Feel Free, Be Yourself: Authentic Leadership, Emotional Expression, and Employee Authenticity

Authenticity is a relational construct, but research to date has largely overlooked the relationship between authentic leadership and follower authenticity. In our first study, comprising 162 leader-follower dyads, we examined the conditions that enhance followers' authenticity in regard to the leader. We found that deviations from prototypical leader emotions (e.g., shame) reinforce the relationship between authentic leadership and employees' unbiased self-presentation. Contrary to predictions, no such effect was found for followers' ingratiation. Our second study examined the generalization of the effect of authentic leadership to the service context, in which authentic self-expression is inhibited by organizational display rules. This diary study of 380 service employees' emotional experiences and authenticity in service encounters found that authentic leadership reinforced the relationship of employees' positive emotions with authentic self-expression.