regulation strategies. This requires a high degree of emotional awareness from MNT leaders. Recognizing language-induced emotions becomes even more challenging with respect to other-directed feelings, which team members display differently depending on their cultural backgrounds.
Managing language-induced negative emotions
Our study's core findings also highlight the necessity for MNT leaders to manage negative language-induced emotions actively, re- inforcing critique of “laissez-faire leadership”. In agreement with, who believe that providing leaders with the requisite knowledge and skills for emotion regulation is crucial for effective leadership and performance, we outlined a set of concrete measures enabling MNT leaders to address the specific emotional challenges of multilingual work envi- ronments. The language-specific emotion management measures which we presented and classified into various strategies can pre- vent negative emotional spirals like the ones described by Harzing and Feely or Neeley . However, the beneficial impact of these strategies goes beyond preventing or mitigating negative emotions. As our study has shown, the successful
management of language-induced emotions through MNT leaders also improves sensemaking within MNTs, creates a productive team climate and thus increases team members' willingness to follow the designated leader. As established by previous research, these leadership outcomes have a highly beneficial impact on team performance.
Training MNT leaders for cross-lingual sensitivity
The present study also carries significant implications for leadership development in MNCs. Our findings suggest that MNCs should provide training programs geared towards sensitizing current and potential MNT leaders to the distinctive impact of language barriers on cooperation. The scope of diversity training, which has so far mostly focused on cultural, racial, generational or gender differences, thus needs to be expanded to include cross-lingual sensitivity as a key qualification for MNT leaders.
Limitations and further research
Our study is subject to a number of limitations, which provide the basis for further research in this area. First, we purposefully chose to keep industry and home country constant, thus being able to focus our investigation on language-induced effects. Future re- search could investigate language-induced emotions and related leadership strategies in other industries and home countries to dis- cover similarities and differences across contexts. In addition, given the focus on one home country, we had a disproportionately large number of interviewees from this country. However, given that our sample still includes MNT leaders from five different nationalities and subordinates from 19 different countries, we are confident that our data provide sufficient spread to arrive at differentiated argu- ments about effective strategies of managing language-induced emotions. In addition, our approach also entailed advantages related to our background as researchers. Speaking the home country language German as our mother tongue and being very familiar with German business culture helped us to make sense of informants' accounts in a way that preserved the authenticity of their perspec- tives.
Second, space restrictions did not allow us to discuss in detail possible cultural preferences for particular emotion management strategies. However, a large majority of our interviewees across different cultural backgrounds embraced the above outlined emotion management strategies.