greer show that recognizing emotions can also work upward in the hierarchy. And that this small departure from the unwritten rules of work can have surprisingly useful effects.
The researchers conducted three preregistered studies. A first experiment with 340 workers showed that people were less likely to recognize their boss’s emotions than those of their colleagues or employees. A second study, involving 137 employee-manager dyads, found the same pattern: on a scale from 1 to 5, upward emotional acknowledgment averaged 2.77, compared with 3.50 in the other direction. This was not simply because employees were less close to their boss or had less exposure to their emotions. The main mechanism was normative. We are less likely to believe that it is our role to attend to the emotions of someone above us.
The third study is the most interesting. The researchers placed 191 three-person teams in a negotiation simulation. When the two lower-ranking members were explicitly instructed to acknowledge the leader’s emotions, the leader subsequently acknowledged theirs more often. Downward emotional acknowledgment averaged 3.41, compared with 3.04 in the no-instruction group and 2.75 when employees were told to avoid acknowledging the leader’s emotions. This reciprocal response was then associated with better team performance. In other words, noticing that your boss seems hesitant, enthusiastic, or concerned does more than simply support the boss. It can change the emotional dynamics of the entire team. A team where someone can simply say, “You seem concerned about this decision,” may have a small advantage over one where everyone acts as though the title of boss comes with some mysterious form of emotional self-sufficiency.