A multimethod investigation of the interpersonal effects of leader perfectionism and anger expression on employee psychological safety and creativity

Abstract

Heightened competition within and across organizations compels leaders to set inflexibly high standards and to demand creative performance from their employees. Considering recent research on the interpersonal approach to perfectionism and anger expression, we predicted that leaders' perfectionism combined with their anger expression would threaten employees' psychological safety and creative effort that, in turn, would diminish their creative performance. To test our predictions, we designed three multimethod studies: (1) a preregistered memory reconstruction study, (2) a preregistered laboratory experiment, and (3) a multi-wave and multi-source field study. We found convergent evidence that leaders' anger expressions exacerbate the negative indirect influence of their perfectionism on employees' creative performance via psychological safety and creative effort. We conclude by discussing the interpersonal consequences of leader perfectionism in the workplace.