Emotions at the workplace

Types of emotions

Felt Emotions – These are the individual actual emotion.

Displayed Emotions- These are the emotion that are organizationally required and considered appropriate in a given job.

Surface Acting It means hiding one’s inner feeling and forgoing emotional expressions in response to display rules.

Deep Acting It means trying to modify one’s true inner feelings based on display rules.

Emotions are intense feelings directed towards something or someone

Emotional dissonance- projecting one emotion while feeling another

Instant messaging and emotions Emotional Contagion Emotional Intelligence

Impact of emotions

Positive emotions Increased creativity Encourage helping behavior and cooperation Reduce aggression against organization and people Leads to accuracy in the work

Negative emotions Aggression towards colleagues Dissatisfaction with the job Frequent fights Absenteeism

Emotion and workplace

Intellectual capital- Emotions directly affect intellectual functioning

Customer service- If service workers are angry, unhappy or the like no amount of training will offset the service climate that their emotions create

Organizational responsiveness- Emotions affect how fast and flexible people are in their response

Productivity Employee attraction and retention- The happier

the employees are the more they would like to continue with the organization

Emotion & Cognition

Inverse relationship between emotion and thinking When emotion is high (or intense) thinking will be

impaired. Physiological reason

Blood flow is altered from cognitive to emotional areas (Drevets & Raichle, 1998)

Attention is diverted to the strongest emotion (Marsella & Gratch, 2002)

Emotion at five levels of organization

5. Organization-wideOrganizational policies; requirement for emotional labor;

stress and wellbeing; emotional climate and culture

4. GroupsAffective composition; emotionally intelligent groups;

emotional contagion; leader-member exchange

3. Interpersonal InteractionsEmotional labor; emotional exchange;

displayed vs. felt emotion

2. Between personsTrait affectivity, affective commitment; job

satisfaction; burnout; emotional intelligence

1. Within-personState affect; affective events;

discrete emotions; mood; behaviors

5. Organization-wideOrganizational policies; requirement for emotional labor;

stress and wellbeing; emotional climate and culture

4. GroupsAffective composition; emotionally intelligent groups;

emotional contagion; leader-member exchange

3. Interpersonal InteractionsEmotional labor; emotional exchange;

displayed vs. felt emotion

2. Between personsTrait affectivity, affective commitment; job

satisfaction; burnout; emotional intelligence

1. Within-personState affect; affective events;

discrete emotions; mood; behaviors

Generating Positive Emotions at Work

The emotions-attitudes-behavior model illustrates that attitudes are shaped by ongoing emotional experiences.

Thus, successful companies actively create more positive than negative emotional episodes.

Emotional Quotient

Emotional Intelligence is a major determinant of human behavior. EQ is the measure of EI.

Emotional Intelligence is directly correlated with job performance and job satisfaction.

Most of the components of emotional intelligence are highly valued in Indian culture and traditions.

Can be learned, especially through coaching

EI increases with age -- maturity

Today recruiting managers make sure that the candidates have high level of EQ

Does he have the maturity and independence to follow a project to completion?

Can he motivate and lead a group of his peers? Does he genuinely care about the company’ s values

and goals? Will he be sensitive towards the needs of a troubled

co-worker? Can he control his anger when his supervisor is rude

to him?According to Goleman, to be successful in life , one needs to

have 20% of IQ and 80 % of EQ.

Five Components of EI at Workplace

Self –awareness Self-regulation Motivation Empathy Social Skills

# Emotional Intelligence has its roots in the concept of social intelligence

# Inter-personal Intelligence is the ability to understand other people ; what motivates them, how they work, how to work co-operatively with them.

# Emotional Intelligence emphasizes empathy, self-control etc.

Emotional Labor Across Cultures

Displaying or hiding emotions varies across cultures Minimal emotional expression and monotonic voice in

Korea, Japan, Austria Encourage emotional expression in Kuwait, Egypt,

Spain, Russia

Emotional Labor

Effort, planning and control needed to express organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions.

Emotional labor higher when job requires: frequent and long duration display of emotions displaying a variety of emotions displaying more intense emotions

Emotional Labor Challenges

Difficult to display expected emotions accurately, and to hide true emotions

Emotional dissonance Conflict between true and required emotions Potentially stressful with surface acting Less stress through deep acting