A model of within person variation in leadership: Emotion regulation and scripts as predictors of situationally appropriate leadership

Leadership has been described as a relational process with substantial research examining a leaders' ability to interact with followers. At the same time, there has been a swell of research that considers leadership as a multi-level construct. The majority of this research starts from the individual level examining the relationship between leaders and individuals and groups. In this article, we argue that a significant aspect of multi-level leadership has been overlooked, the within-person variation leaders are expected to engage in when they work with others. To address this theoretical gap and encourage empirical testing, we develop a conceptual model that highlights how the within-person interaction of emotion regulation and leader scripts influences followers' perceptions of situational appropriateness of the leader behaviors. Implications for theory and empirical testing are discussed.