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Emotions in the strata workplace
Professor Ashlea Troth
Griffith Business School
Griffith University Strata Title Conference, 5th Sept 2019
Overview
1. Emotions in workplaces are inevitable
2. Emotional nature of Strata Management work
3. What emotions are signalling
4. How emotions are useful and have important consequences for
individuals and businesses
Duty of Care?
• Under Australian health and safety legislation, employers have a duty
of care to ensure the health and safety of workers, both physical and
psychological
Is your workplace mentally healthy?
• Consider the role of emotion-related situations at work
Individual exercise
1. Think about your time at work over the last week (in strata mgt) context
2. What emotions did you experience yourself or witness in others? What
triggered this?
3. Write down each of these emotions
Emotions is a work day
Positive & Negative Emotions(Murray & Jordan, 2006)
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
Negative Positive
Com
para
tive
Sco
res
Emotions are part of work and have important
outcomes
• Positive Emotions
• Affective Commitment (Loyalty)
• Enthusiasm
• Organizational Citizenship Behaviours
• Performance, Creativity and innovation
• Negative Emotions
• Withdrawal, Lethargy, Burnout
• Lowers motivation; absenteeism; poorer performance
• Antisocial Behaviours
But is it that simple?
Emotion and cognition (thinking)
• Inverse relationship between emotion intensity and thinking
• When emotion is high (or intense) thinking will be impaired.
• Physiological reason
• Blood flow is altered from cognitive to emotional
• Attention is diverted to the strongest emotion
Emotional Progressions in intensity
Anger
Irritable
Annoyed
Frustrated
Upset
Mad
Angry
Furious
Enraged
Happiness
Positive
Calm
Content
Amused
Pleased
Happy
Joyous
Fear
Attentive
Wary
Edgy
Nervous
Worried
Fearful
Panicked
Emotion work in strata management?
Do you do any of the following in your role:
• Resolving disputes?
• Problem solving?
• Dealing with difficult people?
• Working under pressure?
• Working with diverse people with different goals and motives?
• Delivering client services; ensuring client satisfaction?
• Job challenge?
• Sense of achievement/accomplishment?
• Helping people?
Do these activities involve
managing your own
feelings and expressions?
Or those of other people?
Emotional labour and strata management?
Emotional labour refers to the situation where the job role requires that individual to
display a certain emotion.
1. Surface acting – required to express emotions that you don’t feel i.e., fake
emotion
2. Deep acting – Change the way you think so you genuinely feel the emotion you
are expressing to others.
Emotions are contagious
A tendency to ‘catch’ another person’s emotions or ‘trigger’ similar emotions in another person; especially in group settings.
Examples of emotional contagion include:
1. An enthusiastic person raising the mood
2. A fearful person spreading despair.
3. A sad person being draining of others.
4. An angry person creating dissent and conflict.
What are the implications of emotional contagion in the Strata mgt context?
Emotional Intelligence
Ability to perceive emotions
Ability to apply emotions
Emotional Knowledge
Ability to
manage
emotions
Identifying emotions in the face
What emotion?
What emotion?
What emotion?
What emotion?
What emotion?
What emotion?
What emotion?
• Emotions are a normal part of worklife.. But they shouldn’t be ignored
• Dealing with emotions at work can have positive (creativity; job satisfaction;
cohesion) and negative (burnout; absenteeism, absenteeism poor
performance) outcomes
• Emotions matter – they provide information (a signal) about what is
happening in your workplace.
• Understanding the source of emotions suggest how to address issues.
Take home messages
• Do an audit of the emotion-inducing events. What situations create the most intense reactions?
• Build affective breaks built into the day (to rejuvenate and recover); Job rotation and job design
• Training through scenario building and roleplaying of various emotion-eliciting situations in strata management
• Set ground rules (emotional ground rules regarding appropriate and inappropriate expressions) with all stakeholders
• Debriefing and supportive work environment after intense situations. Celebrate the +ve experiences.
• Social support (peers, supervisor; outside work) – at the event or afterwards
• Leadership models acceptable emotional behaviour
• Training in emotional intelligence and emotional regulation strategies
• NB: Everyone is different in what works for them.
Practical strategies