Emotion Management?

Emotion management refers to the ways in which people influence their own feelings and expressions and the ways in which they influence other peoples feelings. All employees engage in emotion management as part of their jobs and employers often play a significant role in shaping emotion management. For many years emotion in the workplace was only considered important in relation to employee well being and job satisfaction. More recently, however, it has been recognised that emotions play a role in almost all work activities. Emotions influence what tasks employees work on, what effort they exert, how they react to situations, and how they influence other people. In other words, what employees feel and how they express their emotions affects their performance and the performance of others. Effective emotion management is therefore important both to employers and employees. What are the benefits of effective emotion management for employers and employees? There are a number of ways in which employers can gain from facilitating effective emotion management: Immediate gains, such as sales arising from customers who are positively influenced to purchase products or services. Encore gains, such as repeat business arising from customers who feel positive about the service they received. Contagion gains, such as additional business arising from customers word-of-mouth recommendations. Internal gains, such as improved internal processes arising from improved communication and well being. their emotions effectively. For example, research has shown that service employees can receive bigger tips or bonuses if they are more emotionally expressive. Effective emotion management can also enhance employees feelings of personal achievement, identity, and well being. However, employees may experience emotional exhaustion and burnout if they are required to repeatedly display the same emotions. This is most likely to occur when there is a mismatch between what employees feel and what they have to express. In which jobs is emotion management most important? The ability to manage emotions is important in all jobs but it is most important in jobs that entail high levels of interaction with work colleagues, customers, or clients. Jobs involving a service role usually require employees to express designated emotions in particular ways when dealing with customers. Examples of such jobs include flight attendants, hairdressers, fast food workers, call centre operators, debt collectors, and funeral directors. Emotion management in these roles can involve expressing a mixture of pleasant, neutral, and even unpleasant emotions depending on the situation. Ideally, employers want employees to comply with the organisations implicit or explicit emotion display rules. The expression of emotion in exchange for a wage has been termed emotional labour. How can employees manage their emotions? Two main ways in which employees can manage their emotional expressions are surface acting and deep acting. Surface acting involves employees expressing the emotions required by the job without actually feeling those emotions. For example, an employee might fake a smile for a customer and hide his or her true feelings. However, surface

Employees can also personally gain from managing

acting does not always appear authentic and the discrepancy between what employees express and feel may cause employees to feel alienated. In contrast, deep acting involves employees trying to experience the emotions that they have to express. This method of emotion management requires more effort but, compared to surface acting, it can lead to better service performance and greater job satisfaction. There is a wide range of emotion regulation strategies that employees can use to maintain or change their feelings. Some of the most effective strategies for alleviating negative emotions involve: engaging with the problem at hand, reappraisal of the situation, thinking about something pleasant, or doing something active. Ineffective regulation strategies include avoiding the problem and venting anger. Is emotional intelligence relevant here? Emotional intelligence can be defined as a persons ability to monitor, understand, use and change emotions in self and others. It is therefore clearly relevant to emotion management at work. However, there is some disagreement about what constitutes emotional intelligence and about the extent to which it overlaps with personality traits and general intelligence. Nevertheless, preliminary evidence suggests that aspects of emotional intelligence may relate to job effectiveness. Emotional intelligence competencies can be learned and could therefore be enhanced by appropriate training. How can employers management? influence emotion

skills. Supportive supervision can also have a role in influencing how individuals and teams use emotions. What should employers know about influencing emotion management? There are a number of reasons why employers should be careful in their attempts to influence emotion management: Ethics. Many people view emotions as very personal experiences. Employers attempts to control emotions may therefore be regarded as interference and resisted by employees. Emotion Display Rules. People learn how to use emotion management skills from infancy and may therefore actually be hindered in their work by having to follow inflexible corporate emotion display rules. For example, some service organisations require employees to follow dialogue scripts during interactions with customers. Unfortunately scripts do not generally lend themselves to natural interaction and are usually insensitive to important emotional cues from customers. Emotional Contagion. Emotions are contagious between people and can therefore spread within teams and across employee networks. Research has found that emotional contagion can also affect team and service performance. It is therefore important to recognise that emotional events at work can have widespread effects.

Employers can use a diverse range of methods to influence emotion management. In the first instance, employers can recruit applicants who have the necessary emotion management skills for the job. For example, during the selection process, care workers might be assessed for their empathic skills and sales staff for their emotional resilience. Staff can also be trained and rewarded for their use of emotion skills. However, the use of classroom training is likely to be less effective than on the job training. The provision of role models and mentors can also help shape how employees use emotion

In summary, companies can benefit in a number of important ways by considering how emotions are managed within their organisation but new initiatives require careful consideration and consultation with employees. Dr Peter Totterdell Institute of Work Psychology University of Sheffield Sheffield S10 2TN England +44 (0) 114 2223234 p.totterdell@sheffield.ac.uk

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