Chapter 

7. Managing Stress and Emotions

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:

1. Understand the stress cycle.

2. Recognize the sources of stress for employees.
3. Recognize the outcomes of stress.
4. Understand how to manage stress in organizational contexts.
5. Understand the role emotions play for attitudes and behaviors at work.
6. Learn about emotional labor and how to manage it.
7. Understand how emotions can affect perceptions of what is ethical.
8. Understand cross-cultural differences in stressors.

Getting Emotional at American Express

Figure 7.1. 

As the American Express case illustrates, selling life

insurance can be both an emotional and stressful job.

Death and money can be emotional topics. Sales reps at

American Express Company’s life insurance division had to deal with both these issues when
selling life insurance, and they were starting to feel the strain of working with such volatile
emotional materials every day. Part of the problem representatives faced seemed like an
unavoidable side effect of selling life insurance. Many potential clients were responding fearfully
to the sales representatives’ calls. Others turned their fears into anger. They replied to the
representatives’ questions suspiciously or treated them as untrustworthy.

The sales force at American Express believed in the value of their work, but over time,
customers’ negative emotions began to erode employee morale. Sales of policies slowed.
Management insisted that the representatives ignore their customers’ feelings and focus on
making sales. The representatives’ more aggressive sales tactics seemed only to increase their
clients’ negative emotional responses, which kicked off the cycle of suffering again. It was
apparent something had to change.

In an effort to understand the barriers between customers and sales representatives, a team led by
Kate Cannon, a former American Express staffer and mental-health administrator, used a
technique called emotional resonance to identify employees’ feelings about their work. Looking
at the problem from an emotional point of view yielded dramatic insights about clients, sales
representatives, and managers alike.

The first step she took was to acknowledge that the clients’ negative emotions were barriers to
life insurance sales. Cannon explained, “People reported all kinds of emotional issues—fear,
suspicion, powerlessness, and distrust—involved in buying life insurance.” Clients’ negative
emotions, in turn, had sparked negative feelings among some American Express life insurance
sales representatives, including feelings of incompetence, dread, untruthfulness, shame, and even
humiliation. Management’s focus on sales had created an emotional disconnect between the sales
reps’ work and their true personalities. Cannon discovered that sales representatives who did not
acknowledge their clients’ distress felt dishonest. The emotional gap between their words and
their true feelings only increased their distress.

Cannon also found some good news. Sales representatives who looked at their job from the
customer’s point of view were flourishing. Their feelings and their words were in harmony.
Clients trusted them. The trust between these more openly emotional sales representatives and
their clients led to greater sales and job satisfaction. To see if emotional skills training could
increase job satisfaction and sales among other members of the team, Cannon instituted a course
in emotional awareness for a test group of American Express life insurance sales representatives.
The goal of the course was to help employees recognize and manage their feelings. The results of
the study proved the value of emotional clarity. Coping skills, as measured on standardized
psychological tests, improved for the representatives who took Cannon’s course.

The emotional awareness training program had significant impact on American Express’s bottom
line. Over time, as Cannon’s team expanded their emotion-based program, American Express
life insurance sales rose by tens of millions of dollars. American Express’s exercise in emotional
awareness shows that companies can profit when feelings are recognized and consciously
managed. Employees whose work aligns with their true emotions make more believable
corporate ambassadors. The positive use of emotion can benefit a company internally as well.
According to a Gallup poll of over 2 million employees, the majority of workers rated a caring
boss higher than increased salary or benefits. In the words of career expert and columnist
Maureen Moriarity, “Good moods are good for business.”

What Is Stress?
Learning Objectives

1. Learn about the General Adaptation Syndrome.

2. Learn what stressors are.

3. Understand the outcomes of stress.

4. Understand individual differences in experienced stress.

Gravity. Mass. Magnetism. These words come from the physical sciences. And so does the term
stress. In its original form, the word stress relates to the amount of force applied to a given area.
A steel bar stacked with bricks is being stressed in ways that can be measured using
mathematical formulas. In human terms, psychiatrist Peter Panzarino notes, “Stress is simply a
fact of nature—forces from the outside world affecting the individual.”[413] The professional,
personal, and environmental pressures of modern life exert their forces on us every day. Some of
these pressures are good. Others can wear us down over time.

Stress is defined by psychologists as the body’s reaction to a change that requires a physical,
mental, or emotional adjustment or response.[414] Stress is an inevitable feature of life. It is the
force that gets us out of bed in the morning, motivates us at the gym, and inspires us to work.
As you will see in the sections below, stress is a given factor in our lives. We may not be able to
avoid stress completely, but we can change how we respond to stress, which is a major benefit.
Our ability to recognize, manage, and maximize our response to stress can turn an emotional or
physical problem into a resource.

Researchers use polling to measure the effects of stress at work. The results have been eye-
opening. According to a 2001 Gallup poll, 80% of American workers report that they feel
workplace stress at least some of the time.[415] Another survey found that 65% of workers
reported job stress as an issue for them, and almost as many employees ended the day exhibiting
physical effects of stress, including neck pain, aching muscles, and insomnia. It is clear that
many individuals are stressed at work.

The Stress Process

Our basic human functions, breathing, blinking, heartbeat, digestion, and other unconscious
actions, are controlled by our lower brains. Just outside this portion of the brain is the
semiconscious limbic system, which plays a large part in human emotions. Within this system is
an area known as the amygdala. The amygdala is responsible for, among other things,
stimulating fear responses. Unfortunately, the amygdala cannot distinguish between meeting a
10:00 a.m. marketing deadline and escaping a burning building.

Human brains respond to outside threats to our safety with a message to our bodies to engage in
a “fight-or-flight” response.[416] Our bodies prepare for these scenarios with an increased heart
rate, shallow breathing, and wide-eyed focus. Even digestion and other functions are stopped in
preparation for the fight-or-flight response. While these traits allowed our ancestors to flee the
scene of their impending doom or engage in a physical battle for survival, most crises at work are
not as dramatic as this.

Hans Selye, one of the founders of the American Institute of Stress, spent his life examining the
human body’s response to stress. As an endocrinologist who studied the effects of adrenaline and
other hormones on the body, Selye believed that unmanaged stress could create physical diseases
such as ulcers and high blood pressure, and psychological illnesses such as depression. He
hypothesized that stress played a general role in disease by exhausting the body’s immune
system and termed this the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS).[417]

Figure 7.2. 

In Selye’s GAS model,

stress affects an individual
in three steps: alarm,
resistance, and exhaustion.
In the alarm phase of stress, an outside stressor jolts the individual, insisting that something must
be done. It may help to think of this as the fight-or-flight moment in the individual’s experience.
If the response is sufficient, the body will return to its resting state after having successfully dealt
with the source of stress.

In the resistance phase, the body begins to release cortisol and draws on reserves of fats and
sugars to find a way to adjust to the demands of stress. This reaction works well for short periods
of time, but it is only a temporary fix. Individuals forced to endure the stress of cold and hunger
may find a way to adjust to lower temperatures and less food. While it is possible for the body to
“adapt” to such stresses, the situation cannot continue. The body is drawing on its reserves, like a
hospital using backup generators after a power failure. It can continue to function by shutting
down unnecessary items like large overhead lights, elevators, televisions, and most computers,
but it cannot proceed in that state forever.

In the exhaustion phase, the body has depleted its stores of sugars and fats, and the prolonged
release of cortisol has caused the stressor to significantly weaken the individual. Disease results
from the body’s weakened state, leading to death in the most extreme cases. This eventual
depletion is why we’re more likely to reach for foods rich in fat or sugar, caffeine, or other quick
fixes that give us energy when we are stressed. Selye referred to stress that led to disease as
distress and stress that was enjoyable or healing as eustress.

Workplace Stressors

Stressors are events or contexts that cause a stress reaction by elevating levels of adrenaline and
forcing a physical or mental response. The key to remember about stressors is that they aren’t
necessarily a bad thing. The saying “the straw that broke the camel’s back” applies to stressors.
Having a few stressors in our lives may not be a problem, but because stress is cumulative,
having many stressors day after day can cause a buildup that becomes a problem. The American
Psychological Association surveys American adults about their stresses annually. Topping the
list of stressful issues are money, work, and housing.[418] But in essence, we could say that all
three issues come back to the workplace. How much we earn determines the kind of housing we
can afford, and when job security is questionable, home life is generally affected as well.

Understanding what can potentially cause stress can help avoid negative consequences. Now we
will examine the major stressors in the workplace.

A major category of workplace stressors are role demands. In other words, some jobs and some
work contexts are more potentially stressful than others.

Role Demands

Figure 7.3. 

George Lucas, one of the most successful

filmmakers of all time, found making The Empire
Strikes Back stressful both personally and
financially. Those who worked with him on those
early Star Wars films describe him as fully
engrossed in the process, which led to role overload
and work–family conflict. Following the making of that film, Lucas said he was “burnt out” and didn’t
want to make any more Star Wars films.

Role ambiguity refers to vagueness in relation to what our responsibilities are. If you have started
a new job and felt unclear about what you were expected to do, you have experienced role
ambiguity. Having high role ambiguity is related to higher emotional exhaustion, more thoughts
of leaving an organization, and lowered job attitudes and performance.[419] Role conflict refers to
facing contradictory demands at work. For example, your manager may want you to increase
customer satisfaction and cut costs, while you feel that satisfying customers inevitably increases
costs. In this case, you are experiencing role conflict because satisfying one demand makes it
unlikely to satisfy the other. Role overload is defined as having insufficient time and resources to
complete a job. When an organization downsizes, the remaining employees will have to
complete the tasks that were previously performed by the laid-off workers, which often leads to
role overload. Like role ambiguity, both role conflict and role overload have been shown to hurt
performance and lower job attitudes; however, research shows that role ambiguity is the
strongest predictor of poor performance.[420] Research on new employees also shows that role
ambiguity is a key aspect of their adjustment, and that when role ambiguity is high, new
employees struggle to fit into the new organization.[421]

Information Overload

Messages reach us in countless ways every day. Some are societal—advertisements that we may
hear or see in the course of our day. Others are professional—e-mails, memos, voice mails, and
conversations from our colleagues. Others are personal—messages and conversations from our
loved ones and friends. Add these together and it’s easy to see how we may be receiving more
information than we can take in. This state of imbalance is known as information overload,
which can be defined as “occurring when the information processing demands on an individual’s
time to perform interactions and internal calculations exceed the supply or capacity of time
available for such processing.”[422] Role overload has been made much more salient because of
the ease at which we can get abundant information from Web search engines and the numerous
e-mail and text messages we receive each day.[423] Other research shows that working in such a
fragmented fashion significantly impacts efficiency, creativity, and mental acuity.[424]

Top 10 Stressful Jobs

As you can see, some of these jobs are stressful due to high emotional labor (customer service),
physical demands (miner), time pressures (journalist), or all three (police officer).

1. Inner city high school teacher

2. Police officer

3. Miner

4. Air traffic controller

5. Medical intern

6. Stockbroker

7. Journalist

8. Customer service or complaint worker

 9. Secretary

10. Waiter

Work–Family Conflict

Work–family conflict occurs when the demands from work and family are negatively affecting
one another.[425] Specifically, work and family demands on a person may be incompatible with
each other such that work interferes with family life and family demands interfere with work life.
This stressor has steadily increased in prevalence, as work has become more demanding and
technology has allowed employees to work from home and be connected to the job around the
clock. In fact, a recent census showed that 28% of the American workforce works more than 40
hours per week, creating an unavoidable spillover from work to family life.[426] Moreover, the
fact that more households have dual-earning families in which both adults work means
household and childcare duties are no longer the sole responsibility of a stay-at-home parent.
This trend only compounds stress from the workplace by leading to the spillover of family
responsibilities (such as a sick child or elderly parent) to work life. Research shows that
individuals who have stress in one area of their life tend to have greater stress in other parts of
their lives, which can create a situation of escalating stressors.[427]

Work–family conflict has been shown to be related to lower job and life satisfaction.
Interestingly, it seems that work–family conflict is slightly more problematic for women than
men.[428] Organizations that are able to help their employees achieve greater work–life balance
are seen as more attractive than those that do not.[429] Organizations can help employees maintain
work–life balance by using organizational practices such as flexibility in scheduling as well as
individual practices such as having supervisors who are supportive and considerate of
employees’ family life.[430]

Life Changes

Stress can result from positive and negative life changes. The Holmes-Rahe scale ascribes
different stress values to life events ranging from the death of one’s spouse to receiving a ticket
for a minor traffic violation. The values are based on incidences of illness and death in the 12
months after each event. On the Holmes-Rahe scale, the death of a spouse receives a stress rating
of 100, getting married is seen as a midway stressful event, with a rating of 50, and losing one’s
job is rated as 47. These numbers are relative values that allow us to understand the impact of
different life events on our stress levels and their ability to impact our health and well-being.[431]
Again, because stressors are cumulative, higher scores on the stress inventory mean you are more
prone to suffering negative consequences of stress than someone with a lower score.

OB Toolbox: How Stressed Are You?

Read each of the events listed below. Give yourself the number of points next to any event that
has occurred in your life in the last 2 years. There are no right or wrong answers. The aim is just
to identify which of these events you have experienced.

Table 7.1. Sample Items: Life Events Stress Inventory

Life event Stress points Life event Stress points

Death of spouse 100 Foreclosure of mortgage or loan 30

 Life event Stress points Life event Stress points

Divorce 73 Change in responsibilities at work 29

Marital separation 65 Son or daughter leaving home 29

Jail term 63 Trouble with in-laws 29

Death of close family member 63 Outstanding personal achievement 28

Personal injury or illness 53 Begin or end school 26

Marriage 50 Change in living location/condition 25

Fired or laid off at work 47 Trouble with supervisor 23

Marital reconciliation 45 Change in work hours or conditions 20

Retirement 45 Change in schools 20

Pregnancy 40 Change in social activities 18

Change in financial state 38 Change in eating habits 15

Death of close friend 37 Vacation 13

Change to different line of work 36 Minor violations of the law 11

Scoring:

 If you scored fewer than 150 stress points, you have a 30% chance of developing a stress-
related illness in the near future.

 If you scored between 150 and 299 stress points, you have a 50% chance of developing a
stress-related illness in the near future.

 If you scored over 300 stress points, you have an 80% chance of developing a stress-
related illness in the near future.

The happy events in this list such as getting married or an outstanding personal achievement
illustrate how eustress, or “good stress,” can also tax a body as much as the stressors that
constitute the traditionally negative category of distress. (The prefix eu- in the word eustress
means “good” or “well,” much like the eu- in euphoria.) Stressors can also occur in trends. For
example, during 2007, nearly 1.3 million U.S. housing properties were subject to foreclosure
activity, up 79% from 2006.

Downsizing

A study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor to examine over 3,600 companies from
1980 to 1994 found that manufacturing firms accounted for the greatest incidence of major
downsizings. The average percentage of firms by industry that downsized more than 5% of their
workforces across the 15-year period of the study was manufacturing (25%), retail (17%), and
service (15%). A total of 59% of the companies studied fired at least 5% of their employees at
least once during the 15-year period, and 33% of the companies downsized more than 15% of
their workforce at least once during the period. Furthermore, during the recessions in 1985 to
1986 and 1990 to 1991, more than 25% of all firms, regardless of size, cut their workforce by
more than 5%.[432] In the United States, major layoffs in many sectors in 2008 and 2009 were
stressful even for those who retained their jobs.

The loss of a job can be a particularly stressful event, as you can see by its high score on the life
stressors scale. It can also lead to other stressful events, such as financial problems, which can
add to a person’s stress score. Research shows that downsizing and job insecurity (worrying
about downsizing) is related to greater stress, alcohol use, and lower performance and creativity.
[433]
For example, a study of over 1,200 Finnish workers found that past downsizing or
expectations of future downsizing was related to greater psychological strain and absence.[434] In
another study of creativity and downsizing, researchers found that creativity and most creativity-
supporting aspects of the perceived work environment declined significantly during the
downsizing.[435] Those who experience layoffs but have their self-integrity affirmed through other
means are less susceptible to negative outcomes.[436]

Outcomes of Stress

The outcomes of stress are categorized into physiological and psychological and work outcomes.

Physiological

Stress manifests itself internally as nervousness, tension, headaches, anger, irritability, and
fatigue. Stress can also have outward manifestations. Dr. Dean Ornish, author of Stress, Diet and
Your Heart, says that stress is related to aging.[437] Chronic stress causes the body to secrete
hormones such as cortisol, which tend to make our complexion blemished and cause wrinkles.
Harvard psychologist Ted Grossbart, author of Skin Deep, says, “Tens of millions of Americans
suffer from skin diseases that flare up only when they’re upset.”[438] These skin problems include
itching, profuse sweating, warts, hives, acne, and psoriasis. For example, Roger Smith, the
former CEO of General Motors Corporation, was featured in a Fortune article that began, “His
normally ruddy face is covered with a red rash, a painless but disfiguring problem which Smith
says his doctor attributes 99% to stress.”[439]

The human body responds to outside calls to action by pumping more blood through our system,
breathing in a more shallow fashion, and gazing wide-eyed at the world. To accomplish this feat,
our bodies shut down our immune systems. From a biological point of view, it’s a smart strategic
move—but only in the short term. The idea can be seen as your body wanting to escape an
imminent threat, so that there is still some kind of body around to get sick later. But in the long
term, a body under constant stress can suppress its immune system too much, leading to health
problems such as high blood pressure, ulcers, and being overly susceptible to illnesses such as
the common cold.

The link between heart attacks and stress, while easy to assume, has been harder to prove. The
American Heart Association notes that research has yet to link the two conclusively. Regardless,
it is clear that individuals under stress engage in behaviors that can lead to heart disease such as
eating fatty foods, smoking, or failing to exercise.
Psychological

Depression and anxiety are two psychological outcomes of unchecked stress, which are as
dangerous to our mental health and welfare as heart disease, high blood pressure, and strokes.
The Harris poll found that 11% of respondents said their stress was accompanied by a sense of
depression. “Persistent or chronic stress has the potential to put vulnerable individuals at a
substantially increased risk of depression, anxiety, and many other emotional difficulties,” notes
Mayo Clinic psychiatrist Daniel Hall-Flavin. Scientists have noted that changes in brain function
—especially in the areas of the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland—may play a key role in
stress-induced emotional problems.[440]

Work Outcomes

Stress is related to worse job attitudes, higher turnover, and decreases in job performance in
terms of both in-role performance and organizational citizenship behaviors.[441] Research also
shows that stressed individuals have lower organizational commitment than those who are less
stressed.[442] Interestingly, job challenge has been found to be related to higher performance,
perhaps with some individuals rising to the challenge.[443] The key is to keep challenges in the
optimal zone for stress—the activation stage—and to avoid the exhaustion stage.[444]

Figure 7.4. 

Individuals who are able to

find the right balance between
work that is too challenging
and work that is not
challenging enough see
increases in performance.

Individual Differences in Experienced Stress

How we handle stress varies by individual, and part of that issue has to do with our personality
type. Type A personalities, as defined by the Jenkins Activity Survey,[445] display high levels of
speed/impatience, job involvement, and hard-driving competitiveness. If you think back to
Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome, in which unchecked stress can lead to illness over time,
it’s easy to see how the fast-paced, adrenaline-pumping lifestyle of a Type A person can lead to
increased stress, and research supports this view.[446] Studies show that the hostility and hyper-
reactive portion of the Type A personality is a major concern in terms of stress and negative
organizational outcomes.[447]

Type B personalities, by contrast, are calmer by nature. They think through situations as opposed
to reacting emotionally. Their fight-or-flight and stress levels are lower as a result. Our
personalities are the outcome of our life experiences and, to some degree, our genetics. Some
researchers believe that mothers who experience a great deal of stress during pregnancy
introduce their unborn babies to high levels of the stress-related hormone cortisol in utero,
predisposing their babies to a stressful life from birth.[448]

Men and women also handle stress differently. Researchers at Yale University discovered
estrogen may heighten women’s response to stress and their tendency to depression as a result.
[449]
Still, others believe that women’s stronger social networks allow them to process stress more
effectively than men.[450] So while women may become depressed more often than men, women
may also have better tools for countering emotion-related stress than their male counterparts.

OB Toolbox: To Cry or Not to Cry? That Is the Question…

As we all know, stress can build up. Advice that’s often given is to "let it all out" with something
like a cathartic "good cry." But research shows that crying may not be as helpful as the adage
would lead us to believe. In reviewing scientific studies done on crying and health, Ad
Vingerhoets and Jan Scheirs found that the studies “yielded little evidence in support of the
hypothesis that shedding tears improves mood or health directly, be it in the short or in the long
run.” Another study found that venting actually increased the negative effects of negative
emotion.[451]

Instead, laughter may be the better remedy. Crying may actually intensify the negative feelings,
because crying is a social signal not only to others but to yourself. “You might think, ‘I didn’t
think it was bothering me that much, but look at how I’m crying—I must really be upset,’” says
Susan Labott of the University of Toledo. The crying may make the feelings more intense.
Labott and Randall Martin of Northern Illinois University at Dekalb surveyed 715 men and
women and found that at comparable stress levels, criers were more depressed, anxious, hostile,
and tired than those who wept less. Those who used humor were the most successful at
combating stress. So, if you’re looking for a cathartic release, opt for humor instead: Try to find
something funny in your stressful predicament.

Key Takeaway

Stress is prevalent in today’s workplaces. The General Adaptation Syndrome consists of alarm,
resistance, and eventually exhaustion if the stress goes on for too long. Time pressure is a major
stressor. Outcomes of stress include both psychological and physiological problems as well as
work outcomes. Individuals with Type B personalities are less prone to stress. In addition,
individuals with social support experience less stress.

Exercises

1. We’ve just seen how the three phases of the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) can
play out in terms of physical stresses such as cold and hunger. Can you imagine how the
three categories of this model might apply to work stress as well?

2. List two situations in which a prolonged work challenge might cause an individual to
reach the second and third stage of GAS.

3. What can individuals do to help manage their time better? What works for you?

4. What symptoms of stress have you seen in yourself or your peers?

Avoiding and Managing Stress
Learning Objectives

1. Understand what individuals can do to manage their own stress.

2. Understand what organizations can do to help their employees avoid and manage stress.

Individual Approaches to Managing Stress

The Corporate Athlete

Luckily, there are several ways to manage stress. One way is to harness stress’s ability to
improve our performance. Jack Groppel was working as a professor of kinesiology and
bioengineering at the University of Illinois when he became interested in applying the principles
of athletic performance to workplace performance. Could eating better, exercising more, and
developing a positive attitude turn distress into eustress? Groppel’s answer was yes. If
professionals trained their minds and bodies to perform at peak levels through better nutrition,
focused training, and positive action, Groppel said, they could become “corporate athletes”
working at optimal physical, emotional, and mental levels.

The “corporate athlete” approach to stress is a proactive (action first) rather than a reactive
(response-driven) approach. While an overdose of stress can cause some individuals to stop
exercising, eat less nutritional foods, and develop a sense of hopelessness, corporate athletes
ward off the potentially overwhelming feelings of stress by developing strong bodies and minds
that embrace challenges, as opposed to being overwhelmed by them.

Flow

Turning stress into fuel for corporate athleticism is one way of transforming a potential enemy
into a workplace ally. Another way to transform stress is by breaking challenges into smaller
parts, and embracing the ones that give us joy. In doing so, we can enter a state much like that of
a child at play, fully focused on the task at hand, losing track of everything except our genuine
connection to the challenge before us. This concept of total engagement in one’s work, or in
other activities, is called flow. The term flow was coined by psychologist Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi and is defined as a state of consciousness in which a person is totally absorbed
in an activity. We’ve all experienced flow: It’s the state of mind in which you feel strong, alert,
and in effortless control.

Figure 7.5. 
A key to flow is engaging at work, yet research shows that most managers do not feel they are
engaged in purposeful work.

According to this way of thinking, the most pleasurable way for a person to work is in harmony with his
or her true interests. Work is seen as more similar to playing games than most activities adults do. This is
because work consists of tasks, puzzles, surprises, and potentially rewarding challenges. By breaking
down a busy workday into smaller pieces, individuals can shift from the “stress” of work to a more
engaged state of flow.

Designing Work That Flows

Keep in mind that work that flows includes the following:

 Challenge: the task is reachable but requires a stretch

 Meaningfulness: the task is worthwhile or important

 Competence: the task uses skills that you have

 Choice: you have some say in the task and how it’s carried out[452]

Corporate athleticism and flow are two concepts that can help you cope with stress. Next, let us
focus more on exactly how individual lifestyle choices affect our stress levels. Eating well,
exercising, getting enough sleep, and employing time management techniques are all things we
can affect that can decrease our feelings of stress.

Diet

Figure 7.6. 

Eating healthy foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables is a key

to stress management.
Greasy foods often make a person feel tired. Why? Because it takes the body longer to digest
fats, which means the body is diverting blood from the brain and making you feel sluggish.
Eating big, heavy meals in the middle of the day may actually slow us down, because the body
will be pumping blood to the stomach, away from the brain. A better choice for lunch might be
fish, such as wild salmon. Fish keeps you alert because of its effect on two important brain
chemicals—dopamine and norepinephrine—which produce a feeling of alertness, increased
concentration, and faster reaction times.[453]

Exercise

Exercise is another strategy for managing stress. The best kind of break to take may be a
physically active one. Research has shown that physically active breaks lead to enhanced mental
concentration and decreased mental fatigue. One study, conducted by Belgian researchers,
examined the effect of breaks on workers in a large manufacturing company. One-half of the
workers were told to rest during their breaks. The other half did mild calisthenics. Afterward,
each group was given a battery of tests. The group who had done the mild calisthenics scored far
better on all measures of memory, decision-making ability, eye–hand coordination, and fine
motor control.[454]

Strange as it may seem, exercise gives us more energy. How energetic we feel depends on our
maximum oxygen capacity (the total amount of oxygen we utilize from the air we breathe). The
more oxygen we absorb in each breath, the more energy and stamina we will have. Yoga and
meditation are other physical activities that are helpful in managing stress. Regular exercise
increases our body’s ability to draw more oxygen out of the air we breathe. Therefore, taking
physically active breaks may be helpful in combating stress.

Sleep

It is a vicious cycle. Stress can make it hard to sleep. Not sleeping makes it harder to focus on
work in general, as well as on specific tasks. Tired folks are more likely to lose their temper,
upping the stress level of others. American insomnia is a stress-related epidemic—one-third of
adults claim to have trouble sleeping and 37% admit to actually having fallen asleep while
driving in the past year.[455]

The work–life crunch experienced by many Americans makes a good night’s sleep seem out of
reach. According to the journal Sleep, workers who suffer from insomnia are more likely to miss
work due to exhaustion. These missed days ultimately cost employers thousands of dollars per
person in missed productivity each year, which can total over $100 billion across all industries.
[456]
As you might imagine, a person who misses work due to exhaustion will return to work to
find an even more stressful workload. This cycle can easily increase the stress level of a work
team as well as the overtired individual.

Create a Social Support Network

A consistent finding is that those individuals who have a strong social support network are less
stressed than those who do not.[457] Research finds that social support can buffer the effects of
stress.[458] Individuals can help build up social support by encouraging a team atmosphere in
which coworkers support one another. Just being able to talk with and listen to others, either with
coworkers at work or with friends and family at home, can help decrease stress levels.

Time Management

Time management is defined as the development of tools or techniques that help to make us
more productive when we work. Effective time management is a major factor in reducing stress,
because it decreases much of the pressure we feel. With information and role overload it is easy
to fall into bad habits of simply reacting to unexpected situations. Time management techniques
include prioritizing, manageable organization, and keeping a schedule such as a paper or
electronic organizing tool. Just like any new skill, developing time management takes conscious
effort, but the gains might be worthwhile if your stress level is reduced.

Listen Up and Learn More

Check out this interview with Fast Company and Tony Wright, CEO of RescueTime, who has
created a tool to evaluate your productivity using data from your computer.

http://www.fastcompany.tv/video/see-how-much-tme-you-are-wasting-with-RescueTime

This software is available at http://www.RescueTime.com/ and is currently free to use.

Figure 7.7. 

This is an example of output from a RescueTime user.

Organizational Approaches to Managing Stress

Stress-related issues cost businesses billions of dollars per year in absenteeism, accidents, and
lost productivity.[459] As a result, managing employee stress is an important concern for
organizations as well as individuals. For example, Renault, the French automaker, invites
consultants to train their 2,100 supervisors to avoid the outcomes of negative stress for
themselves and their subordinates. IBM Corporation encourages its worldwide employees to take
an online stress assessment that helps them create action plans based on their results. Even
organizations such as General Electric Company (GE) that are known for a “winner takes all”
mentality are seeing the need to reduce stress. Lately, GE has brought in comedians to lighten up
the workplace atmosphere, and those receiving low performance ratings are no longer called the
“bottom 10s” but are now referred to as the “less effectives.”[460] Organizations can take many
steps to helping employees with stress, including having more clear expectations of them,
creating jobs where employees have autonomy and control, and creating a fair work
environment. Finally, larger organizations normally utilize outside resources to help employees
get professional help when needed.

Make Expectations Clear

One way to reduce stress is to state your expectations clearly. Workers who have clear
descriptions of their jobs experience less stress than those whose jobs are ill defined.[461] The
same thing goes for individual tasks. Can you imagine the benefits of working in a place where
every assignment was clear and employees were content and focused on their work? It would be
a great place to work as a manager, too. Stress can be contagious, but as we’ve seen above, this
kind of happiness can be contagious, too. Creating clear expectations doesn’t have to be a top–
down event. Managers may be unaware that their directives are increasing their subordinates’
stress by upping their confusion. In this case, a gentle conversation that steers a project in a
clearer direction can be a simple but powerful way to reduce stress. In the interest of reducing
stress on all sides, it’s important to frame situations as opportunities for solutions as opposed to
sources of anger.

Give Employees Autonomy

Giving employees a sense of autonomy is another thing that organizations can do to help relieve
stress.[462] It has long been known that one of the most stressful things that individuals deal with
is a lack of control over their environment. Research shows that individuals who feel a greater
sense of control at work deal with stress more effectively both in the United States and in Hong
Kong.[463] Similarly, in a study of American and French employees, researchers found that the
negative effects of emotional labor were much less for those employees with the autonomy to
customize their work environment and customer service encounters.[464] Employees’ stress levels
are likely to be related to the degree that organizations can build autonomy and support into jobs.

Create Fair Work Environments

Work environments that are unfair and unpredictable have been labeled “toxic workplaces.” A
toxic workplace is one in which a company does not value its employees or treat them fairly.[465]
Statistically, organizations that value employees are more profitable than those that do not.[466]
Research shows that working in an environment that is seen as fair helps to buffer the effects of
stress.[467] This reduced stress may be because employees feel a greater sense of status and self-
esteem or due to a greater sense of trust within the organization. These findings hold for
outcomes individuals receive as well as the process for distributing those outcomes.[468] Whatever
the case, it is clear that organizations have many reasons to create work environments
characterized by fairness, including lower stress levels for employees. In fact, one study showed
that training supervisors to be more interpersonally sensitive even helped nurses feel less stressed
about a pay cut.[469]

Supervisor Support: Work-Family Conflict Survey

Think of your current or most recent supervisor and rate each of the following items in terms of
this person’s behavior toward you.

Answer the following questions using 1 = not at all, 2 = somewhat, 3 = fully agree
1. _____ My supervisor is willing to listen to my problems in juggling work and nonwork life.

2. _____ My supervisor takes the time to learn about my personal needs.

My supervisor makes me feel comfortable talking to him or her about my conflicts between
3. _____
work and nonwork.

4. _____ My supervisor and I can talk effectively to solve conflicts between work and nonwork issues.

5. _____ I can depend on my supervisor to help me with scheduling conflicts if I need it.

I can rely on my supervisor to make sure my work responsibilities are handled when I have
6. _____
unanticipated nonwork demands.

My supervisor works effectively with workers to creatively solve conflicts between work and
7. _____
nonwork.

8. _____ My supervisor is a good role model for work and nonwork balance.

9. _____ My supervisor demonstrates effective behaviors in how to juggle work and nonwork balance.

10. _____ My supervisor demonstrates how a person can jointly be successful on and off the job.

My supervisor thinks about how the work in my department can be organized to jointly
11. _____
benefit employees and the company.

My supervisor asks for suggestions to make it easier for employees to balance work and
12. _____
nonwork demands.

My supervisor is creative in reallocating job duties to help my department work better as a

13. _____
team.

My supervisor is able to manage the department as a whole team to enable everyone’s needs
14. _____
to be met.

Add up all your ratings to see how your supervisor stacks up.

Score total = _______________

Scoring:

 A score of 14 to 23 indicates low levels of supervisor support.

 A score of 24 to 33 indicates average levels of supervisor support.

 A score of 34 to 42 indicates high levels of supervisor support.

Telecommuting

Figure 7.8. 
Telecommuting helps employees avoid traffic jams like this one.

Telecommuting refers to working remotely. For example, some employees work from home, a remote
satellite office, or from a coffee shop for some portion of the workweek. Being able to work away from
the office is one option that can decrease stress for some employees. Of course, while an estimated 45
million individuals telecommute each year, telecommuting is not for everyone. [470] At Merrill Lynch & Co.
Inc., those who are interested in telecommuting are put through a rigorous training program that
includes 2 weeks in one of their three home office simulation labs in Florida, New Jersey, or Manhattan
to see if telecommuting is a good fit for the employee. Employees must also submit photos of their
home office and a work plan. AT&T Inc. estimates that nearly 55% of its U.S.-based managers
telecommute at some point in the week, and this method is also popular with managers around the
world.[471] A recent survey found that 43% of government workers now telecommute at least part time.
This trend has been growing in reaction to a law passed by the U.S. Congress in 2000 requiring federal
agencies to offer working from home as an option. [472] Merrill Lynch has seen higher productivity, less
stress, lower turnover, and higher job satisfaction for those who telecommute. [473] A recent meta-
analysis of all the studies of telecommuting (12,883 employees) confirmed researcher findings that the
higher autonomy of working from home resulted in lower work–family conflict for these employees.
Even more encouraging were the findings of higher job satisfaction, better performance, and lower
stress as well.[474] Of course, telecommuting can also cause potential stress. The keys to successful
telecommuting arrangements are to match the right employees with the right jobs to the right
environments. If any variable is not within a reasonable range, such as having a dog that barks all day
when the employee is at home, productivity will suffer.

Employee Sabbaticals

Sabbaticals (paid time off from the normal routine at work) have long been a sacred ritual
practiced by universities to help faculty stay current, work on large research projects, and
recharge every 5 to 8 years. However, many companies such as Genentech Inc., Container Store
Inc., and eBay Inc. are now in the practice of granting paid sabbaticals to their employees. While
11% of large companies offer paid sabbaticals and 29% offer unpaid sabbaticals, 16% of small
companies and 21% of medium-sized companies do the same.[475] For example, at
PricewaterhouseCoopers International Ltd., you can apply for a sabbatical after just 2 years on
the job if you agree to stay with the company for at least 1 year following your break. Time off
ranges from 3 to 6 months and entails either a personal growth plan or one for social services
where you help others.[476]

Employee Assistance Programs

There are times when life outside work causes stress in ways that will impact our lives at work
and beyond. These situations may include the death of a loved one, serious illness, drug and
alcohol dependencies, depression, or legal or financial problems that are impinging on our work
lives. Although treating such stressors is beyond the scope of an organization or a manager,
many companies offer their employees outside sources of emotional counseling. Employee
Assistance Programs (EAPs) are often offered to workers as an adjunct to a company-provided
health care plan. Small companies in particular use outside employee assistance programs,
because they don’t have the needed expertise in-house. As their name implies, EAPs offer help
in dealing with crises in the workplace and beyond. EAPs are often used to help workers who
have substance abuse problems.

Key Takeaway

There are many individual and organizational approaches to decreasing stress and avoiding
negative outcomes. Individuals can control their diet, exercise, and sleep routines; build a social
support network; and practice better time management. Organizations can help make
expectations clear, give employees autonomy, create fair work environments, consider
telecommuting, give employee sabbaticals, and utilize employee assistance programs.

Exercises

1. Have you ever been in a state of “flow” as described in this section? If so, what was
special about this time?

2. Whose responsibility do you think it is to deal with employee stress—the employee or the
organization? Why?

3. Do you think most organizations are fair or unfair? Explain your answer.

4. Have you ever considered telecommuting? What do you think would be the pros and cons
for you personally?

What Are Emotions?

Learning Objectives

1. Understand what defines emotions.

2. Identify the different types of emotions people experience.
3. Understand emotion contagion.

Types of Emotions

Financial analysts measure the value of a company in terms of profits and stock. For employees,
however, the value of a job is also emotional. The root of the word emotion comes from a French
term meaning “to stir up.” And that’s a great place to begin our investigation of emotions at
work. More formally, an emotion is defined as a short, intense feeling resulting from some event.
Not everyone reacts to the same situation in the same way. For example, a manager’s way of
speaking can cause one person to feel motivated, another to feel angry, and a third to feel sad.
Emotions can influence whether a person is receptive to advice, whether they quit a job, and how
they perform individually or on a team.[477] Of course, as you know, emotions can be positive or
negative.

Positive emotions such as joy, love, and surprise result from our reaction to desired events. In the
workplace, these events may include achieving a goal or receiving praise from a superior.
Individuals experiencing a positive emotion may feel peaceful, content, and calm. A positive
feeling generates a sensation of having something you didn’t have before. As a result, it may
cause you to feel fulfilled and satisfied. Positive feelings have been shown to dispose a person to
optimism, and a positive emotional state can make difficult challenges feel more achievable.[478]
This is because being positive can lead to upward positive spirals where your good mood brings
about positive outcomes, thereby reinforcing the good mood.[479]

Figure 7.9. 

Research shows that acting positive at work can actually

help you become happier over time, as emotions can be
influenced by actions.

Emotions are also useful for creative tasks, because positive individuals tend to be more creative
and open to new ideas. In addition to helping with employee creativity, companies such as
Microsoft Corporation often want to understand which features of their products produce not just
high ratings for usability but also high emotional ratings. Individuals with strong positive
emotional reactions are more likely to use their product and recommend it to others.[480] This is
something Apple Inc. has been known for doing well, as their products tend to evoke strong
positive emotions and loyalty from their users.

Figure 7.10. 

By creating products that users feel an

emotional reaction to, Apple has revolutionized
the way music is experienced.

Negative emotions such as anger, fear, and sadness can result from undesired events. In the
workplace, these events may include not having your opinions heard, a lack of control over your
day-to-day environment, and unpleasant interactions with colleagues, customers, and superiors.
Negative emotions play a role in the conflict process, with those who can manage their negative
emotions finding themselves in fewer conflicts than those who do not.

The unwanted side effects of negative emotions at work are easy to see: An angry colleague is
left alone to work through the anger; a jealous colleague is excluded from office gossip, which is
also the source of important office news. But you may be surprised to learn that negative
emotions can help a company’s productivity in some cases. Anger at another company’s success,
for example, can spark a burst of positive effort on behalf of a competitor. Jealousy about
another division’s sales figures may inspire a rival division to work harder. While negative
emotions can be destructive in the workplace, they can inspire bursts of valuable individual
action to change situations that aren’t working the way they should.[481] The key is to promote the
positive emotions and work to manage the negative ones so they don’t spread throughout the
organization and become the norm.
Emotional Contagion

Both positive and negative emotions can be contagious, with the spillover of negative emotions
lasting longer than positive emotions.[482] As you may have experienced in the past, contagion
can be especially salient in a team setting. Research shows that emotions are contagious and that
team members affect one another even after accounting for team performance.[483] One
explanation for negative emotions’ tendency to linger may be a stronger connection to the fight-
or-flight situations people experience. Anger, fear, and suspicion are intentionally unpleasant
messages urging us to take action immediately. And to make sure we get the message, these
emotions stick around.

Research shows that some people are more susceptible to emotional contagion than others.[484]
But in general, when the boss is happy, the staff is happy.[485] We can also imagine how negative
emotions can be transferred. Imagine you’re working behind the counter at a fast-food restaurant.
Your mood is fine, until a customer argues with you about an order. You argue back. The
customer leaves in a huff. Your anger emotions continue, turning into negative feelings that last
throughout the day. As you might guess, you are more likely to make mistakes and find ordinary
challenges annoying when you’re experiencing negative emotions. Unchecked, your negative
emotions can spread to those around you. A negative interaction with one customer can spill over
onto interactions with another customer.[486]

OB Toolbox: Practice Changing Your Emotions

Olympic athletes train for peak performance by stimulating their brains to believe they’ve just
run a record race. You can do the same thing to experience different moods. By providing your
brain with the external stimulus of happiness or sadness, you can create those feelings. Give it a
try!

It’s best to practice this when you are feeling relatively calm. To give yourself a neutral starting
point, close your eyes and breathe in slowly. Now, release your breath. Open your eyes and smile
wide. Allow your eyes to crinkle. Now smile a bit more.

The changes you have consciously made to your expression are signaling your body that a
positive event has taken place. How does this affect you emotionally?

Answer these questions to find out:

Do you feel more or less energetic as you smile? More or less calm? More or less optimistic?
How does the feeling resulting from your physical changes compare with your feelings a
moment before?

Now, let’s try the opposite: Close your eyes and breathe in and out slowly, as detailed above, to
clear your “emotional slate.” Then open your eyes. Pull down the corners of your mouth. Open
your eyes wide. You have just signaled to your body that something negative has taken place.

Note your feelings using the list above. How do these feelings compare with your feelings of
“intentional happiness”?

Now consider this: Dr. Aston Trice of Mary Baldwin College in Virginia found that humor has
mood-altering effects. Subjects were given a frustrating task. Then, one-half were shown
cartoons. Those who had seen the cartoons overcame their frustration and attacked a new test
with renewed enthusiasm and confidence, compared to those subjects who hadn’t had the
humorous interlude.[487]

Key Takeaway

Emotions serve many purposes and affect people at work. There are positive and negative
emotions, and both can be helpful at motivating us to work harder. Emotions are malleable and
they can also be contagious.

Exercises

1. How easy do you think it is to “manage” one’s emotions?

2. Which types of emotions are most socially accepted in the workplace? Why do you think
this is?
3. What are factors that affect your emotions?
4. Share an example of either positive or negative emotional contagion. How did it start and
stop?
5. What do you do, if anything, to try to change how you are feeling? How effective are
your strategies?

Emotions at Work
Learning Objectives

1. Understand Affective Events Theory.

2. Understand the influence of emotions on attitudes and behaviors at work.
3. Learn what emotional labor is and how it affects individuals.
4. Learn what emotional intelligence is.

Emotions Affect Attitudes and Behaviors at Work

Emotions shape an individual’s belief about the value of a job, a company, or a team. Emotions
also affect behaviors at work. Research shows that individuals within your own inner circle are
better able to recognize and understand your emotions.[488]

So, what is the connection between emotions, attitudes, and behaviors at work? This connection
may be explained using a theory named Affective Events Theory (AET). Researchers Howard
Weiss and Russell Cropanzano studied the effect of six major kinds of emotions in the
workplace: anger, fear, joy, love, sadness, and surprise.[489] Their theory argues that specific
events on the job cause different kinds of people to feel different emotions. These emotions, in
turn, inspire actions that can benefit or impede others at work.[490]

Figure 7.11. 
 According to Affective Events
Theory, six emotions are affected
by events at work.

For example, imagine that a

coworker unexpectedly delivers your morning coffee to your desk. As a result of this pleasant, if
unexpected experience, you may feel happy and surprised. If that coworker is your boss, you
might feel proud as well. Studies have found that the positive feelings resulting from work
experience may inspire you to do something you hadn’t planned to do before. For instance, you
might volunteer to help a colleague on a project you weren’t planning to work on before. Your
action would be an affect-driven behavior.[491] Alternatively, if you were unfairly reprimanded by
your manager, the negative emotions you experience may cause you to withdraw from work or to
act mean toward a coworker. Over time, these tiny moments of emotion on the job can influence
a person’s job satisfaction. Although company perks and promotions can contribute to a person’s
happiness at work, satisfaction is not simply a result of this kind of “outside-in” reward system.
Job satisfaction in the AET model comes from the inside-in—from the combination of an
individual’s personality, small emotional experiences at work over time, beliefs, and affect-
driven behaviors.

Jobs that are high in negative emotion can lead to frustration and burnout—an ongoing negative
emotional state resulting from dissatisfaction.[492] Depression, anxiety, anger, physical illness,
increased drug and alcohol use, and insomnia can result from frustration and burnout, with
frustration being somewhat more active and burnout more passive. The effects of both conditions
can impact coworkers, customers, and clients as anger boils over and is expressed in one’s
interactions with others.[493]

Emotional Labor

Negative emotions are common among workers in service industries. Individuals who work in
manufacturing rarely meet their customers face-to-face. If they’re in a bad mood, the customer
would not know. Service jobs are just the opposite. Part of a service employee’s job is appearing
a certain way in the eyes of the public. Individuals in service industries are professional helpers.
As such, they are expected to be upbeat, friendly, and polite at all times, which can be exhausting
to accomplish in the long run.

Humans are emotional creatures by nature. In the course of a day, we experience many emotions.
Think about your day thus far. Can you identify times when you were happy to deal with other
people and times that you wanted to be left alone? Now imagine trying to hide all the emotions
you’ve felt today for 8 hours or more at work. That’s what cashiers, school teachers, massage
therapists, fire fighters, and librarians, among other professionals, are asked to do. As
individuals, they may be feeling sad, angry, or fearful, but at work, their job title trumps their
individual identity. The result is a persona—a professional role that involves acting out feelings
that may not be real as part of their job.

Emotional labor refers to the regulation of feelings and expressions for organizational purposes.
[494]
Three major levels of emotional labor have been identified.[495]

1. Surface acting requires an individual to exhibit physical signs, such as smiling, that
reflect emotions customers want to experience. A children’s hairdresser cutting the hair
of a crying toddler may smile and act sympathetic without actually feeling so. In this
case, the person is engaged in surface acting.
2. Deep acting takes surface acting one step further. This time, instead of faking an emotion
that a customer may want to see, an employee will actively try to experience the emotion
they are displaying. This genuine attempt at empathy helps align the emotions one is
experiencing with the emotions one is displaying. The children’s hairdresser may
empathize with the toddler by imagining how stressful it must be for one so little to be
constrained in a chair and be in an unfamiliar environment, and the hairdresser may
genuinely begin to feel sad for the child.
3. Genuine acting occurs when individuals are asked to display emotions that are aligned
with their own. If a job requires genuine acting, less emotional labor is required because
the actions are consistent with true feelings.

Figure 7.12. 

When it comes to acting, the closer to the

middle of the circle that your actions are,
the less emotional labor your job
demands. The further away, the more
emotional labor the job demands.

Research shows that surface acting is related to higher levels of stress and fewer felt positive
emotions, while deep acting may lead to less stress.[496] Emotional labor is particularly common
in service industries that are also characterized by relatively low pay, which creates the added
potentials for stress and feelings of being treated unfairly.[497] In a study of 285 hotel employees,
researchers found that emotional labor was vital because so many employee-customer
interactions involve individuals dealing with emotionally charged issues.[498] Emotional laborers
are required to display specific emotions as part of their jobs. Sometimes, these are emotions that
the worker already feels. In that case, the strain of the emotional labor is minimal. For example, a
funeral director is generally expected to display sympathy for a family’s loss, and in the case of a
family member suffering an untimely death, this emotion may be genuine. But for people whose
jobs require them to be professionally polite and cheerful, such as flight attendants, or to be
serious and authoritative, such as police officers, the work of wearing one’s “game face” can
have effects that outlast the working day. To combat this, taking breaks can help surface actors to
cope more effectively.[499] In addition, researchers have found that greater autonomy is related to
less strain for service workers in the United States as well as France.[500]

Cognitive dissonance is a term that refers to a mismatch among emotions, attitudes, beliefs, and
behavior, for example, believing that you should always be polite to a customer regardless of
personal feelings, yet having just been rude to one. You’ll experience discomfort or stress unless
you find a way to alleviate the dissonance. You can reduce the personal conflict by changing
your behavior (trying harder to act polite), changing your belief (maybe it’s OK to be a little less
polite sometimes), or by adding a new fact that changes the importance of the previous facts
(such as you will otherwise be laid off the next day). Although acting positive can make a person
feel positive, emotional labor that involves a large degree of emotional or cognitive dissonance
can be grueling, sometimes leading to negative health effects.[501]

Emotional Intelligence

One way to manage the effects of emotional labor is by increasing your awareness of the gaps
between real emotions and emotions that are required by your professional persona. “What am I
feeling? And what do others feel?” These questions form the heart of emotional intelligence. The
term was coined by psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer and was popularized by
psychologist Daniel Goleman in a book of the same name. Emotional intelligence looks at how
people can understand each other more completely by developing an increased awareness of
their own and others’ emotions.[502]

There are four building blocks involved in developing a high level of emotional intelligence.
Self-awareness exists when you are able to accurately perceive, evaluate, and display appropriate
emotions. Self-management exists when you are able to direct your emotions in a positive way
when needed. Social awareness exists when you are able to understand how others feel.
Relationship management exists when you are able to help others manage their own emotions
and truly establish supportive relationships with others.[503]

Figure 7.13. 

The four steps of emotional intelligence

build upon one another.

In the workplace, emotional intelligence can be used to form harmonious teams by taking
advantage of the talents of every member. To accomplish this, colleagues well versed in
emotional intelligence can look for opportunities to motivate themselves and inspire others to
work together.[504] Chief among the emotions that helped create a successful team, Goleman
learned, was empathy—the ability to put oneself in another’s shoes, whether that individual has
achieved a major triumph or fallen short of personal goals.[505] Those high in emotional
intelligence have been found to have higher self-efficacy in coping with adversity, perceive
situations as challenges rather than threats, and have higher life satisfaction, which can all help
lower stress levels.[506]

Key Takeaway

Emotions affect attitudes and behaviors at work. Affective Events Theory can help explain these
relationships. Emotional labor is higher when one is asked to act in a way that is inconsistent
with personal feelings. Surface acting requires a high level of emotional labor. Emotional
intelligence refers to understanding how others are reacting to our emotions.

Exercises

1. What is the worst job you have ever had (or class project if you haven’t worked)? Did the
job require emotional labor? If so, how did you deal with it?
2. Research shows that acting “happy” when you are not can be exhausting. Why do you
think that is? Have you ever felt that way? What can you do to lessen these feelings?
3. How important do you think emotional intelligence is at work? Why?

The Role of Ethics and National Culture

Learning Objectives

1. Consider the role of ethics and emotion.

2. Consider the role of national culture on stress.

Emotions and Ethics

We have seen before how a gap between our true feelings and the feelings we display at work
can cause distress. What happens when there is a gap between our feelings and our true beliefs?

Joshua Greene is a philosopher and neuroscientist who uses magnetic imaging of the brain to
show how our minds and bodies react to difficult questions. In one example, Greene asked a
group of subjects to consider a situation in which a trolley is racing down a track, about to kill
five people. The subjects have the ability to steer the trolley onto another track, where it will kill
only one person. Most agree this feels like the right thing to do—the best of possible evils.

Greene then asks his subject to consider the same situation with one major shift: In this case, to
save the five bystanders the subject must push a large man in front of the trolley to stop it in its
tracks.

This time, Greene’s subjects felt the sacrifice was emotionally wrong. Greene’s research shows
that the difference between his subjects’ valuations of life in these cases was that the second was
more emotional. The thought of pushing someone to his death, understandably, had brought up
strong feelings among the group. If humans were computers, one person’s death might be seen as
“less bad” than the death of five. But human decisions are based on emotion. It was considered
emotionally—and therefore, morally—unacceptable to push the man in front of the trolley to
save five others.
Greene’s magnetic images of his subject’s brains showed that while considering the second
scenario, people were using more of their brains. Greene writes, “These differences in emotional
engagement affect people’s judgments.”[507]

Emotions are a powerful force in work and life. They are spontaneous and unpredictable
elements of human beings that separate us from machines, and in some moments, from one
another. By learning to identify and maximize the uses of our emotions at work, we can more
appropriately respond to emotional situations.

Lack of Leisure Time and Stress Around the Globe

As economist Steven Landsburg notes, “Compared with Europeans, Americans are more likely
to be employed and more likely to work longer hours—employed Americans put in about 3
hours more per week than employed Frenchmen. Most important, Americans take fewer (and
shorter) vacations.”[508] That is, if they take a vacation at all. A recent poll showed that 40% of
Americans do not plan to take a vacation within the next year.[509]

Juliet Schor, a senior lecturer in economics and director of women’s studies at Harvard
University, adds to the portrait of the overworked American with a shocking statistic on
Americans’ free time. According to Schor’s book, The Overworked American: The Unexpected
Decline of Leisure, Americans have 16.5 hours per week of leisure time after their work and
household obligations are fulfilled.[510] This is a huge concern, as research has established that
recovery is a key to well-being and that the lack of recovery can lead to health concerns
associated with stress.[511] Even more challenged for leisure time are some Japanese employees,
working an average of 236 more hours per year than their American counterparts and 500 more
hours than employees in France or Germany.[512] Leisure and recovery are key aspects to
remaining healthy throughout one’s lifetime.

While Europeans normally plan on taking the month of August off, Americans do not have a
similar ritual. PricewaterhouseCoopers became so concerned that they have instituted a 10-day
shutdown as a winter break and a 5-day shutdown around July 4 so that everyone takes that time
off without feeling peer pressure to work through vacations.

Key Takeaway

Emotions play a role in shaping what we feel is ethical and what is not. Leisure time is important
for avoiding the exhaustion phase of the stress cycle. Countries vary a great deal in how many
hours the average worker puts in at work, with Japan working the most hours, followed by those
in the United States.

Exercises

1. Explain a time when you have seen emotions help someone to be more ethical than they
might have otherwise been.
2. Explain a time when you have seen emotions help someone to be less ethical than they
might have otherwise been.
3. Why do you think some countries have so much vacation time compared to others? In
your opinion, is this a problem or not? Why?

Conclusion
Stress is a major concern for individuals and organizations. Exhaustion is the outcome of
prolonged stress. Individuals and organizations can take many approaches to lessening the
negative health and work outcomes associated with being overstressed. Emotions play a role in
organizational life. Understanding these emotions helps individuals to manage them. Emotional
labor can be taxing on individuals, while emotional intelligence may help individuals cope with
the emotional demands of their jobs.

Exercises
Ethical Dilemma

You work at a paper supply company that employs fifty people. A coworker, Karen, is not your
favorite person to work with. She is often late to work, can be unprofessional with coworkers,
and isn’t someone you can routinely count on to go above and beyond her job duties. Last week
you even noticed that her breath smelled like alcohol when you spoke to her about some last-
minute orders that needed to be filled. But, you don’t like to rock the boat and you don’t like to
be disloyal to your coworkers, so you didn’t say anything. However, David Chan just
approached you and asked whether you smelled alcohol on Karen’s breath last Thursday. You
are surprised and ask him why. David mentions that he heard some gossip and wants to confirm
if it is true or not.

What will you do?

1. Should you admit you smelled alcohol on Karen’s breath last week? Why or why not?
2. What are the implications of each course of action?
3. Would you change your answer if, instead of working at a paper supply company, you
worked as a nurse?

Individual Exercise

Time Management Quiz

Please answer true or false for each of the statements according to how you currently manage
your time.

1. True or false: I sort my mail when it comes in, open it, place it in a folder, and deal with
it when I am ready to.
2. True or false: I do what my boss asks me to do immediately.
3. True or false: I don’t take breaks because they waste time.
4. True or false: I answer the phone when it rings regardless of what I am doing.
5. True or false: I check my e-mails as soon as they arrive.
6. True or false: I create a “to do” list at the start of every day.
7. True or false: I do my “heavy thinking” at the end of the day when things have calmed
down.
8. True or false: I don’t like to take vacations because making up the work is always too
stressful.
9. True or false: Multitasking helps me be more effective at work.
10. True or false: I don’t have to organize my office, since I always know where things are.

Group Exercise
Time Management Analysis

Create List 1:

List 10 activities you did at work (or at school) yesterday.

Create List 2:

List 5 things you think are key to doing your job well (or doing well in school).

Compare Lists:

Now, look at both lists and write down which items from List 1 relate to List 2.

Place each activity from List 1 on the following grid.

Figure 7.14. 

Group Discussion

Now, as a group, discuss the following questions:

1. What trends in your time management style did you notice?

2. How much of your “work” time is being spent on things that are directly related to doing
well in your work or at school?
3. What works well for you in terms of time management?
4. What steps could you take to improve your time management?
5. How could your group help one another with time management?
Chapter 8. Communication
Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:

1. Understand the communication process.

2. Compare and contrast different types of communication.
3. Compare and contrast different communication channels.
4. Understand and learn to overcome barriers to effective communication.
5. Understand the role listening plays in communication.
6. Learn how ethics can play a role in how messages are communicated as well as how they
are perceived.
7. Learn how verbal and nonverbal communication can carry different meanings among
cultures.

You’ve Got Mail…and You’re Fired!

Figure 8.1. 

No one likes to receive bad news, and few like to give it. In what is heralded as one of the
biggest human resources blunders in business, one company found a way around the discomfort
of firing someone face-to-face. A total of 400 employees at the Fort Worth, Texas headquarters
of Radio Shack Corporation got the ultimate e-mail message early one Tuesday morning. The
message simply said, “The work force reduction notification is currently in progress.
Unfortunately, your position is one that has been eliminated.” Company officials argued that
using electronic notification was faster and allowed more privacy than breaking the news in
person, and additionally, employees received generous severance packages. Organizational
consultant Ken Siegel disagrees, proclaiming, “The bottom line is this: To almost everyone who
observes or reads this, it represents a stupefying new low in the annals of management practice.”
It’s unclear what, if any, the long-term effect will be for Radio Shack. Many wonder if this will
hurt Radio Shack’s ability to recruit and retain talent in the future. It isn’t just Radio Shack that
finds it challenging to deal with letting employees go. Terminating employees can be a painful
job for many managers. The communication that takes place requires careful preparation and
substantial levels of skill. Some organizations are even outsourcing the job to “terminators” to
handle this difficult task for them.

Using language that softens the blow of a termination has also grown in popularity. Here are just
a few ways to say you’re about to lose your job without saying you’ve been fired:

 Career alternative enhancement program

  Career-change opportunity
 Dehiring staff
 Derecruiting resources
 Downsizing employment
 Employee reduction activities
 Implementing a skills mix adjustment
 Negative employee retention
 Optimizing outplacement potential
 Rectification of a workforce imbalance
 Redundancy elimination
 Right-sizing employment
 Selecting out manpower
 Vocation relocation policy

So if anyone ever uses one of these phrases to fire you, take heart, you’re not unemployed.
You’re simply “in an orderly transition between career changes while undergoing a period of
non-waged involuntary leisure during your temporary outplacement.”[513]

Understanding Communication
Learning Objectives

1. Define communication.
2. Understand the communication process.

Communication is vital to organizations—it’s how we coordinate actions and achieve goals. It is

defined in Webster’s dictionary as a process by which information is exchanged between
individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior. We know that 50% to 90%
of a manager’s time is spent communicating,[514] and communication ability is related to a
manager’s performance.[515] In most work environments, a miscommunication is an annoyance—
it can interrupt workflow by causing delays and interpersonal strife. But, in some work arenas,
like operating rooms and airplane cockpits, communication can be a matter of life and death.

So, just how prevalent is miscommunication in the workplace? You may not be surprised to learn
that the relationship between miscommunication and negative outcomes is very strong. Data
suggest that deficient interpersonal communication was a causal factor in approximately 70% to
80% of all accidents over the last 20 years.[516]

Figure 8.2. 

At NASA, success depends on strong communication.

Poor communication can also lead to lawsuits. For example, you might think that malpractice
suits are filed against doctors based on the outcome of their treatments alone. But a 1997 study of
malpractice suits found that a primary influence on whether or not a doctor is sued is the doctor’s
communication style. While the combination of a bad outcome and patient unhappiness can
quickly lead to litigation, a warm, personal communication style leads to greater patient
satisfaction. Simply put, satisfied patients are less likely to sue.[517]

In business, poor communication costs money and wastes time. One study found that 14% of
each workweek is wasted on poor communication.[518] In contrast, effective communication is an
asset for organizations and individuals alike. Effective communication skills, for example, are an
asset for job seekers. A recent study of recruiters at 85 business schools ranked communication
and interpersonal skills as the highest skills they were looking for, with 89% of the recruiters
saying they were important.[519] On the flip side, good communication can help a company retain
its star employees. Surveys find that when employees think their organizations do a good job of
keeping them informed about matters that affect them and when they have access to the
information they need to do their jobs, they are more satisfied with their employers.[520] So can
good communication increase a company’s market value? The answer seems to be yes. “When
you foster ongoing communications internally, you will have more satisfied employees who will
be better equipped to effectively communicate with your customers,” says Susan Meisinger,
president and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management. Research finds that
organizations that are able to improve their communication integrity also increase their market
value by as much as 7%.[521] We will explore the definition and benefits of effective
communication in our next section.

The Communication Process

Figure 8.3. 

Lee Iacocca, past president and CEO of Chrysler until his retirement in
1992, said, “You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them
across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.”

Communication fulfills three main functions within an organization,

including coordination, transmission of information, and sharing emotions and feelings. All these
functions are vital to a successful organization. The coordination of effort within an organization
helps people work toward the same goals. Transmitting information is a vital part of this process.
Sharing emotions and feelings bonds teams and unites people in times of celebration and crisis.
Effective communication helps people grasp issues, build rapport with coworkers, and achieve
consensus. So, how can we communicate effectively? The first step is to understand the
communication process.

We all exchange information with others countless times each day by phone, e-mail, printed
word, and of course, in person. Let us take a moment to see how a typical communication works
using this as a guide.
Figure 8.4. Process Model of Communication

A sender, such as a boss, coworker, or customer, originates the message with a thought. For
example, the boss’s thought could be: “Get more printer toner cartridges!”

The sender encodes the message, translating the idea into words.

The boss may communicate this thought by saying, “Hey you guys, let’s order more printer
toner cartridges.”

The medium of this encoded message may be spoken words, written words, or signs.

The receiver is the person who receives the message.

The receiver decodes the message by assigning meaning to the words.

In this example, our receiver, Bill, has a to-do list a mile long. “The boss must know how much
work I already have,” the receiver thinks. Bill’s mind translates his boss’s message as, “Could
you order some printer toner cartridges, in addition to everything else I asked you to do this
week…if you can find the time?”

The meaning that the receiver assigns may not be the meaning that the sender intended, because
of factors such as noise. Noise is anything that interferes with or distorts the message being
transformed. Noise can be external in the environment (such as distractions) or it can be within
the receiver. For example, the receiver may be extremely nervous and unable to pay attention to
the message. Noise can even occur within the sender: The sender may be unwilling to take the
time to convey an accurate message, or the words that are chosen can be ambiguous and prone to
misinterpretation.

Picture the next scene. The place: a staff meeting. The time: a few days later. Bill’s boss believes
the message about printer toner has been received.

“Are the printer toner cartridges here yet?” Bill’s boss asks.
“You never said it was a rush job!” Bill protests.

“But!”

“But!”

Miscommunications like these happen in the workplace every day. We’ve seen that
miscommunication does occur in the workplace, but how does a miscommunication happen? It
helps to think of the communication process. The series of arrows pointing the way from the
sender to the receiver and back again can, and often do, fall short of their target.

Key Takeaway

Communication is vital to organizations. Poor communication is prevalent between senders and

receivers. Communication fulfills three functions within organizations, including coordination,
the transmission of information, and sharing emotions and feelings. Noise can disrupt or distort
communication.

Exercises

1. Where have you seen the communication process break down at work? At school? At
home?
2. Explain how miscommunication might be related to an accident at work.
3. Give an example of noise during the communication process.

Communication Barriers
Learning Objectives

1. Understand different ways that the communication process can be sidetracked.

2. Understand the role poor listening plays in communication problems.

3. Understand what active listening is.

4. Learn strategies to become a more effective listener.

Barriers to Effective Communication

The biggest single problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

--George Bernard Shaw

Filtering

Filtering is the distortion or withholding of information to manage a person’s reactions. Some

examples of filtering include a manager’s keeping a division’s negative sales figures from a
superior, in this case, the vice president. The old saying, “Don’t shoot the messenger!” illustrates
the tendency of receivers to vent their negative response to unwanted messages to the sender. A
gatekeeper (the vice president’s assistant, perhaps) who doesn’t pass along a complete message
is also filtering. Additionally, the vice president may delete the e-mail announcing the quarter’s
sales figures before reading it, blocking the message before it arrives.

As you can see, filtering prevents members of an organization from getting the complete picture
of a situation. To maximize your chances of sending and receiving effective communications,
it’s helpful to deliver a message in multiple ways and to seek information from multiple sources.
In this way, the impact of any one person’s filtering will be diminished.

Since people tend to filter bad news more during upward communication, it is also helpful to
remember that those below you in an organization may be wary of sharing bad news. One way to
defuse this tendency to filter is to reward employees who clearly convey information upward,
regardless of whether the news is good or bad.

Here are some of the criteria that individuals may use when deciding whether to filter a message
or pass it on:

1. Past experience: Were previous senders rewarded for passing along news of this kind in
the past, or were they criticized?

2. Knowledge and perception of the speaker: Has the receiver’s direct superior made it clear
that “no news is good news?”

3. Emotional state, involvement with the topic, and level of attention: Does the sender’s fear
of failure or criticism prevent the message from being conveyed? Is the topic within the
sender’s realm of expertise, increasing confidence in the ability to decode the message, or
is the sender out of a personal comfort zone when it comes to evaluating the message’s
significance? Are personal concerns impacting the sender’s ability to judge the message’s
value?

Once again, filtering can lead to miscommunications in business. Listeners translate messages
into their own words, each creating a unique version of what was said.[522]

Selective Perception

Small things can command our attention when we’re visiting a new place—a new city or a new
company. Over time, however, we begin to make assumptions about the environment based on
our past experiences. Selective perception refers to filtering what we see and hear to suit our own
needs. This process is often unconscious. We are bombarded with too much stimuli every day to
pay equal attention to everything, so we pick and choose according to our own needs. Selective
perception is a time-saver, a necessary tool in a complex culture. But it can also lead to mistakes.

Think back to the example conversation between the person asked to order more toner cartridges
and his boss earlier in this chapter. Since Bill found the to-do list from his boss to be
unreasonably demanding, he assumed the request could wait. (How else could he do everything
else on the list?) The boss, assuming that Bill had heard the urgency in her request, assumed that
Bill would place the order before returning to previously stated tasks. Both members of this
organization were using selective perception to evaluate the communication. Bill’s perception
was that the task could wait. The boss’s perception was that a time frame was clear, though
unstated. When two selective perceptions collide, a misunderstanding occurs.
Information Overload

Messages reach us in countless ways every day. Some messages are societal—advertisements
that we may hear or see in the course of our day. Others are professional—e-mails, memos, and
voice mails, as well as conversations with our colleagues. Others are personal—messages from
and conversations with our loved ones and friends.

Add these together and it’s easy to see how we may be receiving more information than we can
take in. This state of imbalance is known as information overload, which occurs “when the
information processing demands on an individual’s time to perform interactions and internal
calculations exceed the supply or capacity of time available for such processing.”[523] Others note
that information overload is “a symptom of the high-tech age, which is too much information for
one human being to absorb in an expanding world of people and technology. It comes from all
sources including TV, newspapers, and magazines as well as wanted and unwanted regular mail,
e-mail and faxes. It has been exacerbated enormously because of the formidable number of
results obtained from Web search engines.”[524] Other research shows that working in such
fragmented fashion significantly impacts efficiency, creativity, and mental acuity.[525]

Figure 8.5. 

A field study found that managers can expect, on

average, to do only 3 minutes of uninterrupted work
on any one task before being interrupted by an
incoming e-mail, instant message, phone call,
coworker, or other distraction.[526]

Going back to our example of Bill, let’s say he’s in

his office on the phone with a supplier. While he’s talking, he hears the chime of his e-mail
alerting him to an important message from his boss. He’s scanning through it quickly while still
on the phone when a coworker pokes her head into his office saying Bill’s late for a staff
meeting. The supplier on the other end of the phone line has just given him a choice among the
products and delivery dates he requested. Bill realizes he missed hearing the first two options,
but he doesn’t have time to ask the supplier to repeat them all or to try reconnecting with him at a
later time. He chooses the third option—at least he heard that one, he reasons, and it seemed fair.
How good was Bill’s decision amidst all the information he was processing at the same time?

Emotional Disconnects

An effective communication requires a sender and a receiver who are open to speaking and
listening to one another, despite possible differences in opinion or personality. One or both
parties may have to put their emotions aside to achieve the goal of communicating clearly. A
receiver who is emotionally upset tends to ignore or distort what the sender is saying. A sender
who is emotionally upset may be unable to present ideas or feelings effectively.

Lack of Source Familiarity or Credibility

Have you ever told a joke that fell flat? You and the receiver lacked the common context that
could have made it funny. (Or yes, it could have just been a lousy joke.) Sarcasm and irony are
subtle and, therefore, they are potentially hurtful commodities in business. It’s best to keep these
types of communications out of the workplace, as their benefits are limited, and their potential
dangers are great. Lack of familiarity with the sender can lead to misinterpreting humor,
especially in less-rich information channels such as e-mail. For example, an e-mail from Jill that
ends with, “Men should be boiled in vats of oil,” could be interpreted as antimale if the receiver
didn’t know that Jill has a penchant for exaggeration and always jokes to let off steam. Similarly,
if the sender lacks credibility or is untrustworthy, the message will not get through. Receivers
may be suspicious of the sender’s motivations (Why is she telling me this?). Likewise, if the
sender has communicated erroneous information in the past or has created false emergencies, the
current message may be filtered.

Workplace Gossip

The informal gossip network known as the grapevine is a lifeline for many employees seeking
information about their company.[527] Researchers agree that the grapevine is an inevitable part of
organizational life. Research finds that 70% of all organizational communication occurs at the
grapevine level.[528] Employees trust their peers as a source of information, but the grapevine’s
informal structure can be a barrier to effective communication from the managerial point of
view. Its grassroots structure gives it greater credibility in the minds of employees than
information delivered through official channels, even when that information is false. Some
downsides of the office grapevine are that gossip offers politically minded insiders a powerful
tool for disseminating communication (and self-promoting miscommunications) within an
organization. In addition, the grapevine lacks a specific sender, which can create a sense of
distrust among employees: Who is at the root of the gossip network? When the news is volatile,
suspicions may arise as to the person or person behind the message. Managers who understand
the grapevine’s power can use it to send and receive messages of their own. They can also
decrease the grapevine’s power by sending official messages quickly and accurately, should big
news arise.

Semantics

Words can mean different things to different people, or they might not mean anything to another
person. This is called semantics. For example, companies often have their own acronyms and
buzzwords (called business jargon) that are clear to them but impenetrable to outsiders. For
example, at IBM, GBS is focusing on BPTS, using expertise acquired from the PwC purchase
(which had to be sold to avoid conflicts of interest in light of SOX) to fend off other BPO
providers and inroads by the Bangalore tiger. Does this make sense to you? If not, here’s the
translation: IBM’s Global Business Services (GBS) division is focusing on offering companies
Business Process Transformation Services (BPTS), using the expertise it acquired from
purchasing the management consulting and technology services arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers
(PwC), which had to sell the division due to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX; enacted in response
to the major accounting scandals such as Enron). The added management expertise puts it above
business process outsourcing (BPO) vendors who focus more on automating processes rather
than transforming and improving them. Chief among these BPO competitors is Wipro, often
called the “Bangalore tiger” because of its geographic origin and aggressive growth. Given the
amount of messages we send and receive everyday, it makes sense that humans would try to find
a shortcut—a way to communicate things in code. In business, this code is known as jargon.
Jargon is the language of specialized terms used by a group or profession. It is common
shorthand among experts and if used sensibly can be a quick and efficient way of
communicating. Most jargon consists of unfamiliar terms, abstract words, nonexistent words,
acronyms, and abbreviations, with an occasional euphemism thrown in for good measure. Every
profession, trade, and organization has its own specialized terms.[529]
At first glance, jargon sounds like a good thing—a quicker way to send an effective
communication similar to the way text message abbreviations can send common messages in a
shorter, yet understandable way. But that’s not always how things happen. Jargon can be an
obstacle to effective communication, causing listeners to tune out or fostering ill feelings
between partners in a conversation. When jargon rules the day, the message can get obscured. A
key question to ask yourself before using a phrase of jargon is, “Who is the receiver of my
message?” If you are a specialist speaking to another specialist in your area, jargon may be the
best way to send a message while forging a professional bond—similar to the way best friends
can communicate in code. For example, an IT technician communicating with another IT
technician may use jargon as a way of sharing information in a way that reinforces the pair’s
shared knowledge. But that same conversation should be held in Standard English, free of
jargon, when communicating with staff members outside the IT group.

Online Follow-Up

Eighty buzz words in the business can be found at the following Web site:

http://www.amanet.org/movingahead/editorial2002_2003/nov03_80buzzwords.htm

A discussion of why slang is a problem can be found at the following Web site:

http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/speakforsuccesscourse/a/speechlesson5.htm

In addition, the OB Toolbox below will help you avoid letting business jargon get in your way at
work.

OB Toolbox: Tips for Reducing Miscommunication-by-Jargon

 Know your audience. If they weren’t sitting beside you in law school, medical school, or
in that finance or computer class, then assume they don’t know what you are talking
about. Speak for the other person and not yourself.

 Decode your acronyms. If you use an acronym in verbal or written communication,

explain what it means after you use it for the first time. Your audience will filter your
message otherwise, as they wonder, “Now what does ROI stand for?” (It stands for
“return on investment,” btw—by the way.)

 Limit your jargon use. Jargon doesn’t necessarily make you sound smart or business
savvy. It can create communication barriers and obstacles and hurts your ability to build
relationships and close deals.

Gender Differences in Communication

Men and women work together every day, but their different styles of communication can
sometimes work against them. Generally speaking, women like to ask questions before starting a
project, while men tend to “jump right in.” A male manager who’s unaware of how most women
communicate their readiness to work may misperceive a ready employee as not being prepared.

Another difference that has been noticed is that men often speak in sports metaphors, while many
women use their home as a starting place for analogies. Women who believe men are “only
talking about the game” may be missing out on a chance to participate in a division’s strategy
and opportunities for teamwork and “rallying the troops” for success.[530]
“It is important to promote the best possible communication between men and women in the
workplace,” notes gender policy advisor Dee Norton, who provided the above example. “As we
move between the male and female cultures, we sometimes have to change how we behave
(speak the language of the other gender) to gain the best results from the situation. Clearly,
successful organizations of the future are going to have leaders and team members who
understand, respect, and apply the rules of gender culture appropriately.”[531]

As we have seen, differences in men’s and women’s communication styles can lead to
misunderstandings in the workplace. Being aware of these differences, however, can be the first
step in learning to work with them instead of around them. Keep in mind that men tend to focus
more on competition, data, and orders in their communications, while women tend to focus more
on cooperation, intuition, and requests. Both styles can be effective in the right situations, but
understanding the differences is a first step in avoiding misunderstandings.

Differences in Meaning Between the Sender and Receiver

“Mean what you say, and say what you mean.” It’s an easy thing to say. But in business, what do
those words mean? Simply put, different words mean different things to different people. Age,
education, and cultural background are all factors that influence how a person interprets words.
The less we consider our audience, the greater our chances of miscommunication will be.
Eliminating jargon is one way of ensuring our words will convey real-world concepts to others.
Speaking to our audience, as opposed to speaking about ourselves, is another.

Managers who speak about “long-term goals and profits” to a staff that has received scant raises
may find their core message (“You’re doing a great job—and that benefits the folks in charge!”)
has infuriated the group they hoped to inspire. Instead, managers who recognize the
contributions of their staff and confirm that this work is contributing to company goals in ways
“that will benefit the source of our success—our employees as well as executives,” will find that
their core message (“You’re doing a great job—we really value your work.”) is received as
intended, rather than being misinterpreted.

Biased Language

Words and actions that stereotype others on the basis of personal or group affiliation are
examples of bias. Below is a list of words that have the potential to be offensive. The column on
the right provides alternative words that can be used instead.[532]

Figure 8.6. 
Effective communication is clear, factual, and goal-oriented. It is also respectful. Referring to a
person by one adjective (a brain, a diabetic) reduces the person to that one characteristic.
Language that inflames or stereotypes a person poisons the communication process. Language
that insults an individual or group based on age, ethnicity, sexual preference, or political beliefs
violates public and private standards of decency, ranging from civil rights to corporate
regulations.

The effort to create a neutral set of terms to refer to heritage and preferences has resulted in a
debate over the nature of “political correctness.” Proponents of political correctness see it as a
way to defuse the volatile nature of words that stereotyped groups and individuals in the past.
Critics of political correctness see its vocabulary as stilted and needlessly cautious.

Many companies offer new employees written guides on standards of speech and conduct. These
guides, augmented by common sense and courtesy, are solid starting points for effective,
respectful workplace communication.

Tips for appropriate workplace speech include, but are not limited to the following:

 Alternating our use of he and she when referring to people in general

 Relying on human resources–generated guidelines

 Remembering that terms that feel respectful or comfortable to us may not be comfortable
or respectful to others

Poor Listening

The greatest compliment that was ever paid to me was when one asked me what I thought, and
attended to my answer.

--Henry David Thoreau

A sender may strive to deliver a message clearly. But the receiver’s ability to listen effectively is
equally vital to successful communication. The average worker spends 55% of their workdays
listening. Managers listen up to 70% each day. Unfortunately, listening doesn’t lead to
understanding in every case.
From a number of different perspectives, listening matters. Former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca
lamented, “I only wish I could find an institute that teaches people how to listen. After all, a
good manager needs to listen at least as much as he needs to talk.”[533] Research shows that
listening skills were related to promotions.[534]

Listening clearly matters. Listening takes practice, skill, and concentration. Alan Gulick, a
Starbucks Corporation spokesperson, believes better listening can improve profits. If every
Starbucks employee misheard one $10 order each day, their errors would cost the company a
billion dollars annually. To teach its employees to listen, Starbucks created a code that helps
employees taking orders hear the size, flavor, and use of milk or decaffeinated coffee. The
person making the drink echoes the order aloud.

How Can You Improve Your Listening Skills?

Cicero said, “Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.” How often have we been in a
conversation with someone else when we are not really listening but itching to convey our
portion? This behavior is known as “rehearsing.” It suggests the receiver has no intention of
considering the sender’s message and is actually preparing to respond to an earlier point instead.
Effective communication relies on another kind of listening: active listening.

Active listening can be defined as giving full attention to what other people are saying, taking
time to understand the points being made, asking questions as needed, and not interrupting at
inappropriate times.[535] Active listening creates a real-time relationship between the sender and
receiver by acknowledging the content and receipt of a message. As we’ve seen in the Starbucks
example above, repeating and confirming a message’s content offers a way to confirm that the
correct content is flowing between colleagues. The process creates a bond between coworkers
while increasing the flow and accuracy of messaging.

How Can We Listen Actively?

Carl Rogers gave five rules for active listening:

1. Listen for message content.

2. Listen for feelings.

3. Respond to feelings.

4. Note all cues.

5. Paraphrase and restate.

The good news is that listening is a skill that can be learned.[536] The first step is to decide that we
want to listen. Casting aside distractions, such as by reducing background or internal noise, is
critical. The receiver takes in the sender’s message silently, without speaking.

Second, throughout the conversation, show the speaker that you’re listening. You can do this
nonverbally by nodding your head and keeping your attention focused on the speaker. You can
also do it verbally, by saying things like, “Yes,” “That’s interesting,” or other such verbal cues.
As you’re listening, pay attention to the sender’s body language for additional cues about how
they’re feeling. Interestingly, silence has a role in active listening. During active listening, we are
trying to understand what has been said, and in silence we can consider the implications. We
can’t consider information and object to it at the same time. That’s where the power of silence
comes into play. Finally, if anything is not clear to you, ask questions. Confirm that you’ve heard
the message accurately, by repeating back a crucial piece like, “Great, I’ll see you at 2:00 p.m. in
my office.” At the end of the conversation, a thank you from both parties is an optional but
highly effective way of acknowledging each other’s teamwork.

Becoming a More Effective Listener

As we’ve seen above, active listening creates a more dynamic relationship between a receiver
and a sender. It strengthens personal investment in the information being shared. It also forges
healthy working relationships among colleagues by making speakers and listeners equally valued
members of the communication process.

Many companies offer public speaking courses for their staff, but what about “public listening”?
Here are some more ways you can build your listening skills by becoming a more effective
listener and banishing communication freezers from your discussions.

OB Toolbox: 10 Ways to Improve Your Listening Habits

1. Start by stopping. Take a moment to inhale and exhale quietly before you begin to listen.
Your job as a listener is to receive information openly and accurately.

2. Don’t worry about what you’ll say when the time comes. Silence can be a beautiful thing.

3. Join the sender’s team. When the sender pauses, summarize what you believe has been
said. “What I’m hearing is that we need to focus on marketing as well as sales. Is that
correct?” Be attentive to physical as well as verbal communications. “I hear you saying
that we should focus on marketing, but the way you’re shaking your head tells me the
idea may not really appeal to you—is that right?”

4. Don’t multitask while listening. Listening is a full-time job. It’s tempting to multitask
when you and the sender are in different places, but doing that is counterproductive. The
human mind can only focus on one thing at a time. Listening with only part of your brain
increases the chances that you’ll have questions later, ultimately requiring more of the
speaker’s time. (And when the speaker is in the same room, multitasking signals a
disinterest that is considered rude.)

5. Try to empathize with the sender’s point of view. You don’t have to agree, but can you
find common ground?

6. Confused? Ask questions. There’s nothing wrong with admitting you haven’t understood
the sender’s point. You may even help the sender clarify the message.

7. Establish eye contact. Making eye contact with the speaker (if appropriate for the culture)
is important.

8. What is the goal of this communication? Ask yourself this question at different points
during the communication to keep the information flow on track. Be polite. Differences
in opinion can be the starting point of consensus.

9. It’s great to be surprised. Listen with an open mind, not just for what you want to hear.
 10. Pay attention to what is not said. Does the sender’s body language seem to contradict the
message? If so, clarification may be in order.

Communication Freezers

Communication freezers put an end to effective communication by making the receiver feel
judged or defensive. Typical communication stoppers include criticizing, blaming, ordering,
judging, or shaming the other person. Some examples of things to avoid saying include the
following:

1. Telling the other person what to do:

o “You must…”

o “You cannot…”

2. Threatening with “or else” implied:

o “You had better…”

o “If you don’t…”

3. Making suggestions or telling the other person what they ought to do:

o “You should…”

o “It’s your responsibility to…”

4. Attempting to educate the other person:

o “Let me give you the facts.”

o “Experience tells us that…”

5. Judging the other person negatively:

o “You’re not thinking straight.”

o “You’re wrong.”

6. Giving insincere praise:

o “You have so much potential.”

o “I know you can do better than this.”

7. Psychoanalyzing the other person:

o “You’re jealous.”

o “You have problems with authority.”

 8. Making light of the other person’s problems by generalizing:

o “Things will get better.”

o “Behind every cloud is a silver lining.”

9. Asking excessive or inappropriate questions:

o “Why did you do that?”

o “Who has influenced you?”

10. Making light of the problem by kidding:

o “Think about the positive side.”

o “You think you’ve got problems!”

Key Takeaway

Many barriers to effective communication exist. Examples include filtering, selective perception,
information overload, emotional disconnects, lack of source credibility, workplace gossip,
gender differences, and semantics. The receiver can enhance the probability of effective
communication by engaging in active listening.

Exercises

1. Most people are poor listeners. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Please
support your position.

2. Please share an example of how differences in shared meaning have affected you.

3. When you see a memo or e-mail full of typos, poor grammar, or incomplete sentences,
how do you react? Does it affect your perception of the sender? Why or why not?

4. Give an example of selective perception.

5. Do you use jargon at work or in your classes? If so, do you think it helps or hampers
communication? Why or why not?

Different Types of Communication and Channels

Learning Objectives

1. Understand different types of communication.

2. Understand how communication channels affect communication.

3. Recognize different communication directions within organizations.

Types of Communication

There are three types of communication, including: verbal communication involving listening to
a person to understand the meaning of a message, written communication in which a message is
read, and nonverbal communication involving observing a person and inferring meaning. Let’s
start with verbal communication, which is the most common form of communication.

Verbal Communication

Verbal communications in business take place over the phone or in person. The medium of the
message is oral. Let’s return to our printer cartridge example. This time, the message is being
conveyed from the sender (the manager) to the receiver (an employee named Bill) by telephone.
We’ve already seen how the manager’s request to Bill (“Buy more printer toner cartridges!”) can
go awry. Now let’s look at how the same message can travel successfully from sender to
receiver.

Manager (speaking on the phone): “Good morning Bill!”

(By using the employee’s name, the manager is establishing a clear, personal link to the
receiver.)

Manager: “Your division’s numbers are looking great.”

(The manager’s recognition of Bill’s role in a winning team further personalizes and
emotionalizes the conversation.)

Manager: “Our next step is to order more printer toner cartridges. Would you place an order for
1,000 printer toner cartridges with Jones Computer Supplies? Our budget for this purchase is
$30,000, and the printer toner cartridges need to be here by Wednesday afternoon.”

(The manager breaks down the task into several steps. Each step consists of a specific task, time
frame, quantity, or goal.)

Bill: “Sure thing! I’ll call Jones Computer Supplies and order 1,000 more printer toner
cartridges, not exceeding a total of $30,000, to be here by Wednesday afternoon.”

(Bill, a model employee, repeats what he has heard. This is the feedback portion of the
communication. Feedback helps him recognize any confusion he may have had hearing the
manager’s message. Feedback also helps the manager hear if she has communicated the
message correctly.)

Storytelling has been shown to be an effective form of verbal communication that serves an
important organizational function by helping to construct common meanings for individuals
within the organization. Stories can help clarify key values and also help demonstrate how
certain tasks are performed within an organization. Story frequency, strength, and tone are
related to higher organizational commitment.[537] The quality of the stories is related to the ability
of entrepreneurs to secure capital for their firms.[538]

While the process may be the same, high stakes communications require more planning,
reflection, and skill than normal day-to-day interactions at work. Examples of high stakes
communication events include asking for a raise or presenting a business plan to a venture
capitalist. In addition to these events, there are also many times in our professional lives when
we have crucial conversations, which are defined as discussions in which not only are the stakes
high, but also the opinions vary and emotions run strong.[539] One of the most consistent
recommendations from communications experts is to work toward using “and” instead of “but”
when communicating under these circumstances. In addition, be aware of your communication
style and practice being flexible; it is under stressful situations that communication styles can
become the most rigid.

OB Toolbox: 10 Recommendations for Improving the Quality of Your Conversations

1. Be the first to say hello. Use your name in your introduction, in case others have
forgotten it.

2. Think before you speak. Our impulse is often to imitate movies by offering fast, witty
replies in conversation. In the real world, a careful silence can make us sound more
intelligent and prevent mistakes.

3. Be receptive to new ideas. If you disagree with another person’s opinion, saying, “Tell
me more,” can be a more useful way of moving forward than saying, “That’s stupid!”

4. Repeat someone’s name to yourself and then aloud, when being introduced. The form of
the name you use may vary. First names work with peers. Mr. or Ms. is common when
meeting superiors in business.

5. Ask questions. This establishes your interest in another person.

6. Listen as much, if not more, than you speak. This allows you to learn new information.

7. Use eye contact. Eye contact shows that you are engaged. Also, be sure to smile and
make sure your body language matches your message.

8. Mirror the other person. Occasionally repeat what they’ve said in your own words. “You
mean… ?”

9. Have an exit strategy ready. Ideal conversations are brief, leaving others wanting more.

10. Be prepared. Before beginning a conversation, have three simple facts about yourself and
four questions about someone else in mind.

Written Communication

In contrast to verbal communications, which are oral, written business communications are
printed messages. Examples of written communications include memos, proposals, e-mails,
letters, training manuals, and operating policies. They may be printed on paper or appear on the
screen. Written communication is often asynchronous. That is, the sender can write a message
that the receiver can read at any time, unlike a conversation that is carried on in real time. A
written communication can also be read by many people (such as all employees in a department
or all customers). It’s a “one-to-many” communication, as opposed to a one-to-one conversation.
There are exceptions, of course: A voice mail is an oral message that is asynchronous.
Conference calls and speeches are oral one-to-many communications, and e-mails can have only
one recipient or many.
Normally, a verbal communication takes place in real time. Written communication, by contrast,
can be constructed over a longer period of time. It also can be collaborative. Multiple people can
contribute to the content on one document before that document is sent to the intended audience.

Verbal and written communications have different strengths and weaknesses. In business, the
decision to communicate verbally or in written form can be a powerful one. As we’ll see below,
each style of communication has particular strengths and pitfalls. When determining whether to
communicate verbally or in writing, ask yourself: Do I want to convey facts or feelings? Verbal
communications are a better way to convey feelings. Written communications do a better job of
conveying facts.

Picture a manager making a speech to a team of twenty employees. The manager is speaking at a
normal pace. The employees appear interested. But how much information is being transmitted?
Probably not as much as the speaker believes. The fact is that humans listen much faster than
they speak. The average public speaker communicates at a speed of about 125 words a minute,
and that pace sounds fine to the audience. (In fact, anything faster than that probably would
sound unusual. To put that figure in perspective, someone having an excited conversation speaks
at about 150 words a minute.) Based on these numbers, we could assume that the audience has
more than enough time to take in each word the speaker delivers, which actually creates a
problem. The average person in the audience can hear 400 to 500 words a minute.[540] The
audience has more than enough time to hear. As a result, their minds may wander.

As you can see, oral communication is the most often used form of communication, but it is also
an inherently flawed medium for conveying specific facts. Listeners’ minds wander. It’s nothing
personal—in fact, it’s a completely normal psychological occurrence. In business, once we
understand this fact, we can make more intelligent communication choices based on the kind of
information we want to convey.

Figure 8.7. 

Communication mediums have come a long way since Alexander

Graham Bell’s original telephone.

Most jobs involve some degree of writing. According to the National Commission on Writing,
67% of salaried employees in large American companies and professional state employees have
some kind of writing responsibility. Half of responding companies reported that they take writing
into consideration when hiring professional employees, and 91% always take writing into
account when hiring.[541] Luckily, it is possible to learn to write clearly.

Here are some tips on writing well. Thomas Jefferson summed up the rules of writing well with
this idea: “Don’t use two words when one will do.” Put another way, half the words can have
twice the impact. One of the oldest myths in business is that writing more will make us sound
more important. The opposite is true. Leaders who can communicate simply and clearly project a
stronger image than those who write a lot but say nothing.

Putting Jefferson’s Rules Into Action: Five Ways to Communicate More With Fewer Words
 1. Picture the receiver in your mind before you begin to write. After all, a written
communication is a link between people.

2. Choose simple words. When in doubt, choose the shorter word (“Automobile or car?
Car!”)

3. Be polite and clear. Your message will make a strong, clear impact.

4. Make your message brief and direct by trimming redundant words or phrases. “Having
thus explored our first option, I would now like to begin to explore the second option that
may be open to us.” versus “After considering Option 1, I would like to look at Option
2.”

5. Choose strong, active verbs. “I suggest…” instead of “It would seem to me that we
might…”

Remember, concise writing equals effective communication.

Nonverbal Communication

What you say is a vital part of any communication. Surprisingly, what you don’t say can be even
more important. Research shows that nonverbal cues can also affect whether or not you get a job
offer. Judges examining videotapes of actual applicants were able to assess the social skills of
job candidates with the sound turned off. They watched the rate of gesturing, time spent talking,
and formality of dress to determine which candidates would be the most socially successful on
the job.[542] Research also shows that 55% of in-person communication comes from nonverbal
cues such as facial expressions, body stance, and tone of voice. According to one study, only 7%
of a receiver’s comprehension of a message is based on the sender’s actual words, 38% is based
on paralanguage (the tone, pace, and volume of speech), and 55% is based on nonverbal cues
(body language).[543] To be effective communicators, our body language, appearance, and tone
must align with the words we’re trying to convey. Research shows that when individuals are
lying, they are more likely to blink more frequently, shift their weight, and shrug.[544]

Listen Up and Learn More!

To learn more about facial language from facial recognition expert Patrician McCarthy as she
speaks with Senior Editor Suzanne Woolley at Business Week, view the online interview at
http://feedroom.businessweek.com/index.jsp?
fr_chl=1e2ee1e43e4a5402a862f79a7941fa625f5b0744

A different tone can change the perceived meaning of a message. See the table below for how
clearly this can be true. If we only read these words, we would be left to wonder, but during a
conversation, the tone conveys a great deal of information.

Don’t Use That Tone With Me!

Changing your tone can dramatically change your meaning.

Table 8.1. 
 Placement of the emphasis What it means

I did not tell John you were late. Someone else told John you were late.

I did not tell John you were late. This did not happen.

I did not tell John you were late. I may have implied it.

I did not tell John you were late. But maybe I told Sharon and José.

I did not tell John you were late. I was talking about someone else.

I did not tell John you were late. I told him you still are late.

I did not tell John you were late. I told him you were attending another meeting.

Now you can see how changing the tone of voice in a conversation can incite or diffuse a
misunderstanding. For another example, imagine that you’re a customer interested in opening a
new bank account. At one bank, the bank officer is dressed neatly. She looks you in the eye
when she speaks. Her tone is friendly. Her words are easy to understand, yet professional
sounding. “Thank you for considering Bank of the East Coast. We appreciate this opportunity
and would love to explore ways that we can work together to help your business grow,” she says
with a friendly smile. At the second bank, the bank officer’s tie is stained. He looks over your
head and down at his desk as he speaks. He shifts in his seat and fidgets with his hands. His
words say, “Thank you for considering Bank of the West Coast. We appreciate this opportunity
and would love to explore ways that we can work together to help you business grow,” but he
mumbles his words, and his voice conveys no enthusiasm or warmth. Which bank would you
choose? The speaker’s body language must match his or her words. If a sender’s words and body
language don’t match—if a sender smiles while telling a sad tale, for example—the mismatch
between verbal and nonverbal cues can cause a receiver to actively dislike the sender.

Following are a few examples of nonverbal cues that can support or detract from a sender’s
message.

Body Language

A simple rule of thumb is that simplicity, directness, and warmth conveys sincerity. Sincerity is
vital for effective communication. In some cultures, a firm handshake, given with a warm, dry
hand, is a great way to establish trust. A weak, clammy handshake might convey a lack of
trustworthiness. Gnawing one’s lip conveys uncertainty. A direct smile conveys confidence.

Figure 8.8. 
Eye Contact

In business, the style and duration of eye contact varies greatly across cultures. In the United
States, looking someone in the eye (for about a second) is considered a sign of trustworthiness.

Facial Expressions

The human face can produce thousands of different expressions. These expressions have been
decoded by experts as corresponding to hundreds of different emotional states.[545] Our faces
convey basic information to the outside world. Happiness is associated with an upturned mouth
and slightly closed eyes; fear with an open mouth and wide-eyed stare. Shifty eyes and pursed
lips convey a lack of trustworthiness. The impact of facial expressions in conversation is
instantaneous. Our brains may register them as “a feeling” about someone’s character. For this
reason, it is important to consider how we appear in business as well as what we say. The
muscles of our faces convey our emotions. We can send a silent message without saying a word.
A change in facial expression can change our emotional state. Before an interview, for example,
if we focus on feeling confident, our face will convey that confidence to an interviewer.
Adopting a smile (even if we’re feeling stressed) can reduce the body’s stress levels.

Posture

The position of our body relative to a chair or other person is another powerful silent messenger
that conveys interest, aloofness, professionalism, or lack thereof. Head up, back straight (but not
rigid) implies an upright character. In interview situations, experts advise mirroring an
interviewer’s tendency to lean in and settle back in a seat. The subtle repetition of the other
person’s posture conveys that we are listening and responding.

Touch

The meaning of a simple touch differs between individuals, genders, and cultures. In Mexico,
when doing business, men may find themselves being grasped on the arm by another man. To
pull away is seen as rude. In Indonesia, to touch anyone on the head or to touch anything with
one’s foot is considered highly offensive. In the Far East and some parts of Asia, according to
business etiquette writer Nazir Daud, “It is considered impolite for a woman to shake a man’s
hand.”[546] Americans, as we have noted above, place great value in a firm handshake. But
handshaking as a competitive sport (“the bone-crusher”) can come off as needlessly aggressive
both at home and abroad.

Space

Anthropologist Edward T. Hall coined the term proxemics to denote the different kinds of
distance that occur between people. These distances vary among cultures. The chart below
outlines the basic proxemics of everyday life and their associated meaning.[547]

Figure 8.9. 

Distance between speakers is partially determined by their intimacy level.

Standing too far away from a colleague (public speaking distance) or too close to a colleague (intimate
distance for embracing) can thwart an effective verbal communication in business.

Communication Channels

The channel, or medium, used to communicate a message affects how accurately the message
will be received. Channels vary in their “information-richness.” Information-rich channels
convey more nonverbal information. Research shows that effective managers tend to use more
information-rich communication channels than less effective managers.[548] The figure below
illustrates the information richness of different channels.

Figure 8.10. 
Information channels differ in their richness.

The key to effective communication is to match the communication channel with the goal of the
message.[549] For example, written media may be a better choice when the sender wants a record
of the content, has less urgency for a response, is physically separated from the receiver, and
doesn’t require a lot of feedback from the receiver, or when the message is complicated and may
take some time to understand.

Oral communication, on the other hand, makes more sense when the sender is conveying a
sensitive or emotional message, needs feedback immediately, and does not need a permanent
record of the conversation.

Figure 8.11. Guide for When to Use Written versus Verbal Communication

Figure 8.12. 

Make sure to match the medium to the task. Trying to accomplish a

visual task such as choosing colors is more challenging on the phone
versus in person.

Like face-to-face and telephone conversations, videoconferencing has

high information richness, because receivers and senders can see or hear beyond just the words
that are used—they can see the sender’s body language or hear the tone of their voice. Handheld
devices, blogs, and written letters and memos offer medium-rich channels, because they convey
words and pictures or photos. Formal written documents, such as legal documents and budget
spreadsheets, convey the least richness, because the format is often rigid and standardized. As a
result, the tone of the message is often lost.

The growth of e-mail has been spectacular, but it has also created challenges in managing
information and increasing the speed of doing businesses. Over 100 million adults in the United
States use e-mail at least once a day.[550] Internet users around the world send an estimated 60
billion e-mails each day, and a large portion of these are spam or scam attempts.[551] That makes
e-mail the second most popular medium of communication worldwide, second only to voice.
Less than 1% of all written human communications even reaches paper these days.[552] To combat
the overuse of e-mail, companies such as Intel have even instituted “no e-mail Fridays.” During
these times, all communication is done via other communication channels. Learning to be more
effective in your e-mail communications is an important skill. To learn more, check out the OB
Toolbox on business e-mail do’s and don’ts.

OB Toolbox: Business E-mail Do’s and Don’ts

1. DON’T send or forward chain e-mails.

2. DON’T put anything in an e-mail that you don’t want the world to see.

3. DON’T write a message in capital letters—this is the equivalent of SHOUTING.

4. DON’T routinely CC everyone. Reducing inbox clutter is a great way to increase

communication.

5. DON’T hit send until you’ve spell-checked your e-mail.

6. DO use a subject line that summarizes your message, adjusting it as the message changes
over time.
 7. DO make your request in the first line of your e-mail. (And if that’s all you need to say,
stop there!)

8. DO end your e-mail with a brief sign-off such as, “Thank you,” followed by your name
and contact information.

9. DO think of a work e-mail as a binding communication.

10. DO let others know if you’ve received an e-mail in error.

An important although often ignored rule when communicating emotional information is that e-
mail’s lack of richness can be your loss. As we saw in the chart above, e-mail is a medium-rich
channel. It can convey facts quickly. But when it comes to emotion, e-mail’s flaws make it a far
less desirable choice than oral communication—the 55% of nonverbal cues that make a
conversation comprehensible to a listener are missing. Researchers also note that e-mail readers
don’t pick up on sarcasm and other tonal aspects of writing as much as the writer believes they
will.[553]

The sender may believe that certain emotional signifiers have been included in a message. But,
with written words alone, those signifiers are not there. This gap between the form and content of
e-mail inspired the rise of emoticons—symbols that offer clues to the emotional side of the
words in each message. Generally speaking, however, emoticons are not considered professional
in business communication.

You might feel uncomfortable conveying an emotionally laden message verbally, especially
when the message contains unwanted news. Sending an e-mail to your staff that there will be no
bonuses this year may seem easier than breaking the bad news face-to-face, but that doesn’t
mean that e-mail is an effective or appropriate way to break this kind of news. When the message
is emotional, the sender should use verbal communication. Indeed, a good rule of thumb is that
more emotionally laden messages require more thought in the choice of channel and how they
are communicated.

Career Advice

Communication can occur without you even realizing it. Consider the following: Is your e-mail
name professional? The typical convention for business e-mail contains some form of your
name. While an e-mail name like “LazyGirl” or “DeathMonkey” may be fine for chatting online
with your friends, they may send the wrong signal to individuals you e-mail such as professors
and prospective employers.

Is your outgoing voice mail greeting professional? If not, change it. Faculty and prospective
recruiters will draw certain conclusions if, upon calling you, they get a message that screams,
“Party, party, party!”

Do you have a “private” social networking Web site on MySpace.com, Facebook.com, or

Xanga.com? If so, consider what it says about you to employers or clients. If it is information
you wouldn’t share at work, it probably shouldn’t be there.

Googled yourself lately? If not, you probably should. Potential employers have begun searching
the Web as part of background checking, and you should be aware of what’s out there about you.

Direction of Communication Within Organizations

Information can move horizontally, from a sender to a receiver, as we’ve seen. It can also move
vertically, down from top management, or up from the front line. Information can also move
diagonally between and among levels of an organization, such as a message from a customer
service rep to a manager in the manufacturing department or a message from the chief financial
officer sent down to all department heads.

Figure 8.13. 

Organizational
communication
travels in many
different
directions.

There is a chance for these arrows to go awry, of course. As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of
best-selling books such as Flow, has noted, “In large organizations the dilution of information as
it passes up and down the hierarchy, and horizontally across departments, can undermine the
effort to focus on common goals.”[554]

The organizational status of the sender can impact the receiver’s attentiveness to the message.
For example, consider the following: A senior manager sends a memo to a production
supervisor. The supervisor, who has a lower status within the organization, is likely to pay close
attention to the message. The same information conveyed in the opposite direction, however,
might not get the attention it deserves. The message would be filtered by the senior manager’s
perception of priorities and urgencies.

Requests are just one kind of communication in business. Other communications, either verbal or
written, may seek, give, or exchange information. Research shows that frequent communications
with one’s supervisor is related to better job performance ratings and overall organizational
performance.[555] Research also shows that lateral communication done between peers can
influence important organizational outcomes such as turnover.[556]

Figure 8.14. How Managers Spend Time Communicating at Work

External Communications

External communications deliver specific businesses messages to individuals outside an

organization. They may announce changes in staff or strategy, earnings, and more. The goal of
an external communication is to create a specific message that the receiver will understand and
share with others. Examples of external communications include the following.

Press Releases

Public relations professionals create external communications about a client’s product, services,
or practices for specific receivers. These receivers, it is hoped, will share the message with
others. In time, as the message is passed along, it should appear to be independent of the sender,
creating the illusion of an independently generated consumer trend, public opinion, and so on.

The message of a public relations effort may be b2b (business to business), b2c (business to
consumer), or media related. The message can take different forms. Press releases try to convey a
newsworthy message, real or manufactured. It may be constructed like a news item, inviting
editors or reporters to reprint the message in part or as a whole, with or without
acknowledgement of the sender’s identity. Public relations campaigns create messages over time
through contests, special events, trade shows, and media interviews in addition to press releases.

Ads

Advertising places external business messages before target receivers through media buys. A
media buy is a fee that is paid to a television network, Web site, magazine, and so on by an
advertiser to insert an advertisement. The fee is based on the perceived value of the audience
who watches, reads, listens to, or frequents the space where the ad will appear.

In recent years, receivers have begun to filter advertiser’s messages. This phenomenon is
perceived to be a result of the large amount of ads the average person sees each day and a
growing level of consumer wariness of paid messaging. Advertisers, in turn, are trying to create
alternative forms of advertising that receivers won’t filter. The advertorial is one example of an
external communication that combines the look of an article with the focused message of an ad.
Product placements in videos, movies, and games are other ways that advertisers strive to reach
receivers with commercial messages.
Web Pages

A Web page’s external communication can combine elements of public relations, advertising,
and editorial content, reaching receivers on multiple levels and in multiple ways. Banner ads,
blogs, and advertiser-driven “click-through” areas are just a few of the elements that allow a
business to deliver a message to a receiver online. The perceived flexibility of online
communications can impart a less formal (and therefore, more believable) quality to an external
communication. A message relayed in a daily blog post, for example, will reach a receiver
differently than if it is delivered in an annual report. The popularity and power of blogs is
growing, with 11% of Fortune 500 companies having official blogs (up from 4% in 2005). In
fact, blogs have become so important to companies such as Coca-Cola Company, Eastman
Kodak Company, and Marriott International Inc. that they have created official positions within
their organizations titled “chief blogging officer.”[557] The “real-time” quality of Web
communications may appeal to receivers who might filter out traditional ads and public relations
messages because of their “prefab” quality. Despite a “spontaneous” feel, many online pages can
be revisited many times in a single day. For this reason, clear and accurate external
communications are as vital for online use as they are in traditional media.

Customer Communications

Customer communications can include letters, catalogs, direct mail, e-mails, text messages, and
telemarketing messages. Some receivers automatically filter these types of bulk messages.
Others will be receptive. The key to a successful external communication to customers is to
convey a business message in a personally compelling way—dramatic news, a money-saving
coupon, and so forth.

Key Takeaway

Types of communication include verbal, written, and nonverbal. Surprisingly, 55% of face-to-
face communication comes from nonverbal cues such as tone or body language. Different
communication channels are more or less effective at transmitting different kinds of information.
In addition, communication flows in different directions within organizations.

Exercises

1. How aware are you of your own body language? Has your body language ever gotten you
in trouble while communicating with someone?

2. In your experience, how is silence used in communication?

3. If the meaning behind verbal communication is only 7% words, what does this imply for
written communication?

4. How could you use your knowledge of communication richness to be more effective in
your own communications?

5. What are the three biggest advantages and disadvantages you see regarding technology
and communications?
The Role of Ethics and National Culture
Learning Objectives

1. Consider the role of ethics in communication.

2. Consider the role of national culture on communication.

Ethics and Communication

“People aren’t happy when the unexpected happens, but they are even unhappier if they find out
you tried to hide it,” says Bruce Patton, a partner at Boston-based Vantage Partners LLC.[558] To
speak or not to speak? One of the most challenging areas of effective business communication
occurs in moments of crisis management. But in an age of instant information, the burden on
business to speak out quickly and clearly in times of crisis has never been greater.

The alternative to a clear message is seen as a communication blocker, in addition to being guilty
of the misdeed, disaster, or infraction at hand. The Exxon Valdez disaster is a classic example of
ineffective crisis management and communication. When millions of barrels of oil spilled into
Prince William Sound, the company’s poor response only added to the damage. Exxon Mobil
Corporation executives refused to acknowledge the extent of the problem and declined to
comment on the accident for almost a week. Exxon also sent a succession of lower level
spokespeople to deal with the media.[559]

Instead, a more effective method of crisis communication is to have the company’s highest
ranking official become the spokesperson who communicates the situation. This is the approach
that James Burke, the chairman of Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc., took when tampering was
discovered with Tylenol bottles. He became the face of the crisis, communicating with the public
and explaining what J & J would do. His forthrightness built trust and allayed customer fears.

Ethical, forthright communication applies inside the company as well as externally with the
public. “When the truth is missing, people feel demoralized, less confident, and ultimately are
less loyal,” write leadership experts Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans. “Research
overwhelmingly supports the notion that engaged employees are ‘in the know.’ They want to be
trusted with the truth about the business, including its challenges and downturns.”[560]

Cross-Cultural Communication

Culture is a shared set of beliefs and experiences common to people in a specific setting. The
setting that creates a culture can be geographic, religious, or professional. As you might guess,
the same individual can be a member of many cultures, all of which may play a part in the
interpretation of certain words.

The different and often “multicultural” identity of individuals in the same organization can lead
to some unexpected and potentially large miscommunications. For example, during the Cold
War, Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev told the American delegation at the United Nations, “We
will bury you!” His words were interpreted as a threat of nuclear annihilation. However, a more
accurate reading of Khruschev’s words would have been, “We will overtake you!” meaning
economic superiority. The words, as well as the fear and suspicion that the West had of the
Soviet Union at the time, led to the more alarmist and sinister interpretation.[561]

Miscommunications can arise between individuals of the same culture as well. Many words in
the English language mean different things to different people. Words can be misunderstood if
the sender and receiver do not share common experiences. A sender’s words cannot
communicate the desired meaning if the receiver has not had some experience with the objects or
concepts the words describe.[562]

It is particularly important to keep this fact in mind when you are communicating with
individuals who may not speak English as a first language. For example, when speaking with
nonnative English-speaking colleagues, avoid “isn’t it?” questions. This sentence construction
does not exist in many other languages and can be confusing for nonnative English speakers. For
example, to the question, “You are coming, aren’t you?” they may answer, “Yes” (I am coming)
or “No” (I am coming), depending on how they interpret the question.[563]

Cultures also vary in terms of the desired amount of situational context related to interpreting
situations. People in very high context cultures put a high value on establishing relationships
prior to working with others and tend to take longer to negotiate deals. Examples of high context
cultures include China, Korea, and Japan. Conversely, people in low context cultures “get down
to business” and tend to negotiate quickly. Examples of low context cultures include Germany,
Scandinavia, and the United States.[564]

Finally, don’t forget the role of nonverbal communication. As we learned in the nonverbal
communication section, in the United States, looking someone in the eye when talking is
considered a sign of trustworthiness. In China, by contrast, a lack of eye contact conveys respect.
A recruiting agency that places English teachers warns prospective teachers that something that
works well in one culture can offend in another: “In Western countries, one expects to maintain
eye contact when we talk with people. This is a norm we consider basic and essential. This is not
the case among the Chinese. On the contrary, because of the more authoritarian nature of the
Chinese society, steady eye contact is viewed as inappropriate, especially when subordinates talk
with their superiors.”[565]

Figure 8.15. Gestures Around the Globe

It’s easy to see how meaning could become confused, depending on how and when these signals
are used. When in doubt, experts recommend that you ask someone around you to help you
interpret the meaning of different gestures, that you be sensitive, and that you remain observant
when dealing with a culture different from your own.

Key Takeaway

Ethical, forthright communication applies inside a company as well as externally with the public.
Trying to cover up or ignore problems has been the downfall of many organizational members.
There are differences in word meanings and nonverbal communication. For example, in North
America, the nonverbal V means victory or peace, but in Australia means something closer to
“take this,” which could still fit if your team wins a championship but probably isn’t exactly
what was meant.

Exercises

1. How can you assess if you are engaging in ethical communications?

2. What experiences have you had with cross-cultural communications? Please share at least
one experience when this has gone well and one when it has not gone well.
3. What advice would you give to someone who will be managing a new division of a
company in another culture in terms of communication?

Conclusion
In this chapter we have reviewed why effective communication matters to organizations.
Communication may break down as a result of many communication barriers that may be
attributed to the sender or receiver. Therefore, effective communication requires familiarity with
the barriers. Choosing the right channel for communication is also important, because choosing
the wrong medium undermines the message. When communication occurs in the cross-cultural
context, extra caution is needed, given that different cultures have different norms regarding
nonverbal communication, and different words will be interpreted differently across cultures. By
being sensitive to the errors outlined in this chapter and adopting active listening skills, you may
increase your communication effectiveness.

Exercises
Ethical Dilemma

How far would you go to find out who is talking to whom?[566]

In 2006, Hewlett-Packard Development Company LP became embroiled in a controversy over

methods used to investigate media leaks from its board. HP Chairperson Patricia Dunn could
have simply asked the directors who was the source cited in the story, sought an apology, and
gone from there. With some direct face-to-face communication, the story would likely have
ended quickly. It did not. “Not only did investigators impersonate board members, employees
and journalists to obtain their phone records, but according to multiple reports, they also
surveilled an HP director and a reporter for CNet Networks Inc. They sent monitoring spyware in
an e-mail to that reporter by concocting a phony tip. They even snooped on the phone records of
former CEO and Chairperson Carly Fiorina, who had launched the quest to identify media
sources in the first place.” The situation continued to escalate. For example, the New York Times
reported that HP consultants even considered planting clerical or custodial workers at CNet and
the Wall Street Journal to learn who was leaking information to them. Following this, Patricia
Dunn, as well as three executives, left the company. A congressional hearing and several federal
investigations later, executives were charged with felonies, and HP paid $14.5 million to settle
civil charges related to the scandal. HP is not the only company to use such methods; recent
admissions by the investigation firms involved suggest that the use of ethically questionable
investigative tactics by large companies is quite common. “It betrays a type of corporate culture
that is so self-obsessed, (that) really considers itself not only above the law, but above, I think,
ethical decency, that you have to ask yourself, where did the shame come in?” said Charles King,
an analyst with Pund-IT Inc.

Consider this situation from a multiple stakeholder perspective. Imagine you are…

 a CEO faced with leaks regarding your strategic vision. What would you do to determine
who was sharing the information? What would be the advantages and disadvantages of
these approaches?
 a shareholder with HP stock. What would you want to see done to protect your
investment in the company?
 a board member who was spied upon. What would your reaction be to learning that you
were investigated?
 an investigator hired by HP. What role do you have to uphold ethical standards?

As several observers have noted, HP spent a lot of time establishing whether or not their
activities were technically legal but little time considering whether or not their actions were
ethical.

Individual Exercise

Active Listening Quiz

It’s easy to assume that listening is a passive activity, the opposite of speaking or writing. But
effective listening can be an even greater aid to communication than speaking. An individual
who accurately and compassionately receives or shares a message is a valuable business asset.
Active listeners are wise, both in perception and in action.

Are you an active or a passive listener? Take this quiz and see.

Active listeners have an identifiable style of receiving communications from others. Your
answers to these questions will let you know what kind of listener you are:

1. When someone else is speaking to you, personally or as part of a group, do you

1. Sit back in your seat. After all, you’re waiting to speak!
2. Lean forward a bit, the better to hear—and see—what’s really being said.
2. As the speaker continues, do you
1. Hear a kind of “blah blah blah” as you wait for your turn to speak
2. Try to guess what the speaker will say next, and why
3. When taking notes during a speech or in class, do you
1. Try to write down what you’ve heard, word for word
2. Summarize, riff, or expand on concepts that have caught your attention
4. At public speaking events, do you
1. See the speaker as being like someone on TV. You can see her, but she can’t see
you.
2. Try to make eye contact with the speaker. Effective communication is about
sending and receiving!

As you might guess, the “b” answers illustrate the traits of active listeners. If you had lots of “b”
answers, congratulations! You are adding to the power of effective communication. If you gave
more “a” answers, don’t despair. Active listening is a skill. By paying closer attention to the
sender and the message, you’ll be able to improve your communication effectiveness.[567]
Group Exercise

You Know What I Mean, Right?

Purpose

This exercise illustrates how words we commonly take for granted are not universal in their
meaning.

Time

Approximately 20 minutes.

1. Write down the number that comes to mind for each of the following questions.
Remember that there are no right or wrong answers—just go with your first response. Do
not discuss your answers with anyone in the class until instructed to do so.
o My neighbor just bought an expensive car. How much did it cost? _____
o Several people were in line for the movie. How many people were in line? _____
o The ballot measure was approved overwhelmingly. What percentage of votes did
the measure receive? _____
o My boss is an older man. How old is he? _____
o I recently saw an article in the paper. How long ago did I see it? _____
2. Your instructor will summarize the responses from the class.
3. Discuss the following questions (either as a class or in small groups).
o Do you agree that words mean different things to different people?
o How large was the range of responses for each of the questions? Why was this?
o Did this surprise you? Why or why not?

What can you apply from this exercise to make you a better communicator?