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The views expressed here are the personal views of the participants and are not necessarily the views of their organisations. The following people were present at this mindstretch®:
Karen and Gary welcomed participants and after introductions, Karen began with a quote from research by Thompson:
“When I’m in the preparation room I never think about WHO I’m working on, I only think about what has to b done next. When I picked up the body, it was a person. When I get done, clean and dress the body, and place it in the casket, it becomes a person again. But in here it’s just something to be worked on. I treat it like a mechanic treats an automobile engine – with respect, but there’s no emotion involved. It’s just a job that has to be done.” (Mortician, Thompson 1991)
After a brief run through the agenda , participants considered a number of views about emotion . Newspaper coverage of some very public emotional outbursts from senior executives – for example the very un-Tinkerbell –like wrangling at Disney that did significant damage to the share price and the equally bitter public exchanges during Granada’s hostile takeover of Forte Hotels – might indicate that rationality is best for business.
In addition, communication research has found that “professionalism” is a considerable influence on what is expressed and how that expression is viewed by other co-workers.
Helen felt that we were dealing with several different levels when talking about emotion; people cannot be considered without their emotions, and the next level is about the explicit use of emotion in jobs.
Karen said that there has been a resurgence in interest in emotion in organisations, but that much of the academic work had been on job satisfaction – defined as “a pleasurable or positive state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences” (Locke 1976).
Vanessa thought that all jobs need emotion and Caroline said she thought immediately of service jobs, but in fact emotion and the idea of commitment go hand in hand with change programme. The planning and programming was often what people concentrate on – but the emotional dimension of change was MUCH harder to deal with and a little scary.
Chris thought the canvas very broad and questions were raised about the definition of “emotion”. Karen agreed, and said that in Ashforth and Humphrey, they had been deliberately broad, defining emotion as “a subjective feeling state”.
When we moved on to talk about whether emotion was a good or bad thing, Karen outlined Allen and Meyer’s three-component model of commitment. Affective commitment “refers to the employee’s emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in, the organisation.” (Meyer and Allen 1997). This is different from normative commitment where there’s a sense of obligation to remain with the organisation and continuance commitment where choices to move are limited and therefore employees have to remain.
Karen pointed out that research on this model had demonstrated links between affective commitment and retention and organisational citizenship behaviours.
Brian made the point that it depends on the specific context and that you need some dissatisfaction with the current state to get change to happen – a piece of grit to get things started, with a move to a more positive state after this.
Chris agreed, and wondered if mergers are popular because people believe that the impact is less painful. His view was that they create the required instability but are more uncomfortable than people expect.
Vanessa asked if there were any gender differences in the studies. Karen responded that she hadn’t seen any in the literature she’d looked at, but that that she’s been to a presentation at the Work Foundation a couple of years ago where they seemed to be outlining a model of leadership that was based on more feminine attributes of empathy and the ability to network and collaborate. Keith commented that this sounded a bit archetypal and she replied that the presentation she’d seen was work in progress.
The studies were mostly Anglo-American and Chris commented that there might be a cultural issue – for example, having the emotion versus showing it and Fiona suggested that HOW the emotion was expressed may be the crux of studies. Chris wondered whether a feeling – for example anger – was expressed rationally and calmly, would it qualify as emotion? And do repetitive jobs have emotion attached to them? Both Fiona and Caroline felt this might be an over-simplification – Caroline pointed out that there would always be an emotional attachment to the team, for example.
Brian thought that experience is influenced by interactions rather than the corporate vision, etc. and he gave the example of a doorman who worked for PWC and who took enormous pride in remembering all the company’s clients and their names, and in all the customer satisfaction surveys, the doorman always got a mention – regardless of the quality of the PWC service. He felt that emotion was a key differentiator for professional service firms and PWC want people to work for them who are passionate and courageous.
Chris wondered if there was a difference between passion and a passion to do things well, satisfy customers – perhaps there was more than one concept?
Marie commented that in NUS, yes, people were passionate about what they did, but that alongside this, there were lots of tantrums. It wasn’t just about the youth of the people, but also that they were a long way from a corporate environment. Helen added that they might also be passionate because they come from an activist environment as student and Vanessa commented that perhaps this was something to consider when recruiting graduates – that in turning them into corporate animals, we beat the emotion out of them which was the very thing we hired them for!
Helen thought that the “corporatisation” of students was becoming a part of the personal development planning agenda, and this part of the university experience was now being given more emphasis.
Brian said that in PWC, they had to concentrate more on the soft skills such as team working and that the graduates they take in are more corporate than they really need! Helen replied that there was a drive in HE to build soft skills into the curriculum, but as universities go up the league tables, this gets diluted and what employers might want gets somehow lost in translation. Vanessa wondered if universities and colleges lower in the league tables are compensating by adding soft skill development to the curriculum.
Moving on , Karen introduced an interesting model developed by Kahn, which she thought made explicit the huge potential for emotion to make us rethink our perspective on work, in particular our theories of motivation – which are mostly rational and to a greater or lesser extent, calculative.
The diagram shows Kahn’s view that the level of investment of self in work is linked to the level of motivation – the higher the investment, the higher the motivation. The lowest investment is purely physical – or without cognitive or emotional involvement. The next level is cognitive, where rests the traditional focus of rational theories of motivation; the highest is emotional investment where workers get so involved in their work, they forget time and other commitments, and to have dinner. Individuals working at this level can experience “flow” which is a kind of immersion of the self in what they’re doing where people feel their performance is at its peak.
Here’s where all the rational calculations about effort, valance and reward cease to have relevance.
This had enormous relevance to some of our participants. Keith told a brief story about a company in Bedford was acquired by a German company who wanted to introduce SAP. Before, teams planned their own work, people were in at six AM, and the atmosphere was really very good. After two years, the impact has been that the employees work on what they have to do and give nothing additional; the place is deserted by ten past five.
Karen then gave a definition of organisational citizenship behaviours. Organisational citizenship behaviour is generally thought by researchers to be a valuable by-product of commitment, and some researchers believe that without at least some level of this, the smooth running of organisations is not possible.
Helen thought that OCB may also include commitment to your immediate work group and Karen agreed that it operates on a number of levels, from individual, through group, to organisations. Chris felt that the concept looked similar to definitions of engagement, but that perhaps the element of personal choice is the key differentiator. There was a general discussion about how much OCBs could be accounted for in job descriptions and rewarded; Brian said that his company has reward systems that have moved on since 1988 (the date of the definition of OCB) and that they try to pick up discretionary behaviour in their reward systems.
Fiona wondered how long it took new graduates – given their perceived lack of soft skills – to recognise the need to “do” OCB and Brian responded that they do try to recruit for these sort of qualities and engender them into the first three years of training. Fiona commented that recruitment has moved away from a focus on experience to that of attitude.
Helen made the point that there are models of employability that look at less obvious indicators, for example, self-efficacy, disposition and how does the individual bring these together and make sense of them, and recognise the need for OCBs.
Chris thought that the context of the job must make a big difference as well, so some of it would be self-selection? Helen countered that job choice is very complex – often people are not self-aware or just don’t have a choice about the jobs they go for. Chris still was concerned about the measurement issues – he thought it sounded like very fine judgement is needed.
Brian commented that there was a big cultural difference in graduates in the UK and the US: in the UK, recruitment from other disciplines rather than accountancy was normal, as these graduates tended to have better soft skills. In the US, they have to recruit people with accountancy qualifications, and these graduates don’t have perhaps such good soft skills.
Caroline thought that this issue may be more significant in jobs where there is a big range of possible ways in.
Having considered some of the reasons why emotion is a good thing in organisations, Karen moved on to some of the reasons why it might be a bad thing.
Karen said that she had come across an interesting article about “communication rules” for the display of emotions in organisations which focused on the rules put in place by employees which cover emotional displays (Kramer, Hess 2002). The most common “rule” that employees considered in place in their organisation was “expressing emotions professionally” – its most essential elements were having control over emotion displays and maintaining a “businesslike” atmosphere…. But this control can have unexpected and unwelcome outcomes – which is where she turned to emotional labour.
The phrase was first coined in Arlie Hochschild in her seminal work The Managed Heart. This looked at two industries – the airline flight attendants (Delta) and bill collectors.
Definition – the effort which is required to display that which are perceived to be expected emotions.
Studies suggest that emotional labour:
Karen recounted one of the quotes from Hochschild’s study; that a passenger called over a stewardess and asked her why she wasn’t smiling. The stewardess asked him to smile first. He smiled at her. “Right,” she said. “Now hold that for fifteen hours.”
Brian commented that Delta has since gone bust and that it might be a cultural thing – that Singaporean stewardesses manage to smile on long haul flights without any apparent impact. He did also say, however, that some executives would rather pay any difference between the company discounted rate they have to fly with BA, to fly Virgin because the BA stewardesses were so grim!
Helen said that this was about being a critical consumer, versus not complaining. She felt that it is now assumed that people should put themselves out to meet our needs. Brian wondered if some airlines are now managing to get people employed who are HAPPY to serve, and agreeing, Helen added that consumer relationships are getting ever more complex – for example, HE students now considering themselves as customers.
Brian thought it was a two-way process and that for example, banks are giving unrealistic expectations about 24/7 service.
Fiona commented that service organisations have made great strides but that customers don’t seem to recognise that own responsibilities in the exchange – something else that education has to fix.
Chris thought that perhaps it would be better to think about reacting “professionally” than bringing in emotion and having to feel “positive”. Vanessa said that there was some research that says there is a direct response in the brain by moving the facial muscles, which in turn releases dopamine – which makes you feel better. In addition, she thought it was quite hard not to smile back if someone smiled at you! Chris wasn’t convinced; he thought it would be better to take emotion out of service exchanges.
There was a general discussion about it and participants thought that while there might be something in this, they also thought that empathy was very important in service exchanges and in fact the basis on which “good” service is judged.
As a side issue, Karen wondered whether the bringing of emotion to a job as just another thing would commoditise it…?
Karen then moved on to a useful framework provided by Rafaeli and Sutton which looks at the match between the emotions of the employee and the feeling rules of the organisation.
Emotional harmony is an indicator of “good fit” between person and environment – so the employee is free from occupational stress to the extent that their own expectations of their own behaviour is congruent with what the organisation expects…there are some researchers who consider that freedom from mental health issues is dependent in part, on the match between personal feelings and feeling norms – so this might lead you to the belief that emotional harmony is associated with well being. Research has indicated that the more attention that employees need to take of the display rules, the more effort is required and the greater the risk that employees will be ill at work.
Emotional dissonance happens when expressed emotions satisfy feeling rules but clash with personal feelings. The effects of emotional dissonance appear to depend on whether people feel that the display of emotion should or should not be part of the job. If employees feel the emotional display is a reasonable thing to include as part of the job, even though it’s an effort to display it, this is called “faking good”. If the employee doesn’t feel emotional display should be part of the job, but still do it, this is called “faking bad” – the latter is more stressful for the individual.
Emotional deviance occurs when expressed emotions clash with local norms. May lead to people being sacked – but not sure about any further consequences for employees… some comments from the research on the strength of employees’ wishes TO conform with organisational norms – this may also lead to burnout
Vanessa wondered if the three component commitment model aligned with this one – in that affective commitment would be linked to emotional harmony, and that emotional dissonance would be linked to the normative and continuance elements of commitment.
When we talked about emotional contagion , Fiona pointed out that Anthony Robbins creates emotional contagion deliberately to “psych” people up to do things like walk across hot coals. The discussion encompassed groups like football crowds, church meetings and Vanessa wondered if it was the same in small groups, rather than something limited to “mobs”. Chris thought that there were examples – for example, the spreading of emotion in a footballers’ dressing room at half time and Caroline agreed, saying that particularly in presentations, if it gets off to a good start, teams get “on a roll”.
Karen elaborated the conditions thought to be essential to emotional contagion. It’s thought to be more likely when:
On the positive side, emotional contagion may increase empathy and solidarity and increase psychological involvement – “feel good”? On the negative side, it may cause negative emotions such as fear and anxiety to spread through the organisation and it might help to create a climate which paralyses action which might help – not least through “legitimising” being afraid.
Participants pointed out that emotional contagion perhaps shouldn’t be placed in the “bad thing” category, as it depends what the emotion is as to whether it’s harmful to the organisation or not. Chris pointed out that in terms of leadership, contagion could be seen as a very positive thing, and Brian pointed out that political leaders were once used to evangelising crowds, but now this has changed to be more one-to-one as leaders influence through television.
Caroline commented that another consideration in leadership was that of consistency – that if someone demonstrates positive emotion 90 per cent of the time, it’s very unsettling if you meet with them on one of the occasions in the 10 per cent. Fiona commented that perhaps the management of emotions in the leadership is a version of emotional labour.
When looking at measurement , Karen apologised that the slides contained a bit of a fudge – we were looking at the measurement of emotional intelligence in individuals rather than anything broader on the organisational front.
The idea of intelligence as more than just IQ isn’t new. Research was done in the 1930s and 1940s by Thorndike (who talked about “social intelligence”) and David Weschler, who thought that non-intellective abilities are essential to predict a person’s success in life. This was followed up by Howard Gardner in 1983 who began to write about “multiple intelligence”.
The term emotional intelligence was coined by Salovey and Mayer in 1990 who defined it as “a form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions”. Goleman, a writer from the New York Times, has built on their ideas.
The essential premise of EQ is that to be successful requires the effective awareness, control and management of one's own emotions, and those of other people. EQ embraces two aspects of intelligence:
Goleman identified the five 'domains' of EQ as:
Karen wondered if “managing the emotions of others” might be construed as a little sinister, but Keith disagreed, considering it an accepted part of life. Karen’s responded that there were critical commentators who would argue that the inclusion of emotion in any job as unacceptable and simply not part of the employment exchange.
Helen suggested that we were talking about was ethics, although advertising has made the boundaries a little “fuzzy” in terms of permission to manipulate emotions. She quoted an example where a colleague had attended management training, taken the principles and applied them to her personal life, divorcing her husband in the process, with some significant consequences. She said that we need an awareness of the boundaries between professional and personal.
Chris recounted that when British Steel was going to be shut down, McGreggor went round all the plants encouraging workers and implying that all that needed to be done to keep the company alive was to increase production – and he wondered how ethical this was.
There is some dissent about the measurements. A significant criticism of EQ is that emotional intelligence has no “benchmark” to set itself against. While IQ tests are designed to correlate as closely as possible with school grades, emotional intelligence seems to have no similar objective quantity it can be based on.
Some researchers have raised concerns about the extent to which self report EI measures correlate with established personality dimensions like the Big Five….so is the self report EI redundant and therefore you should be able to measure the potential for success through the Big 5 test?
Finally, self report EI measures are comprised of highly face-valid items and as such, because people can see what items are “really asking for”, people may respond in what they believe is a more socially desirable way – representing themselves in an excessively positive way
Commenting on the specific measurements, Fiona has used the 360 Emotional Competency Inventory in her company to help with the selection and identification of regional managers. She said that it predicted the later failures among these managers and thought that it was good for working with individuals rather than organisations for selection.
Karen outlined some more general concerns: much of organisational life may be played out in silence – so you don’t hear or see much in employee interactions, but the emotions are powerful regardless – particularly where customer service is involved.
In addition, the ability of language to adequately reflect experience has been debated by researchers – particularly as language is linear in the way it expresses ideas – emotions may occur simultaneously; also issues of culture with some workers; ability of employees to express themselves.
This might lead you to think that questionnaires to measure emotions in organisations would be pretty suspect, regardless of the issues with EQ; certainly most of the research done on emotion in organisations is through qualitative studies.
Finally – do only the most extreme emotions find their way into the studies?
After coffee, Karen asked participants if they consciously try to control emotion at work, and if so, how?
Fiona said in her organisation it’s principally by modelling the behaviour from the top – for example this is reflected in the way in which people behave in company celebrations and team meetings. Vanessa wondered what happens if the leaders don’t lead it? What alternatives are there?
To help answer this, Karen introduced some ideas from her review of the literature
She said that if emotion is seen as another behaviour, it will be promoted and shaped by a variety of methods including those you’d employ to maximise any behaviour – through the selection and recruitment process. A number of organisations make it clear that they recruit on the basis of “attitude, not skills” – eg First Direct, Disney among many. In Mary Kay Cosmetics new recruits have to take vow of enthusiasm. Given the importance of service industries to the European economy, which in 1997 employed nearly 60% of the European workforce, its unsurprising that an emotional display is more or less mandated as part of many jobs.
Also unsurprisingly, there is research which indicates that interviewees who display positive emotions and hide negative feelings do better at interview – smiling, nodding and holding eye contact all help to get job offers, while gaze avoidance, more neutral facial expressions and less smiling got candidates rejected. So do we employ generally what we want……?
Chris was concerned that we were confusing emotion and attitude – they had been used interchangeably in the session. Karen admitted they had, but that she thought that without emotion, attitude was unlikely and that they were in the same category, although not the same.
Helen suggested that service exchanges are about the ritualising of exchange and that the issues arise when there is emotional dissonance, because it can be seen by the recipient. Chris agreed, saying that this introduced a great deal of stress that can be seen too.
Fiona said that having given permission to use her first name in a phone conversation with her bank, she became increasingly irritated as the customer services representative used it too much, and this showed a lack of empathy. Brian wondered if this has a cultural context and recounted a story where his wife gave permission for an American neighbour to leave a baby buggy outside their apartment door. This hasn’t just happened on the one occasion, but lots of time since – because Americans perceive that once you’ve said “yes” they believe it’s for ever.
Moving on to the physical environment, Karen said that temperature has been linked to aggressive behaviour (Baron 1993) as have noise, crowding and air quality; fragrance has been shown to affect mood. In addition, there are what Fineman calls “emotionalised zones” – where employees feel different in different spaces (for example Disney and the definition of “backstage” or the difference between the front of a funeral home and the back rooms where the corpse is prepared).
It’s in the process of socialisation that the display rules of the organisation are passed on to newcomers. A key example here would be the “scripts” which go with duties – these effectively operationalise required emotional display – greeting people with “a friendly smile”, the sign off “have a nice day”. Here is also where employees come to understand the limits of emotional display – in one study, high steel workers learn that expressing fear is unacceptable, and in another, by watching and then imitating experienced physicians, medical interns learn that “mild compassion” is the expected emotional posture – appearing concerned but not so concerned that it causes severe psychological distress.
Perhaps some of the most interesting examples of the way in which organisations manage emotions are where potentially negative emotion is to be neutralised, or suppressed. Some of the most detailed studies are around hospitals, hospital workers. Kelly and Barsard in a study from 2001, note that patient rotas and the allocation of specific tasks among a large number of patients reduced familiarity of the nurses with the patients and reduced the risk of intense emotion. Further bureaucratic measures (patient and case numbers rather than names) depersonalised the patients and segregated emotions from ongoing activity, as did the rituals of precise task lists. It may be that the addition of technology distances nurses further from patients.
Keith added here that there is the issue of how the carer is perceived by the relatives, who are more critical of the care, and the carer. Some of the emotional labour that nurses and doctors do, he thought, was about preserving the appropriate feelings in the relatives.
Vanessa wondered if this would translate into the office environment, and if matrix management was a method of distancing people. Keith said it could be, but in his Bedford company, there was matrix management before the German takeover in that teams could choose the other members themselves. This was stopped when the German parent came in, with disastrous consequences for the organisation in terms of motivation.
Karen said that to at least some extent, management CAN help employees manage emotions – it’s interesting to look at burnout where the predictors of emotional exhaustion are: role overload; role conflict; interpersonal conflict and lack of rewards – all of which management has direct influence over. Individual differences – for example, personality traits – have little direct effect as predictors.
Chris thought that perhaps this was more about job design and the organisation of work and felt that the public sector was very rule bound and there was no discretion for employees to engage with the work. Fiona agreed, giving an example of a council which has put in place a large customer excellence project – but then outsourced the call centre activity altogether – so although there might be a motivation to do things for the public good, they don’t have any contact with the public! Chris added that there was also the issue of job satisfaction in being able to see the job through to the end.
Moving on to the last point on the slide, Karen asserted that a major task of senior management is to create and maintain a system of shared meanings to provide a basis for co-ordinated behaviour, and to encourage common interpretations. The success of symbolic management is dependent on the evocation of emotion. Vanessa wanted to be given an example of symbolic management, and Brian told a story of a chief executive who tackled presenteeism culture by walking around the building and asking if people were working late because a) they didn’t have enough resources to do the job (in which case to see him) or b) they weren’t capable of doing their job properly. The presenteeism culture disappeared as a result.
Continuing, Karen gave participants a quick bit of theory:
Orther (1973) identified two ways of managing symbols: summarising – which is representing bundles of experience, memories, values and beliefs through images and this may provoke an immediate reaction ; and elaborating – which provides vehicles for understanding experience and ordering thoughts, for example through myths and metaphors. The following slide is a good example of summarising.
While Karen acknowledged that as mostly non-Americans, the Star and Stripes was not likely to elicit significant levels of (at least positive) emotion, she felt that it was a powerful symbol for Americans. To a great extent this power has been cemented by the elaborating done in terms of myths and stories which sit behind the symbol. There is symbolism in the numbers of stripes (the 13 original colonies of the US) and the stars (the 50 states) and in how it is coloured; white is said to symbolise purity and innocence, red, hardiness and valour; blue, vigilance, perseverance and justice. There are rules about when it is flown, how it is stored, carried, folded and stories about it abound:
“Traditionally a symbol of liberty, the American flag has carried the message of freedom to many parts of the world. Sometimes the same flag that was flying at a crucial moment in our history has been flown again in another place to symbolize continuity in our struggles for the cause of liberty.
One of the most memorable is the flag that flew over the Capitol in Washington on December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbour was attacked. This same flag was raised again on December 8 when war was declared on Japan, and three days later at the time of the declaration of war against Germany and Italy. President Roosevelt called it the "flag of liberation" and carried it with him to the Casablanca Conference and on other historic occasions. It flew from the mast of the U.S.S. Missouri during the formal Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945.”
Another example of summarising – perhaps with less positive associations – is shown on the next slide. The associations we make with the Nazi flag are of course influenced by our recollection of events, but even here, Hitler in Mein Kampf, did his own elaborating:
"In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man, and, by the same token, the victory of the idea of creative work, which as such always has been and always will be anti-Semitic."
What Karen thought was interesting was the need to engage in both summarising and elaborating to make a compelling, emotive image.
Other examples of symbolic management might be through language (use of “we”, “family”, “team” in company documents, particularly handbooks, value statements etc
Also rituals – breakfasts, recognition ceremonies, parties etc – this is where the organisational members are encouraged to think and feel specific things – events are also a demonstration of how employees are supposed to think, feel and act. Marie commented that if the actions behind these things aren’t aligned, the wrong associations can be made. For example, her organisation’s Christmas party has previously been preceded by a staff meeting where bad news has been communicated – as a result, people stopped coming to the Christmas party.
Chris felt that events are very important for field sales forces and have been planned in great, exhaustive detail – but other staff tend to be left out and this was a mistake. All staff need some sense of direction, some access to the symbols which help to define their identity as an employee.
Karen completed the slides by adding that non-event rituals also serve to manage anxieties, express common identities and provide some sense of control and gave the example of the preparation of operating theatre. Gary said that there was some sense in these rituals and told the story of his brother in law, a brain surgeon, who always liked things laid out in the same way before an operation. On one occasion, things were laid out differently, he put on the wrong gown by mistake and this was too long for him. He tripped down some stairs and broke his leg.