Paradoxical leadership: the role of leader emotions and the mediating effect of paradoxical mindset on followers’ performance

Purpose Research on paradoxical leadership, an approach in which leaders exhibit seemingly contradictory yet interdependent behaviors, has gained significant traction in recent years. However, empirical studies on the emotional antecedents and outcomes of paradoxical leadership are rather rare, offering scarce insights into how managers can become paradoxical leaders and how paradoxical leadership affects followers’ role-based job performance. To address this gap, this article demonstrates that leaders’ positive and negative trait emotions play a pertinent role in being a paradoxical leader and provides evidence that paradoxical leadership has a positive indirect effect on followers’ performance through their paradoxical mindset. Design/methodology/approach This study surveyed 313 subordinates regarding their leaders’ trait affect and paradoxical leadership behaviors as well as the subordinates’ own paradoxical mindset and performance, using an online questionnaire. We assessed hypotheses using structural equation modeling. Findings We found positive leader trait affect corresponds positively with paradoxical leadership and vice versa for negative leader trait affect. Paradoxical leadership, in turn, stimulates an increase in role-based job performance through the pathway of followers’ paradoxical mindset. Originality/value Our results contribute to the literature by showing that leaders’ emotions are key to unlocking the potential of paradoxical leadership, providing evidence that paradoxical leadership has a positive effect on followers’ role-based performance and demonstrating that followers’ paradoxical mindset plays an important mediating role between paradoxical leadership and followers’ performance.