The most effective way to affect the inner work life of those around you is to help them make daily progress in meaningful work. In their book “The Progress Principle,” Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer go so far as to say “any manager’s job description should start with facilitating subordinates’ daily progress.” (p. 89). They believe this progress principle should become a fundamental management principle, and I agree.

The authors strongly emphasize that your efforts to support the progress of folks around you should focus more on avoiding the negative than accentuating the positive. Your influence is most effective when it is used to eliminate obstacles rather than create supports, because “small losses can overwhelm small wins” (p. 92). Bad leaders and the damage they cause have more impact than help of good leaders.

The power of setbacks to diminish happiness is more than twice as strong as the power of progress to boost happiness. The power of setbacks to increase frustration is more than three times as strong as the power of progress to decrease frustration. (p. 92).

Leaders also need to be aware of how they rob meaning from peoples’ work. In their research, Amabile and Kramer identified four actions that managers should avoid because they negate the value of work (p. 96):

1.     Dismiss someone’s ideas

2.     Make employees doubt the work they do is important

3.     Assign people to work for which they are overqualified

4.     Keep people from assuming full ownership of their work

In addition to meaningful progress, positive inner work life is also influenced by what Amabile and Kramer call catalyst factors (events supporting the work) and nourishments factors (events supporting the person). I’ll discuss catalysts and nourishment factors in future posts, so stay tuned!

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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Leading Potential

Yesterday I reported the results of a new and very well done study showing that service providers were more likely to exceed customer expectations when their displays of emotion at work were more authentic and less faked. Now another exceptional study conducted by a separate research team shows that when employees fake emotions required as part of work, they are more likely to engage in work withdrawal (e.g. put less effort into the job than I should have; thought about being absent, thought about leaving my current job; daydreamed).

Published in the Academy of Management Journal (full citation below), this study followed 58 bus drivers over a two week period by having them respond to surveys both before and after their assigned shifts. Authentic emotional displays (called deep acting) were measured by questions that included “Tried to actually experience the emotions I must show” and “Made an effort to actually feel the emotions that I needed to display toward others.” Faked emotional displays (called surface acting) were measured by questions that included “Put on an act in order to deal with customers in an appropriate way” and “Faked a good mood.”

The authors found that employees can alternate between authentic and faked displays of emotion in order to try to regulate their moods. But on days when employees faked their emotional displays, they ended up in worse moods and engaged in more work withdrawal. Interestingly, the negative effects of faking emotions were worse for women and the positive effects of displaying authentic emotions were greater for women.

This finding does not suggest that women are more emotional than men at work. It simply says that when women do experience emotions at work, an authentic display is more critical to them than it is to their male colleagues.

Employees that perform the emotional labor of high customer contact work are forced to constantly regulate their display of emotions. Employees have a choice – try to be as authentic as possible to what the job requires and what they are really feeling or fake it. Solid evidence seems to suggest that we should encourage employees to be as authentic as possible in their display of emotions at work because it accentuates the positive (e.g. exceeding customer expectations) and minimizes the negative (e.g. work withdrawal). This new evidence suggests that we need to be especially attentive to how our female employees display emotion, encouraging them to be as authentic as possible.

How are we going to train managers to encourage their employees to be more emotionally authentic at work? And how are we going to deal with the delicate issue that the experience and effects of emotion at work is potentially different for women than for men?

Do you have any suggestions? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Full citation: Scott, B.A. & Barnes, C.M. (2011). A multilevel field investigation of emotional labor, affect, work withdrawal, and gender. Academy of Management Journal, 54 (1): 116-136

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Feeling Good By Doing Good

Jobs that require a high degree of customer interaction are categorized as emotional labor because the emotions displayed by the service provider have an impact on the customer’s perception of service quality. For example, in a restaurant, customers could care less whether or not the kitchen staff smile when they prepare the food, but if the waiter does not smile and display a positive attitude as customers are seated, orders are taken, food is delivered, and checks are presented, customers might perceive that the quality of service was not what it should be.

What if the waiter is frustrated with the kitchen staff’s ability to prepare food fast enough to impress customers? Should the waiter show some of that frustration to customers, or should the waiter fake it and try to display emotions inconsistent with what he is really feeling?

A study recently published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (full citation below) showed that more authentic displays of emotion led to service transactions that were more likely to exceed customer expectations. The authors studied 60 restaurant service providers as each served 10 separate customers and found that the employees that displayed more authentic emotions (e.g. I try to actually experience the emotions that I must show to customers) received better tips and customer ratings than employees that faked emotions (e.g. I fake a good mood with customers). The only exception was that when extraverted employees faked emotions they got good tips but not good evaluations.

The authors conducted a follow-up call center simulation with 160 undergraduate students. In this study the authors controlled for the personality traits extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism and once again found that more authentic displays of emotions resulted in more friendly performance and a higher likelihood of helping customers in extra ways.

Expecting employees to hide or fake their true emotions at work is bad advice. Not only will they experience more stress, but they will also probably fail to deliver performance that exceeds customer expectations.

A better course of action would be to provide managers with good training on emotional intelligence. Help them understand the impact of emotions on performance, how to recognize and regulate their own emotions, and how to respond to the emotions of others at work. Then give your managers the tools to teach these skills to their team.

The recognition, regulation, and tactical leveraging of emotion at work will increasingly become part of sound management practices for leading organizations.

Full citation: Chi, N.W. et. al. (2011). Want a tip? Service performance as a function of emotion regulation and extraversion.  Journal of Applied Psychology.

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How To Deal With Crying In The Office

Here is a short video from www.howdini.com about crying in the office.  The main point the video makes is try not to cry at work, and if something happens and you do start crying, get your composure back as quickly as possible.  I can’t disagree with any of that.

But one of the first things the expert in this video says is “One must always remember that work is about facts, it’s not about feelings.”  I strongly disagree.

Like it or not, we are emotional beings.  Effective leaders don’t dismiss that fact, they embrace it.

Two of the most powerful drivers of employee performance are job satisfaction and organizational commitment.  Satisfied and committed employees are more likely to outperform those that hate their job, your organization, and you.  These attitudes are very affect laden, and it’s the affective component of the attitude that makes them so powerful.

As a leader, the way to deal with a crying employee is to treat the crying as a symptom and not a problem.  Crying is not a sign of weakness; it is a natural way that our bodies deal with stress by releasing emotions.  If there is something in the work environment that caused such an extreme emotional reaction, it needs to be identified and dealt with. 

Be thankful if you witness the crying at work.  If employees are chronically crying at home due to work related stress, you might miss these signs of burnout.  You better care about that, because employee burnout is a bottom line issue.