The power of perceiving: exploring the associations between empathic accuracy and leader-member exchange

Emotion theories across psychological disciplines (social, organizational, and clinical) posit that the accurate perception of others’ emotions facilitates the achievement of various relational, performance and wellbeing related outcomes. In the organizational psychology domain, scholars have traditionally assessed this ability through the use of static, individualistic, maximum performance-based tests. Such approaches, however, overlook the dynamic, social context in which emotions are expressed and perceived. To address this limitation, we implemented the Unstructured Dyadic Interaction Paradigm, a protocol typically used in the study of romantic relationships. This protocol captures how empathic accuracy (EA) – the ability to accurately perceive the feelings of an interaction partner – manifests in real interactions. In our study, 49 leader-follower dyads participated in discussions designed to elicit negative and positive emotions and completed measures of EA and Leader-Member Exchange (LMX). Leader EA was positively associated with follower ratings of LMX quality during the negative discussion scenario, but not during the positive discussion scenario. Our findings contribute to the emotions and leadership literatures by addressing a previous theory-methods misfit, offering first evidence of the importance of EA in the work context, and by pointing to potential boundary conditions of this ability.