Emotions in the Workplace - Essay Example

Emotions In The Workplace Introduction Emotions are essential aspects of human behaviour. Most of the times, the behaviour of a person is described with the help of emotion words (Frijda 1986). The emotion words like ‘angrily’, ‘happily’, and ‘lovingly’, give a specific idea abut the behaviour of a person. Emotions tend to give a meaning and purpose to the behaviour of a person. Psychologist Erik Rosenberg has defined emotions as, “acute, intense and typically brief psycho-physiological changes that result from a response to a meaningful situation in one’s environment” (Barlow and Maul 2000). Emotions play an important role not only in a personal life of a person but also in his social and professional life. Hence, people who know how to handle their emotions intelligently, tend to succeed in their personal and professional lives. However, for emotions to be handled intelligently, it is important to know the different concepts of emotions. Emotion Recognition Emotion recognition is one of the most important aspects of emotional intelligence. Emotions of a person affect his communication pattern to a great extent, as emotions not only influence the thinking pattern of a person but also influence the physiology of a person. The behavior of a person is a result of an emotional state that he is going through. Hence, different emotions create different types of physiological changes in human being (Barlow and Maul 2000). They create physical activities and impulses that motivate a person to behave in certain way (Frijda 1986). For example, if a person is sad, he will sit with slouched shoulders and if a person is feeling happy, he will communicate openly and will display pleasant expressions on his face. This shows that different emotions are accompanied with different body gestures and expressions. Hence, if one needs to know how a person is likely to behave or react, one should read the emotion related clues given in his body language (Barlow and Maul 2000). The ability to read the emotional state of a person through physical clues is known as emotion recognition. According to Mayer et al. (1990), emotion recognition is an “accurate appraisal and expression of emotions in oneself and others” (Elfenbein, Marsh and Ambady 2002). Emotion recognition is the ability to perceive other people’s emotion. It has been found that it is easy to read emotions from facial expressions of a person than from any other body language clues. Hence, it is vital to have an ability to read facial expressions (Elfenbein, Marsh and Ambady 2002). As emotion recognition is one of the important aspects of emotional intelligence, it is considered as an essential quality. Emotion recognition is the non-verbal aspect of communication. People express their true emotions through their body language. Hence, it is necessary to focus on their body language rather than on their verbal language. According to Noller (1985), facial expression is the ‘most observed’ non-verbal body language than any other body language movements of a person (Elfenbein, Marsh and Ambady 2002). Ekman (1965) has observed that people use their face as a primary source to express their distinct and varied emotions (Elfenbein, Marsh and Ambady 2002). According to study by Boyatzis and Satyaprasad (1994), compared to other non-verbal cues, people are more accurate in recognising facial expressions (Elfenbein, Marsh and Ambady 2002). Hence, facial expression plays an important role in emotion recognition. Facial expression gives clue to various emotions that a person is feeling. Hence, the ability to recognise emotions helps a person to communicate better and to increases the productivity of interaction. This helps in reducing the misunderstandings in work relationships. In a study conducted by Elfenbein, it was found that people, who scored high in the ability to recognise emotion in others, were high performers in the organisation (Duskat, Sala and Mount 2006). Emotion recognition enhances team performance skills like collaborative decision making, team learning, psychological safety etc (Duskat, Sala and Mount 2006). Ability to recognise emotion was also found to reduce team conflicts by increasing the feeling of mutual understanding and trust among the team members (Duskat, Sala and Mount 2006). Moreover, Elfenbein found that the team who had no members with the low ability to recognise emotions, experienced good performance and greater retention even in the challenging times (Duskat, Sala and Mount 2006). People who accurately gauge the emotional expressions of other people are good performers, healthy team players and are rated high by their managers (Duskat, Sala and Mount 2006). On the other hand, people who scored low in the ability of emotion recognition were found to be low performers, had lower retention and were rated low by their managers (Duskat, Sala and Mount 2006). This shows that the ability to recognise the emotions helps people not only to enhance their own performance but also to enhance the performance of a team at the workplace. Hence, emotion recognition is considered as one of the most important aspect of motional intelligence. People who have the ability of emotion recognition have a great advantage in their personal and professional life. Emotional Labour Emotions play an important role in the workplace. The emotional state of a person affects his performance at job. People tend to control or modify their emotions to handle the day-today challenges of their work life. However, there are some jobs that do not allow the liberty of emotional expression to people. For example, jobs which require face-to-face or phone interactions with customers, demand a lot of control and modifications of emotions. People working in customer service departments have to take lot of efforts to display the emotional state that they are actually not feeling. This is evident from the fact that people providing help over phone are asked to ‘smile’ while talking on phone to create an enthusiastic and sweet voice. This kind of effort demands great mental and physical labour. Hence, the term ‘emotional labour’ is used to describe the difficulties that a person working in customer service has to go through. Hochschild has defined emotional labour as “management of emotion in the self in order to display a particular feeling” (Strazdins 2002). People working in non-service department practice behaviour control to alter other people’s feelings (Strazdins 2002). They do not need to manage and control their ‘own’ emotions to please ‘others’. However, people working in service departments have to control and manage their ‘own’ emotions to create a positive experience for ‘other’ people (Strazdins 2002). People working in service industry have to smile, show warmth and display a pleasant attitude in order to create a satisfactory experience for customer by making him feel cared for, happy and important (Strazdins 2002). To achieve this goal, the customer service representative has to take great emotional and physical efforts as he has to manage his own emotions, control facial expressions, monitor other person’s feelings and behave in a pleasant manner (Strazdins 2002). These efforts are painful as they demand great control over emotions and curbs natural expression of an employee. The emotional labour has a potential to cause negative impact on the mental and physical health of the employees. According to Wharton (1993), people working in service industry have to display emotional labour not only to gain wages but also to please their superiors (Callaham and McCollum 2002). However, Tolich (1993) found that people performing emotional labour are not always under the control of others (Callaham and McCollum 2002). They do so out of their own choice and also experience some positive things in exchange of it (Callaham and McCollum 2002). Wharton (1993) found that people working in customer service industry experienced higher level of job satisfaction compared to people working in non-public contact jobs (Strazdins 2002). At the same time, Mosrris and Feldman (1996) have found that the conflict between the internal emotions and fake emotions create a feeling of emotional exhaustion in the employees (Strazdins 2002). Hence, emotional labour has both, positive and negative impact on the employees. It depends on a person how he manages to strike a balance in his work. If a person chooses to look at his work positively, then emotional labour creates a positive effect. Otherwise, it remains a painful job. Emotional Intelligence (EI) According to Salovey and Mayer (1990), emotional intelligence (EI) is a combination of the “processes involved in the recognition, use, understanding, and management of one’s own and other’s emotional states to solve emotion-laden problem and to regulate behaviour” (Salovey, Brackett and Mayer 2007). However, Daniel Goleman has extended the scope of EI to professional and social aspects of a person. According to Daniel Goleman, the five components that make a person emotionally intelligent are “self- awareness, self-regulation, self-motivation, empathy, and social skills” (Jordan 2008). Hence, as self-motivation and social skills are the components of EI, it is clear that EI not only affect the personal relationships of a person but also affects his work performance and social success. As discussed earlier, EI helps people to gauge the emotional state of other people. It also helps people to understand what the needs, desires and expectations of other people are, and behave accordingly. Langhorn (2004) has found that managers who implement EI experience employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction and profit performance (Jordan 2008). Similarly, Douglas et al. (2004) has found that people scoring high on EI are high performers while people scoring low on EI display low performance (Jordan 2008). Study by Pherwani (2003) revealed that people who score high on EI are extremely good at people skills and make great leaders (Jordan 2008). They focus on people’s needs and wants rather than on selfish goals. They gain respect and loyalty from their followers. This assures high performance, high satisfaction level and lower attrition. All these aspects lead to growth and profit of the organisation. At the same time, it also generates happiness and satisfaction on individual level. If a person is happy with his job, he performs better and becomes a positive part of an organisation. Hence, EI is considered as one of the most important qualities for success and satisfaction in work. Conclusion Different studies in the field of psychology and management have revealed the importance of emotions at workplace. Emotional intelligence assures success in both, material and emotional aspects of life. Hence, it is extremely important to learn and implement emotional intelligence in every aspect of life. References Barlow, J. and Maul, D., 2000. Emotional Value: Creating Strong Bonds with your Customers. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. Callaham, J. and McCollum, E. Obscured Variability : The distinction between Emotion Work and Emotional Labor. In N.M.Ashkanasy, W. Zerbe and C. Hartel. Eds. 2002. Managing Emotions in the Workplace. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, Inc. Ch.13. Duskat, V.U., Sala, F. and Mount, G. 2006. Linking Emotional Intelligence and Performance at Work: Current Research Evidence with Individuals and Groups. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Elfenbein, H.A., Marsh, A.A. and Ambady, N., Emotional Intelligence and the Recognition of Emotion from Facial Expressions. In L.F. Barrett and P.Salovey, eds. 2002. The Wisdom in Feeling: Psychological Processes in Emotional Intelligence. New York: The Guilford Press. Ch.2. Frijda, N.C., 1986. The Emotions. Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. Jordan, P.J. The use of Emotional Intelligence in Business: Resolving varying definitions and measures and their relationship to work performance. In N.M.Ashkanasy and C.L. Cooper. 2008. Research Companion to Emotion in Organization. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. Ch.13. Salovey, P. Brackett, M.A. and Mayer, J.D. 2007. Emotional Intelligence: Key Readings on the Mayer and Salovey Model.2nd ed. Port Chester: Dude Publishing. Strazdins, L. Emotional Work and Emotional Contagion. In N.M.Ashkanasy, W. Zerbe and C. Hartel. Eds. 2002. Managing Emotions in the Workplace. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, Inc. Ch.14. Read More