IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v15y2023i4p3392-d1066577.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Being an Emotional Business Leader in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Importance of Emotions during a Crisis

Author

Listed:
  • Simona Margheritti

    (Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, 20126 Milano, Italy)

  • Andrea Gragnano

    (Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, 20126 Milano, Italy)

  • Raffaella Villa

    (Mosaic Consulting, 20123 Milano, Italy)

  • Michele Invernizzi

    (Mosaic Consulting, 20123 Milano, Italy)

  • Marco Ghetti

    (Mosaic Consulting, 20123 Milano, Italy)

  • Massimo Miglioretti

    (Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, 20126 Milano, Italy)

Abstract

The COVID-19 crisis has brought about massive and sudden changes in the way people work and has created new emotional strains on workers. For this reason, being an emotional business leader is necessary for an organization’s survival and employees’ well-being. This qualitative study aims: (1) to explore the quality of emotions expressed by business leaders during the COVID-19 crisis, (2) to go into detail on how business leaders managed their own emotions, and (3) to investigate how they managed emotions shown by employees in their company. We interviewed 38 business leaders from 11 Italian companies. The main emotion reported by the leaders we interviewed was anxiety, caused in part by the development of the pandemic and related to uncertainty about the future. Results also showed that some leaders considered emotions as a secondary matter, or something to overcome for the good of their role. Other leaders showed a higher level of emotional intelligence and were able to empathize with their followers, communicate their vision and feelings, and create positive and constructive relationships. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are also discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Simona Margheritti & Andrea Gragnano & Raffaella Villa & Michele Invernizzi & Marco Ghetti & Massimo Miglioretti, 2023. "Being an Emotional Business Leader in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Importance of Emotions during a Crisis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-18, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:4:p:3392-:d:1066577
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/4/3392/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/4/3392/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bowers, Melissa R. & Hall, J. Reggie & Srinivasan, Mandyam M., 2017. "Organizational culture and leadership style: The missing combination for selecting the right leader for effective crisis management," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 60(4), pages 551-563.
    2. Iraj Soltani & Mehdi Shahsavari & Mehran Moradi, 2014. "The Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Crisis Management Capabilities Case Study: Small and Medium Enterprises in the Province of Isfahan," International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, Human Resource Management Academic Research Society, International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, vol. 4(1), pages 415-423, January.
    3. Lee, Changyu & Wong, Chi-Sum, 2019. "The effect of team emotional intelligence on team process and effectiveness," Journal of Management & Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(6), pages 844-859, November.
    4. Louise Metcalf & Sue Benn, 2013. "Leadership for Sustainability: An Evolution of Leadership Ability," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 112(3), pages 369-384, February.
    5. Carnevale, Joel B. & Hatak, Isabella, 2020. "Employee adjustment and well-being in the era of COVID-19: Implications for human resource management," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 183-187.
    6. Maja Strugar Jelača & Radmila Bjekić & Nemanja Berber & Marko Aleksić & Agneš Slavić & Slobodan Marić, 2022. "Impact of Managers’ Emotional Competencies on Organizational Performance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-18, July.
    7. Mubashir Majid Baba, 2020. "Navigating COVID-19 with emotional intelligence," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 66(8), pages 810-820, December.
    8. Suganthi Supramaniam & Kuppusamy Singaravelloo, 2021. "Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Organisational Performance: An Analysis in the Malaysian Public Administration," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-22, July.
    9. Jordan, Peter J & Lawrence, Sandra A, 2009. "Emotional intelligence in teams: Development and initial validation of the short version of the Workgroup Emotional Intelligence Profile (WEIP-S)," Journal of Management & Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(4), pages 452-469, September.
    10. Udayan Dhar & Han Liu & Richard E. Boyatzis, 2021. "Towards Personal Sustainability: Renewal as an Antidote to Stress," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(17), pages 1-12, September.
    11. Alessandra Montenegro & Marina Dobrota & Marija Todorovic & Teodora Slavinski & Vladimir Obradovic, 2021. "Impact of Construction Project Managers’ Emotional Intelligence on Project Success," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(19), pages 1-18, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Caterina Farao & Chiara Bernuzzi & Chiara Ronchetti, 2023. "The Crucial Role of Green Soft Skills and Leadership for Sustainability: A Case Study of an Italian Small and Medium Enterprise Operating in the Food Sector," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(22), pages 1-25, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Turgut Karakose & Ibrahim Kocabas & Ramazan Yirci & Stamatios Papadakis & Tuncay Yavuz Ozdemir & Murat Demirkol, 2022. "The Development and Evolution of Digital Leadership: A Bibliometric Mapping Approach-Based Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(23), pages 1-26, December.
    2. Manuel Pulido-Martos & Leire Gartzia & José María Augusto-Landa & Esther Lopez-Zafra, 2024. "Transformational leadership and emotional intelligence: allies in the development of organizational affective commitment from a multilevel perspective and time-lagged data," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 18(8), pages 2229-2253, August.
    3. Maja Strugar Jelača & Radmila Bjekić & Nemanja Berber & Marko Aleksić & Agneš Slavić & Slobodan Marić, 2022. "Impact of Managers’ Emotional Competencies on Organizational Performance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-18, July.
    4. Ni, Dan & Jiwen Song, Lynda & Zheng, Xiaoming & Zhu, Jinlong & Zhang, Mengyi & Xu, Lingxiao, 2022. "Extending a helping hand: How receiving gratitude makes a difference in employee performance during a crisis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 967-982.
    5. Ali Zackery & Joseph Amankwah-Amoah & Zahra Heidari Darani & Shiva Ghasemi, 2022. "COVID-19 Research in Business and Management: A Review and Future Research Agenda," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-32, August.
    6. Hassan Danaeefard & Ali Farazmand & Akram Dastyari, 2023. "The Iranian Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-9) Crisismanship: Understanding the Contributions of National Culture, Media, Technology and Economic System," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 23(4), pages 1661-1682, December.
    7. Irene Chu & Mai Chi Vu, 2022. "The Nature of the Self, Self-regulation and Moral Action: Implications from the Confucian Relational Self and Buddhist Non-self," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(1), pages 245-262, September.
    8. Isabel Marques & Zélia Serrasqueiro & Fernanda Nogueira, 2021. "Managers’ Competences in Private Hospitals for Investment Decisions during the COVID-19 Pandemic," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-14, February.
    9. Xie, Junyi & Ifie, Kemefasu & Gruber, Thorsten, 2022. "The dual threat of COVID-19 to health and job security – Exploring the role of mindfulness in sustaining frontline employee-related outcomes," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 216-227.
    10. Sangeeta Gupta & Poonam Devdutt & Urmila Jagadeeswari Itam, 2022. "Centrality of psychological well-being of IT employees during COVID-19 and beyond," DECISION: Official Journal of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Springer;Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, vol. 49(4), pages 365-380, December.
    11. Matata Ponyo Mapon & Jean-Paul K. Tsasa, 2021. "Leadership and Institutional Reforms," Papers 2101.08702, arXiv.org.
    12. Nicos A. Scordis & Yoshihiko Suzawa & Astrid Zwick & Lucia Ruckner, 2014. "Principles for Sustainable Insurance: Risk Management and Value," Risk Management and Insurance Review, American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 17(2), pages 265-276, September.
    13. Syamsul Hadi & Ana Faridiana & Kusuma Chandra Kirana & Ambar Lukitaningsih & Christina Heti Tri Rahmawati & Eni Purnasari & Nabila Wahyuningtyas, 2024. "Political Skill and Transactional Leadership on Employee Performance: The Mediating Effect of Organizational Work Culture," Economic Studies journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 4, pages 112-129.
    14. Nadia Kabbara & Hale Ozgit, 2023. "Effectiveness of resource management of Lebanese NGOs in response to COVID-19 and the Syrian crisis," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-11, December.
    15. Mohammad Hamsal & Diena Dwidienawati & Mohammad Ichsan & Ahmad Syamil & Bambang Trigunarsyah, 2022. "Multi-Perspective Approach to Building Team Resilience in Project Management—A Case Study in Indonesia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(20), pages 1-22, October.
    16. Shu Da & Silje Fossum Fladmark & Irina Wara & Marit Christensen & Siw Tone Innstrand, 2022. "To Change or Not to Change: A Study of Workplace Change during the COVID-19 Pandemic," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(4), pages 1-15, February.
    17. Leonidas C. Leonidou & Bilge Aykol & Jorma Larimo & Lida Kyrgidou & Paul Christodoulides, 2021. "Enhancing International Buyer-Seller Relationship Quality and Long-Term Orientation Using Emotional Intelligence: The Moderating Role of Foreign Culture," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 61(3), pages 365-402, June.
    18. Margherita, Alessandro & Elia, Gianluca & Klein, Mark, 2021. "Managing the COVID-19 emergency: A coordination framework to enhance response practices and actions," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    19. Jieun Lee, 2022. "Moral Hazard on Productivity Among Work-From-Home Workers Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic," Papers 2209.05684, arXiv.org.
    20. Leonel Prieto & Md Farid Talukder, 2023. "Resilient Agility: A Necessary Condition for Employee and Organizational Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-24, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:4:p:3392-:d:1066577. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.