When Should Leaders Let Their Emotions Show?

November 14, 2026

Read Time - 4 minutes

“Confronting our feelings and giving them appropriate expression always takes strength, not weakness.”

~Fred Rogers

Late in 2020, Tom Cruise was filming Mission: Impossible 7 outside London under strict COVID rules. It was a high-stress set: one outbreak could shut down production and put thousands of jobs at risk. When Cruise saw two crew members standing too close together, breaking safety protocols, he lost his temper, and someone recorded it. According to theGrio's report on the recording, he swore at them and threatened to fire anyone who broke the rules. The Sun published the audio in December, and within days it was everywhere.

The public was split. Some heard a leader protecting thousands of jobs, and others heard a bully. George Clooney told Howard Stern, “I understand why he did it,” though he wouldn't have handled it that way. Mediaite, citing The Sun, later reported that five crew members quit.

Cruise chose a public outburst. He could have pulled the two aside and asked a producer to follow up. That might have kept five people on the crew, but it might also have told everyone else that one careless moment didn't matter much. His anger made the stakes impossible to miss. And…it cost him people.

We see outrageous behavior on campus all too frequently: bullying, entitlement, and colleagues who undermine decisions. Most of the campus leaders I've worked with respond the opposite way Cruise did. They play the part of the unflappable administrator. The email gets massaged until it’s neutral, and the outburst in a meeting gets a polite “Let's find a time to talk after this.” I know this well, because I've done the same, and I've often wondered why. Part of the answer, as I wrote in 5 Fears That Make Good Leaders Go Full Moon, is the fear of letting people down: under pressure, we protect the relationship at the expense of the decision.

I'm not suggesting we raise our voice at the next faculty or staff member who's out of line. Outbursts like Cruise's are often the wrong call. But muting every emotion has costs too, and sometimes the people we serve need to see what we feel. Below are three research-backed reasons to respond with restraint and three to respond with emotion.

3 Reasons to Respond With Restraint

1. Restraint gives a colleague room to change. When we respond with visible anger, people often feel attacked and dig in. Psychologists call this reactance. In a review of the research, Christina Steindl and her colleagues describe how people who feel pressured often do the opposite of what they're asked, just to protect their sense of freedom. Restraint takes away that pressure and makes it easier for a colleague to admit a mistake.

2. Restraint gives us time to get the facts right. Anger makes us feel sure of ourselves, sometimes before we know all the facts. Psychologists Jennifer Lerner and Dacher Keltner found that angry people saw risks as smaller and made riskier choices, and the effect was tied to the sense of certainty and control that anger gives us. Feeling that sure of ourselves can lead us to confront the wrong person or respond before we really know what’s happened.

3. Restraint protects our influence. People with more status pay a higher price for showing weakness. In three experiments, Kerry Roberts Gibson and her colleagues found that when a higher-status person disclosed a weakness, their partners liked them less and pushed back more on their direction. When a peer disclosed the same weakness, nothing changed. For a leader, a visible loss of composure can look like that kind of weakness.

That price is steeper for women. When Victoria Brescoll and Eric Uhlmann showed people videos of job candidates expressing anger, the men were seen as more competent and given more status and pay. The women were given less of both and seen as less competent. That gap gives many women in leadership an extra reason to choose restraint.

3 Reasons to Respond With Emotion

1. Showing emotion tells people what we care about. Our faculty and staff watch how we react to learn what matters to us. Psychologist Gerben van Kleef’s research found that people draw conclusions about us from the emotions we show. When we mute our response, they have less to go on. Hiding also costs us connection. In a study by Emily Butler, James Gross, and their colleagues, people who hid their feelings during an upsetting conversation reduced rapport and raised their partner's blood pressure.

2. Showing emotion draws a line. When a professor berates a staff member in a meeting, the staff member watches to see whether anyone in charge noticed. A careful email days later can look like no response at all. Visible disapproval tells everyone the behavior won't be tolerated, and it builds trust. In a 2016 study in Nature, Jillian Jordan and her colleagues found that people who took a stand against selfish behavior, even at a cost to themselves, were trusted more by others.

3. Showing grief helps people connect with us. When there's a tragedy on campus, people watch how their leader responds. Communication researchers Schoofs and Claeys tested reactions to a CEO's crisis message that expressed sadness and one that stuck to the facts. During the crisis, sadness raised empathy for the CEO but made the CEO seem less competent, which the researchers link to people's need for reassurance. After the crisis, expressing sadness improved the organization's reputation. The lesson is that timing matters: sadness cost the most in the heat of the crisis and helped most afterward.

Try This Before Friday

Pick a moment this week when you feel something strongly at work, whether it's frustration, sadness, or pride. Before you respond, ask two questions: What do I want to happen next? What do people need from me in this moment?

If restraint will get you there, choose it on purpose. If it won't, find simple language to share how you feel, such as “This missed deadline concerns me” or “I'm heartbroken about this news.” Then tell people what happens next.

Either way, notice that you made a choice.

Bottom Line

Emotion works a lot like the heat under a frying pan. With no heat, nothing cooks. With too much, everything burns. Showing emotion at work can feel risky, yet audiences connect with the speaker who lets a little imperfection show, and the people we lead do too. Good communicators watch the people in front of them and adjust the heat until their message gets through. Sometimes that takes a raised voice, and sometimes it takes a quiet word in the hallway. In a season of loss, it may mean letting people see our grief. We're human, and the people we lead connect with us when they can see it.

Thanks for reading. I'll see you next week.

Put this to work on your campus.

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