Head in the Clouds and Feet on the Ground: Leadership and Regulatory Focus across Different Contexts

Regulatory focus as a motivational mechanism, plays a significant role in determining whether leaders and followers will focus on promotion goals, aspiring to “keep their head in the clouds” thinking about their ideal self, hopes, and wishes or, alternatively, on prevention goals to “keep their feet on the ground” thinking about their ought self, demands, expectations and requirements. Focusing on promotion versus prevention goals further affects how leaders and followers behave and what outcomes they achieve. The growth in leadership and followership research that focus on the underlying mechanism of regulatory focus is apparent in many recent studies in the fields of management, I/O psychology, and social psychology. However, most of the studies have overlooked the significant role of the specific context in which the leadership and regulatory focus processes are taking place. For example, what is the type of organization, the organizational culture, or the characteristics of the environment in which the leadership dynamics occur (e.g., dynamic versus stable environment). In this session, we will focus on the association between leadership, followership, and regulatory focus, and the role of context. The symposium consists of five presentations and a concluding discussion by an expert in this field: The first presentation offers a wide systemic conceptual overview of the field and provides a context and time sensitive framework for the study of leadership, followership and regulatory focus. The other four presentations include three field studies and one conceptual paper, each focusing on a specific aspect of the context that delineates the links between leadership and regulatory focus and enables a better understanding of the environment in which the leadership process is more effective. This symposium can advance our knowledge by shielding light on the boundary conditions under which “keeping the head in the clouds” or “keeping the feet on the ground” are mostly effective.