Leader Lab: Want Your Employees To Display Positive Emotions?

My inaugural post at the Leader Lab is entitled “Want Your Employees To Display Positive Emotions? The answer to that question is YES! if your business depends on delivering high quality service to customers. In today’s economy that describes most business.

In this post, I review a recent study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology that looked at how a positive service climate affected both employees and supervisors. The bottom line is that the more positive the service climate, the more likely it was that employees could display positive emotions and deliver high quality service. This study was especially interesting because it showed how emotionally exhausted supervisors could have a serious negative effect on emotionally exhausted employees when the service climate was poor.

The message to me is one I have repeated here often – partner with your employees to fix those crappy systems that keep them from impressing your customers. If you find yourself constantly blaming your employees when they display negative emotions at work, you need to take a very close look at this and other research on the power of a positive service climate.

Bad service is much more your fault than theirs.

Related Posts:

Employees First, Customers Second: My Review

Leadership Integrity, Value Congruence, And Employee Engagement

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About the Author: Bret L. Simmons