Leader affective presence is the tendency of leaders to elicit the same shared feelings among their team members and is supported as a substantive influence on teamwork outcomes. Nevertheless, there is a dearth of knowledge about the etiological factors leading to the construction of leader affective presence. Based on emotion regulation theory, we propose that leaders’ strategies to generate positive affect among team members, namely, leader affect-improving emotion regulation, is a source of their positive affective presence. In contrast, leader affect-worsening interpersonal emotion regulation could drive leader negative affective presence. We tested these proposals in a two-wave longitudinal survey study based on 479 members and 61 leaders of their teams, using cross-lagged structural equation modeling. Thus, this study contributes to the nascent literature on leader affective presence by showing its behavioral roots.
