Emotion recognition and emergent leadership: Unraveling mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions Frank Walter a, ⁎, Michael S. Cole b,1 , Gerben S. van der Vegt a,2 , Robert S. Rubin c,3 , William H. Bommer d,4 a University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business, Nettelbosje 2, 9747AE Groningen, The Netherlands b Texas Christian University, Neeley School of Business, 2900 Lubbock Avenue, Fort Worth, TX 76109, USA c DePaul University, Kellstadt Graduate School of Business, 1 E. Jackson Blvd., Chicago, IL 60604, USA d California State University, Fresno, Craig School of Business, 5245 N. Backer, Fresno, CA 93740, USA article info abstract Article history: Received 16 January 2012 Received in revised form 12 June 2012 Accepted 27 June 2012 Available online 21 July 2012 This study examines the complex connection between individuals' emotion recognition capability and their emergence as leaders. It is hypothesized that emotion recognition and extraversion interactively relate with an individual's task coordination behavior which, in turn, influences the likelihood of emerging as a leader. In other words, we cast task coordination as a mediating mechanism in the joint relationship between emotion recognition and extraversion, on the one hand, and leader emergence, on the other. Study hypotheses were tested using multisource data from two diverse, independent samples. Study 1 supports the hypothesized relationships in a sample of student project teams in the Netherlands, and Study 2 constructively replicates the proposed model using student participants in an assessment center in the United States. These findings were obtained using a performance-based test of emotion recognition and controlling for a battery of known covariates. © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Emotion recognition Leader emergence Task coordination Extraversion Emotional intelligence 1. Introduction Scholars have long recognized that in the context of work teams, individual members with no formal authority often provide leadership on various tasks (e.g., Foti and Hauenstein, 2007). Because such emergent leaders are known to influence important team processes and outcomes (Bass, 1990), researchers have attempted to better understand the factors that predict leader emergence (e.g., Lord, Foti, and De Vader, 1984; Neubert and Taggar, 2004). This literature has identified an array of antecedents, with meta-analytic evidence demonstrating, for example, that cognitive ability (Judge, Colbert, and Ilies, 2004) and personality (Judge, Bono, Ilies, and Gerhardt, 2002) assist in explaining why individuals are more or less likely to be regarded as leaders by others. More recently, scholars have focused their attention on one's emotional abilities. Consistent with the notion that “leadership is an emotion-laden process” (George, 2000, p. 1046), it is theorized that individuals are more likely to emerge as leaders if they are adept at effectively dealing with their own and others' feelings (Caruso, Mayer, and Salovey, 2002; Humphrey, Pollack, and Hawver, 2008; Prati, Douglas, Ferris, Ammeter, and Buckley, 2003). In a recent review of this literature, however, Walter, Cole, and Humphrey (2011) located only a handful of studies that have empirically examined relationships between emotional abilities and emergent leadership (i.e., Côté, Lopes, Salovey, and Miners, 2010; Higgs and Aitken, 2003; Kellett, Humphrey, and Sleeth, 2002, 2006; Offermann, Bailey, The Leadership Quarterly 23 (2012) 977–991 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 50 363 3849. E-mail addresses: f.walter@rug.nl (F. Walter), m.s.cole@tcu.edu (M.S. Cole), g.s.van.der.vegt@rug.nl (G.S. der Vegt), rrubin@depaul.edu (R.S. Rubin), wbommer@csufresno.edu (W.H. Bommer). 1 Tel.: +1 817 257 6796. 2 Tel.: +31 50 363 3915. 3 Tel.: +1 312 362 6145. 4 Tel.: +1 559 278 2493. 1048-9843/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2012.06.007 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect The Leadership Quarterly journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/leaqua