Emotions in the Workplace

The root of the word emotion comes from a French term meaning “to stir up.” More formally, an emotion is defined as a short, intense feeling resulting from some event. Not everyone reacts to the same situation in the same way.

Emotions play a significant role in the workplace, both for individuals and for organizations as a whole. Emotions can affect employee motivation, job satisfaction, and performance, as well as organizational culture and productivity. Emotions in the workplace can be positive or negative and can be influenced by a variety of factors, including job demands, interpersonal relationships, and organizational culture. Positive emotions, such as happiness, enthusiasm, and pride, can enhance creativity, problem-solving, and teamwork. In contrast, negative emotions, such as anger, frustration, and anxiety, can lead to conflict, stress, and burnout.

Emotions shape an individual’s belief about the value of a job, a company, or a team. Emotions also affect behaviours at work. Managing emotions in the workplace is an important skill for employees at all levels. Individuals who are able to regulate their emotions effectively are better equipped to handle challenging situations, maintain positive relationships with coworkers, and perform at their best. Emotional intelligence, which refers to the ability to recognize, understand, and manage one’s own emotions as well as those of others, is a key factor in emotional management and workplace success.

Organizations can also play a role in managing emotions in the workplace. This can include developing policies and practices that promote a positive work environment, providing resources and support for employees who are struggling with emotional challenges, and fostering a culture of emotional intelligence and awareness.

Jobs that are high in negative emotion can lead to frustration and burnout—an ongoing negative emotional state resulting from dissatisfaction. Depression, anxiety, anger, physical illness, increased drug and alcohol use, and insomnia can result from frustration and burnout, with frustration being somewhat more active and burnout more passive. The effects of both conditions can impact coworkers, customers, and clients as anger boils over and is expressed in one’s interactions with others.

Types of Emotions

Positive emotions such as joy, love, and surprise result from our reaction to desired events. In the workplace, these events may include achieving a goal or receiving praise from a superior. Individuals experiencing a positive emotion may feel peaceful, content, and calm. A positive feeling generates a sensation of having something you didn’t have before. As a result, it may cause you to feel fulfilled and satisfied. Positive feelings have been shown to dispose a person to optimism, and a positive emotional state can make difficult challenges feel more achievable[11]. This is because being positive can lead to upward positive spirals where your good mood brings about positive outcomes, thereby reinforcing the good mood[12].

Emotions are also useful for creative tasks because positive individuals tend to be more creative and open to new ideas. In addition to helping with employee creativity, companies such as Microsoft Corporation often want to understand which features of their products produce not just high ratings for usability but also high emotional ratings. Individuals with strong positive emotional reactions are more likely to use their product and recommend it to others[13]. This is something Apple Inc. has been known for doing well, as their products tend to evoke strong positive emotions and loyalty from their users.

Negative emotions such as anger, fear, and sadness can result from undesired events. In the workplace, these events may include not having your opinions heard, a lack of control over your day-to-day environment, and unpleasant interactions with colleagues, customers, and superiors. Negative emotions play a role in the conflict process, with those who can manage their negative emotions finding themselves in fewer conflicts than those who do not.

The unwanted side effects of negative emotions at work are easy to see: An angry colleague is left alone to work through the anger; a jealous colleague is excluded from office gossip, which is also the source of important office news. But you may be surprised to learn that negative emotions can help a company’s productivity in some cases. Anger at another company’s success, for example, can spark a burst of positive effort on behalf of a competitor. Jealousy about another division’s sales figures may inspire a rival division to work harder. While negative emotions can be destructive in the workplace, they can inspire bursts of valuable individual action to change situations that aren’t working the way they should[14]. The key is to promote positive emotions and work to manage the negative ones so they don’t spread throughout the organization and become the norm.

Emotional Contagion

Both positive and negative emotions can be contagious, with the spillover of negative emotions lasting longer than positive emotions[15]. As you may have experienced in the past, contagion can be especially salient in a team setting. Research shows that emotions are contagious and that team members affect one another even after accounting for team performance[16]. One explanation for negative emotions’ tendency to linger may be a stronger connection to the fight-or-flight situations people experience. Anger, fear, and suspicion are intentionally unpleasant messages urging us to take action immediately. And to make sure we get the message, these emotions stick around.

Research shows that some people are more susceptible to emotional contagion than others[17]. But in general, when the boss is happy, the staff is happy[18]. We can also imagine how negative emotions can be transferred. Imagine you’re working behind the counter at a fast-food restaurant. Your mood is fine until a customer argues with you about an order. You argue back. The customer leaves in a huff. Your anger and emotions continue, turning into negative feelings that last throughout the day. As you might guess, you are more likely to make mistakes and find ordinary challenges annoying when you’re experiencing negative emotions. Unchecked, your negative emotions can spread to those around you. A negative interaction with one customer can spill over into interactions with another customer[19].

Practice Changing Your Emotion

Emotional Labour

Emotional labour is the effort required to manage one’s own emotions or the emotions of others in order to meet job requirements. Emotional labour can involve regulating one’s own emotions to present a particular image or to meet job demands, as well as displaying appropriate emotions in response to the emotions of others[21].

Examples of emotional labour may include customer service representatives who are required to remain calm and polite even in the face of difficult or angry customers, or nurses who must provide emotional support to patients and families who are experiencing stress or grief.

Emotional labour can be challenging and can take a toll on an individual’s emotional well-being, especially if it requires suppressing one’s true emotions or constantly putting on a facade. Some researchers have suggested that certain professions or industries may be more likely to require emotional labour, such as service industries, healthcare, and education.

Humans are emotional creatures by nature. In the course of a day, we experience many emotions. Think about your day thus far. Can you identify times when you were happy to deal with other people and times when you wanted to be left alone? Now imagine trying to hide all the emotions you’ve felt today for 8 hours or more at work. That’s what cashiers, school teachers, massage therapists, firefighters, and librarians, among other professionals, are asked to do. As individuals, they may be feeling sad, angry, or fearful, but at work, their job title trumps their individual identity. The result is a persona—a professional role that involves acting out feelings that may not be real as part of their job.

Three major levels of emotional labour have been identified[22].

1. Surface Acting ~ requires an individual to exhibit physical signs, such as smiling, that reflect emotions customers want to experience. A children’s hairdresser cutting the hair of a crying toddler may smile and act sympathetic without actually feeling so. In this case, the person is engaged in surface acting.
2. Deep Acting ~ takes surface acting one step further. This time, instead of faking an emotion that a customer may want to see, an employee will actively try to experience the emotion they are displaying. This genuine attempt at empathy helps align the emotions one is experiencing with the emotions one is displaying. The children’s hairdresser may empathize with the toddler by imagining how stressful it must be for one so little to be constrained in a chair and be in an unfamiliar environment, and the hairdresser may genuinely begin to feel sad for the child.
3. Genuine Acting ~ occurs when individuals are asked to display emotions aligned with their own. If a job requires genuine acting, less emotional labour is required because the actions are consistent with true feelings.

Emotional labourers are required to display specific emotions as part of their jobs. Sometimes, these are emotions that the worker already feels. In that case, the strain of emotional labour is minimal. For example, a funeral director is generally expected to display sympathy for a family’s loss. In the case of a family member suffering an untimely death, this emotion may be genuine. But for people whose jobs require them to be professionally polite and cheerful, such as flight attendants, or to be serious and authoritative, such as police officers, the work of wearing one’s “game face” can have effects that outlast the working day. To combat this, taking breaks can help surface actors cope more effectively[23].

What is the worst job you have ever had (or class project if you haven’t worked)? Did the job require emotional labour? If so, how did you deal with it?

Cognitive dissonance is a term that refers to a mismatch among emotions, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior, for example, believing that you should always be polite to a customer regardless of personal feelings, yet having just been rude to one. You’ll experience discomfort or stress unless you find a way to alleviate the dissonance. You can reduce the personal conflict by changing your behavior (trying harder to act polite), changing your belief (maybe it’s OK to be a little less polite sometimes), or by adding a new fact that changes the importance of the previous facts (such as you will otherwise be laid off the next day). Although acting positive can make a person feel positive, emotional labour that involves a large degree of emotional or cognitive dissonance can be grueling, sometimes leading to negative health effects[24].

Emotional Intelligence

One way to manage the effects of emotional labour is by increasing your awareness of the gaps between real emotions and emotions that are required by your professional persona. “What am I feeling? And what do others feel?” These questions form the heart of emotional intelligence. The term was coined by psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer and was popularized by psychologist Daniel Goleman in a book of the same name. Emotional intelligence looks at how people can understand each other more completely by developing an increased awareness of their own and others’ emotions[25].

There are four building blocks involved in developing a high level of emotional intelligence. Self-awareness exists when you are able to accurately perceive, evaluate, and display appropriate emotions. Self-management exists when you are able to direct your emotions in a positive way when needed. Social awareness exists when you are able to understand how others feel. Relationship management exists when you are able to help others manage their own emotions and truly establish supportive relationships with others[26].

In the workplace, emotional intelligence can be used to form harmonious teams by taking advantage of the talents of every member. To accomplish this, colleagues well-versed in emotional intelligence can look for opportunities to motivate themselves and inspire others to work together[27]. Important among the emotions that helped create a successful team, Goleman learned, was empathy—the ability to put oneself in another’s shoes, whether that individual has achieved a major triumph or fallen short of personal goals[28]. Those high in emotional intelligence have been found to have higher self-efficacy in coping with adversity, perceive situations as challenges rather than threats, and have higher life satisfaction, which can all help lower stress levels[29].

Consider the following: 

1. What is the worst job you have ever had (or class project if you haven’t worked)? Did the job require emotional labor? If so, how did you deal with it?
2. Research shows that acting “happy” when you are not can be exhausting. Why do you think that is? Have you ever felt that way? What can you do to lessen these feelings?
3. How important do you think emotional intelligence is at work? Why?