MANAGE YOUR EMOTIONAL CULTURE

Organisations like Ubiquity Retirement plus Savings Press have started a practice of
registering the emoticons as the button of punching out from the office. So, theyre not
actually just punching out after work but theyre registering their emotions and feelings that
they have while leaving from work. Theyll be pressing the button with the happy smiley if
they were happy and satisfied at work or a frowning smiley if it has been a hard day for them
and so on. Ubiquity is using the data to understand what motivates the employees, to learn
what makes them feel a sense of belonging and excitement at work. And other oraganisations
are starting to do the same. Some of them are recording how much fun people are having
whereas some are recording their moods.

Generally all types of the organisations follow Cognitive Culture which is about the
customer focus, innovativeness and team orientation and undeniably this is very important for
the success of the businesses but it is only a part of the study, the other part being the
Emotional Culture which is about understanding the feelings of the employees.

Through the studies it has been found that the emotions of the people shape their behaviour
and efficiency at work. Positive emotions results to better quality, performance and customer
relations whereas the negative emotions leads to group sadness, anger and fear.

Out of the 135 emotions, the following are predominantly exercised to manage an emotional
culture in any organisation:

Culture of joy: In order to enhance productivity, creativity and other elements of

performance, pause for fun has proven to be very effective. Even the leaders of the
organisations support this cultural value by creating humorous videos of themselves, pausing
for fun.

Culture of compassion: Showing compassion, care, affection to the ones you work with is
no less important than the professional relationship that colleagues share amongst themselves
in an organisation. They should never be colleagues but friends. It will not only increase the
team spirit, but also will enhance the eventual firms impact.

Culture of fear: Human brain stops being creative and productive under the impact of stress.
If a leader is feared, the whole morale of the team goes down. Hence, employees must be
allowed to take decisions on their own and they must be allowed to make mistakes only for
them to learn from it.

Intersection of the emotions: As too much of anything is bad, an abundance of any of these
emotions in an organisation may impede the progress of work. Hence, a culture needs to be
built where all of these emotions intersect and create a best of both worlds. For example, in
Firefighters organisational culture, employees play prank on one another that helps them
know ones weaknesses, but at the same time, they also support each other. Thus, one never
feels dismissed or demeaned while working in the organisation, because they know, despite
the pranks, they are cared for and valued in their workplace.

Decades worth of research demonstrates the importance of organisational culture, yet most
of it has focused on the cognitive component. But organisations also have an emotional pulse
and managers must track it closely to motivate their teams and reach their goals. Emotional
culture is shaped by how all employees - from the highest echelons to the front lines -
comport themselves day in and day out. But its up to senior leaders to establish which
emotions will help the organisation thrive, model those emotions, and reward others for doing
the same. Companies in which they do this have a lot to gain.