Research slides behind the mask

How much emotion should we show in the workplace? ALISON HORWOOD tackles a tricky question.

Many of us believe we have to leave our emotions at home when we go to work.

We have learned to separate personal and professional life and not let a fight with our partner, or problems paying the bills, affect what we do between 9am and 5pm.

But academics and lay people are beginning to acknowledge the critical role that emotions can play in making decisions and working effectively with others in the workplace.

"It used to be thought that emotion interfered with rational decision-making and productive work, and should be left at home," says Waikato Management School adjunct professor Sally Planalp.

The academic has just published Communication Emotion: Social, Moral and Cultural Processes (Cambridge University Press), and is overseeing student research into feelings at work.

"More recently," she says, "scholars and people in the business world are starting to recognise not only that you can't check your feelings at the door, but also that emotions also motivate people to do good work.

"People care about their work and those they work with, take pleasure in a job well done, and base decisions on feelings and intuition as well as on information."



Professor John Brocklesby, who specialises in organisational behaviour at Victoria University's school of business and public management, says that it is impossible to separate emotion and rational thinking.

"We are human beings and, ultimately we are always flowing in emotions," he says.

"Whereas classical management thinking believes that emotion and reason are fundamentally different ways of responding to a situation, I would argue that they are inextricably linked.

"People need to accept that all decisions, even rational analytical decisions, ultimately are underpinned by emotion."

People behave differently, and describe and interpret things differently depending on emotions they are experiencing at the time, he says.

That means that all employees - from management to nurses to politicians - make decisions based on emotions underpinned by feelings, core values and preferences.

"I think the issue of whether emotions ought to be allowed to intrude into the workplace is a red herring, since emotions are always there whether we like it or not," says Brocklesby.

"It's just the case that sometimes the emotional basis of individual, organisation and political behaviour and decisions is more obvious than other times."

So does this justify the odd irrational, emotional outburst in the office?

No, say our experts. But, says Planalp, "awareness is important. Recognise that anxiety over your child's dental work is distracting you, or that anger at your spouse is carrying over into being irritable with co-workers.

"Then you can decide how to manage it."

Brocklesby adds that rising feelings when a group is trying to reach consensus are a call for the emotional basis of actions and decisions to be acknowledged.

"Ideally, once acknowledged, this emotional underpinning is then made subject to debate among affected parties," he says.

"If this is not practical, then decision-makers need to take full responsibility for their actions, and not simply claim they are acting objectively and dispassionately in response to the supposed facts."

Professor Steven Grover, who lectures in organisational behaviour at Otago University's management school, says emotions cannot be left at home because they are physiological as well as social in nature.

While we can try to control emotional displays - by not throwing fits, yelling, screaming and crying - we are much less adept at controlling the emotional response that arrives in social and work situations.

He says the tip for managing emotions is to separate emotional displays from the emotion.

If you are extremely angry for example, remove yourself from the situation and plan a rational, measured response to the events or situation that led to that anger.

He says emotion can also be used in a positive way. People learn better when they are happy.

For example, the ability to remember is increased when there is humour in the classroom.

People in a good mood are much more positive about their work than those in a bad mood, even when the work is exactly the same.

As well, people pick up the emotions, as well as the thoughts and attitudes, of those around them.

"So if you have one angry, disgruntled worker in a small work group, it makes it less pleasant for the whole group and their general emotional state might emphatically resemble the disgruntled worker after some time," says Grover.

Adds Planalp: "Emotion is finally receiving credit for the ways it can facilitate work, as well as the ways it can interfere."

But while it may seem the key is to channel the emotion into something positive and work-appropriate, new research from the University of Missouri-Columbia supports the idea that many employees do not want their co-workers to express any type of strong emotion - positive or negative.

Michael Kramer and Jon Hess, professors of communication, asked staffers from different occupations to describe situations at work where emotions were managed "appropriately" or "inappropriately".

Their research found the only "appropriate" way to manage emotions at work was for employees to hide or mask them.

Employees expected others to hide negative emotions in order to maintain what they call "professionalism".

They also expected co-workers to hide positive ones by not showing too much pleasure about promotions or raises, because someone else might have missed out.

"We've known for years that customer relations employees are expected to manage their emotions to express positive emotions regardless of the situation," Kramer says.

But Planalp says that such "emotional labour" - fakery of the required emotional appearance - takes its toll.

"People in a variety of occupations try to be pleasant - especially those who deal with the public in service occupations - but others try to be irritated, like bill collectors, or fearless, like rescue workers," she says.

"One controversial question is whether generating positive expressions hurts workers, because it takes so much effort and can make them feel phony, or helps workers because when they fake positive expressions, they convince themselves and feel better."

Kremer and Hess also found that emotion management is not something taught at work.

Rather, participants learned to manage their emotions by observing others in the workplace to learn what was appropriate.

But Planalp says that countries differ.

"The US, for instance, seems to have an impersonal but friendly emotional expectation, whereas several European countries expect neutrality with more tolerance for negative expressions."