Why Suppressing What You Feel Makes You a Worse Leader

"The strategy is called suppression-controlling your emotional expression, keeping your face neutral, not letting them see you sweat. We've built an entire leadership archetype around it. I've called it the Myth of the Unshakable Leader: the belief that real strength means never being moved by what happens around you. A systematic review of 101 studies shows this clearly: across leadership style, leader well-being, and leader performance, suppressing emotion correlates negatively with effectiveness."

"The leaders who perform best don't feel less. They regulate differently. Most high performers, when pressed, will say: "Suppress it, get over it, and get on with it." The research now shows that this approach has real costs. What suppression actually costs The foundational work comes from psychologists James Gross and Oliver John, whose 2003 study became one of the most-cited papers in emotion regulation science."

"Their finding was counterintuitive and specific: people who habitually suppress their emotional expression don't feel less. They feel differently: more negative emotion, less positive emotion. In a recent piece on the leaders who can't switch off, I wrote about the executives who check their phones at midnight not because anything is urgent but because stopping feels dangerous."

"The hook underneath that pattern is identity fusion, control anxiety, and the deep belief that personal worth equals output. What I didn't fully address there is what happens when the emotion does surface. When stress hits, when frustration rises, when something lands that threatens your sense of control. The question isn't just why you can't switch off, it's what do you do with the discomfort when it arrives?"

Many leaders rely on suppressing emotional expression to appear calm and unshakable, but research shows this strategy does not work. A systematic review of 101 studies finds that suppression correlates negatively with leadership effectiveness across leadership style, leader well-being, and leader performance. Leaders who perform best do not feel less; they regulate emotions differently. Some high performers cannot switch off and check phones at midnight due to identity fusion, control anxiety, and the belief that personal worth equals output. When stress and frustration threaten perceived control, suppression is often the default response. Research indicates suppression carries real costs, including more negative emotion and less positive emotion.

Read at Psychology Today