In the emerging world of human-robot interaction, people and robots will work together to achieve joint objectives. This paper discusses the design and validation of a general scheme for creating emotionally expressive behaviours for robots, in order that people might better interpret how a robot collaborator is succeeding or failing in its work. It exemplifies a unified approach to creating robot behaviours for two very different robot forms, based on combinations of four groups of design parameters (approach/avoidance, energy, intensity and frequency). 59 people rated video clips of robots performing expressive behaviours both for emotional expressivity on Valence-Arousal-Dominance dimensions, and their judgement of the successfulness of the robots’ work. Results are discussed in terms of the utility of expressive behaviour for facilitating human understanding of robot intentions and the design of cues for basic emotional states.