Managing emotion is a key challenge facing today’s managers
There is no question about it, managing people is a tricky business. It would be nice to think that employees do not have personal issues in their lives that affect their working performance (or the performance of others).
It would be even better if every employee really did want to be at work. Probably the only thing better than that scenario would be if all employees were sincerely appreciative of both their employers and their managers. It would be great superior customer service would abound, employees would smile and wave at one another everybody would be so happy.
Enough. If work were truly like this fantasy environment, pay would not be termed compensation.The identities that we have on our time are not so easily separated from our identities on company time. Most any successful enterprise, especially those whose success hinges upon customer service, depends in employees who, to some extent, put on their face. Putting on a pleasant disposition, smiling and the like, if not explicit performance standards, are certainly implicit rules in virtually any venue.
In addition to being obvious that emotion and relation constructs such as personality, mood and attitude require managerial consideration simply from the perspective trying to keep everyone ‘happy’, it is also relevant to firm financial performance. While conceivable that it has an effect through seeming common sense notions that ‘happy employees are better employees’, research has borne out that emotion and, mood specifically, has statistically significant influence on both turnover and absenteeism (Pelted & Xin 1999, p, 875).
Act Happy. Be Happy.
One of Freud’s contributions to psychology was the most thoughts circulate ‘beneath the surface’ of conscious awareness.Despite the lack of awareness, these thoughts and feelings influence or even determine observed behavior (Gleitman 1986, p. 419). Though there are certainly automatic, reflexory reactions, most workplace interactions are more complex. Consequently, such behaviors are all the more subject to our emotions, moods and desires and are geared to adapt and to the extent possible, ‘create’ a better environment for our self.
Defined as short-lived psychological-physiological phenomena that represent efficient modes of adaptation to changing environmental demands, emotions are capable of shifting certain behaviors upwards in response hierarchies and rapidly organizing the responses of disparate biological systems to produce an optimal behavior response to the perceived environment (Levinson 1999, p. 481). With this definition, it becomes obvious that simply by considering a matter, even unconsciously, behavior is influenced. The degree to which any individual allows ‘emotions’ to over-ride the mutual best interest goal behaviors in the employment relationship is the degree to which emotion must be managed.
One model that explains how emotions can manifest themselves in behavior is the Affective Events Theory. The key postulate of this theory is simply that the work environment produces emotions and attitudes about work result in work events or, the daily hassles and uplifts of normal work life. In turn, these events evolve influence subsequent actions which are attenuated by personality traits or emotional intelligence that express themselves as observed behaviors (Ashkanasy & Daus 2002, p. 77).
Now, before I hire you are you emotionally stable?
One of the easiest ways to manage people is to hire the right person through valid, accurate means of selection. Though many managers feel they have superior ‘hiring instincts’, there are a number of hiring instruments that purportedly assist in this endeavor. One type of such an instrument is personality tests. Such a test indicates a disposition toward certain behavior patterns such as emotional stability as one of the Big Five personality measure. Interestingly enough, research indicates a 0.08 validity and thus such an indicator should by no means by the sole or even a significant influence upon a hiring decision (Dreher & Dougherty 2002, p. 113).
Rather than testing for personality, emotional stability or even IQ, grades, or letters of recommendation, a better method that has emerged from research on the concept of emotional intelligence is that of competence modeling. To hire the best individual for a specific position, one should first review the individuals who have enjoyed high performance in that specific position characteristics and abilities. From this point, a list of specific competencies can be tested against (Dearlove 2003, p. 29).
There’s no crying in baseball
Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own, Marshall, P. (1992) People are emotional creatures to the extent that conflict in a separate ‘compartment’ of one’s life force one to absolve the very idea that there can be a completely effective separation of personal issues or family or home issues and attitudes, moods, emotion and subsequent behavior at work.Clearly, sources external to work affect us but work has its own set of stressors in which one must operate, seemingly oblivious to any internal conflicts of emotion. A salient example of this is exhibited by food service crew members. Studied by sociologist Arlie Hochschild, the term emotional labor was coined to refer to activities of an employee (for compensation by definition) that management requires or [strongly] encourages in order to create a certain publicly observable facial or bodily display (Wharton & Erickson 1993, pp. 458 & 466).
Taking the intentional proactive management of emotion one step further, Wharton & Erikson cite Ekman’s term display rules. Such rules, exemplified ubiquitously by Disneyland employees, are overlearned habits about who can show emotion to whom and when they can show it. While not every employer and position have such explicit or implicit rules, some present that western society is becoming more bias towards greater emotional control such as not showing anger or other ‘extreme’ feelings (Wharton & Erickson 1993, pp. 461 & 463).
There is no Japanese word for fair
As noted, culture is a key concept in both understanding and managing emotion in the workplace. It is probably generally agreed that a few good tools that should be in one’s managerial toolbox are good listening skills, the ability to intervene and confront employees when needed and the ability to clearly articulate firm values and goals. This is complicated by the growing diversity in the marketplace. Multicultural teams abound.
Along with a few obvious mannerisms and customs, managers must also be aware that many emotions have a very different expression in different cultures. Though there is some evidence for something akin to universal expression such as a smile indicating happiness, there are significant cultural attenuating factors. For example, it is reported that Melanese chieftains frown fiercely when greeting each other at a festive occasion (Gleitman 1986, p. 362).
Though most managers are not likely to hire many Melanese chieftans, the point is underscored by the fact that there is no direct translation for fair in Japanese (Von Glinow, Shapiro & Brett 2004, p. 581). Such information has key implications for expressing values, general discussion of business practices and, in particular, resolving conflict.Specifically, many western human resource practices are based upon equity theory in which the perceived ratios of contributed inputs and received outputs are foundation to how ‘we’ feel the world should operate (Dreher & Dougherty 2002, p. 41).
Managing Schedules, Payroll, Consumer Demand and Emotions
Knowing that emotion has a degree of predictive validity for the success of the firm, management ignores such issues are their own peril. Not simply ‘psycho-business-mumbo jumbo’, managing emotion is actionable. By utilizing competence modeling selection devises, manager and employee training tools, employee coaching, negotiation and other tools, one can take advantage of a much larger toolbox to get the results that shareholders, management and the market demand.
A key component of a successful manager of others may well be their emotional intelligence consisting of self-awareness, social awareness, self-management and relationship management rather than today’s oft erroneously rewarded technical expertise (Dearlove 2003, pp. 26 & 28). Similarly, research by Hubbard, Beckitt-Milburn & Kemmer, indicate that emotionally-sensed knowledge is an important aspect of relating to others. Utilizing this information can provide insight that is fundamental through leveraging the efforts of others in such as way as to align the resources of the firm to create value.
To fully harness the power of a emotion, to be able to appropriately respond to the needs of others and to possess the ability to proactively create a environment that enable peak-performance, one must be able to successfully manage emotion.
Tags: common sense, emotion, employees, managing emotion, managing people, personal issues, workplace
