How do you think this encounter would make you feel? Our study suggests that you would likely feel a mixture of distress, sadness, and nervousness — and be less engaged at work that day.

Leaders help with personal problems on a regular basis at work. In fact, some studies have suggested that leaders in certain industries spend as much as 2.5 hours each week responding to such requests from people they manage. These issues run the gamut from problems with marriages to mental health to child care.

Given how much time most of us spend at work, it’s not surprising that employees occasionally disclose personal issues to their leaders. And people tend to approach their leaders more often than they approach their other coworkers because many believe that it is the leader’s responsibility to assist with emotional issues at work. What is surprising, however, is how little we know about how responding to these requests affects leaders’ mood and performance at work.

To investigate this, we conducted a longitudinal study of leaders and what we call their “followers,” also known as direct reports. We recently published our findings in the Journal of Applied Psychology. We surveyed 43 middle and senior leaders and up to five of their followers each day for three consecutive work weeks. We asked the leaders to report on their mood (positive and negative affect) at the beginning and end of each workday. Leaders also reported how often they responded to requests for support from their direct reports that day at work. We focused on two types of requests: work-related and personal. At the end of each workday, we also asked up to five employees to rate their leaders’ work engagement — how devoted and immersed their leader was that day at work.

We found that leaders’ negative mood increased on days when they helped direct reports with personal problems. This is likely because personal issues, such as the hypothetical one described above, are often uncomfortable, sensitive, and even distressing. They create an emotional burden: when employees share personal hardships, leaders pick up on their negative emotions through emotional contagion. Because personal issues are non-work related, leaders may also find these help requests to be disruptive or inappropriate and therefore further upsetting.

We also found that helping employees with personal issues was particularly detrimental to a leader’s mood on days when they were also helping employees with work-related issues. On busy days, it can be particularly frustrating for leaders to have additional, and often unanticipated, demands on their time, and they reported more negative emotions on these days. But there was a silver lining. On days when leaders felt that their support with personal issues had a positive impact on the lives of their employees, their negative mood was less impacted. Feelings of prosocial impact, in fact, enhanced leaders’ positive mood.

Interestingly, leaders with many years of managerial experience were not as distressed by the time they spent helping employees with personal problems compared to inexperienced leaders. This may be because seasoned managers are likely to have dealt with many of these kinds of requests and, as a result, may have developed the skills and confidence to manage them properly.