EMOTIONS AT WORK

Preparing for a speech to the leadership of an organization facing major restructuring, I asked the meeting planner for background on the audience.

“We’ve presented all the facts,” she replied. “But it would be much easier if everyone weren’t so emotional!”

In the business world, it seems, people are supposed to think logically and act rationally. Steeped in this belief, leaders quantify everything they can and try to present information in ways that help employees make objective decisions.

Emotions are not supposed to be part of the equation. But the fact is that all employees bring their emotions to the workplace. And the more I study the psychology of people at work, the more I see how emotions are integral to everything that happens in an organization.

According to the neurologist and author Antonio Damasio, for example, the center of our conscious thought (the prefrontal cortex) is so tightly connected to the emotion-generating amygdala, that no one makes decisions based on pure logic. Damasio’s research makes it clear that mental processes we’re not conscious of drive our decision making, and logical reasoning is really no more than a way to justify emotional choices.

Emotion gets our attention. Emotionally charged stimuli (ECS) persist much longer in memory, and people remember the emotional components (fear, joy, surprise, anger, embarrassment, etc.) of an experience better than any other aspect.

Emotions dictate actions. Since our past experiences carry an emotional charge that is encoded in memory, we subconsciously assess a new situation based on past emotions – and are then motivated to act on those we have labeled “good” and reject those deemed “bad.”

Emotions drive performance. Positive emotions increase energy, learning and motivation. Worry, resentment or boredom decreases physical and mental energy and impairs mental agility. And when the pressure becomes excessive, soaring cortisol levels combined with adrenaline can actually paralyze our mental functions.

Emotions can even highjack a negotiation. When we negotiate in a positive mood, it increases our tendency to select a cooperative strategy and helps us to avoid the development of hostility and conflict. Negotiating when angry makes us less likely to accurately judge the interests of opponents and less likely to achieve joint gains.

Emotions are highly infectious and “catching” them is a universal human phenomenon. A research study, conducted by Peter Totterdell of the University of Sheffield, had nurses record their moods each day at work for three weeks. He found that the mood of different teams shifted together over time. Totterdell also found this same tendency of emotions to move in a lockstep fashion in teams of accountants and cricket players.

It’s also true that emotions flow most strongly from the most powerful person in the room to others. We monitor our leaders and are extremely sensitive to what the boss says and does. Researchers at California State University, Long Beach found that when business leaders were in a good mood, members of their work groups experienced more positive emotions and were more and productive than groups whose leaders were in a bad mood.

Good or bad, emotional responses can happen before we have time to process them consciously. In a study at the University of Tubingen in Germany, people were shown photos of happy or sad faces on a computer then asked questions to gauge their emotional reactions. Subjects reported corresponding emotions to the photos – even when the pictures lasted only fractions of a second.

So I made sure my harried meeting planner understood that, sure, we all want change to make logical sense. But we also need – and it’s a primary need – to view challenges and solutions in ways that validate and influence the way we feel about our organizations, our jobs, and ourselves.

And that involves emotions. Because like it or not, as I told her, emotions have already been driving or inhibiting the organization’s successful transformation.


Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is an executive coach and international keynote speaker at corporate, government, and association events. She’s the author of “The Nonverbal Advantage: Secrets and Science of Body Language at Work.” To contact Carol about speaking or coaching, call 510-526-1727, email CGoman@CKG.com or visit her websites: http://www.CKG.com or http://www.NonverbalAdvantage.com.

The Fourth Cookie

The June issue of Harvard Business Review featured an article, “How to be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy.” One interesting piece of research the article cited was the “cookie experiment” that psychologists conducted in 2003.

In this study, groups were created with three students in each. Two of the students were asked to write a short policy paper. The third student in each group was asked to evaluate the papers and determine how much the first two would be paid. (This made the third student the “boss” over the other students.)

About 30 minutes into the experiment, there was a break and a plate of five cookies was brought into the room. All three participants took a cookie. That left two – the last cookie which, out of politeness, no one was expected to (nor did) take – and the fourth cookie, which was the real object of the experiment.

Question: Who would feel “entitled” to grab the extra cookie?

Answer: The boss. In all cases, it only took half an hour for the randomly chosen bosses to not only take the fourth cookie, but to chew with their mouths open and to carelessly scatter crumbs.

It could be dismissed as a silly experiment if it wasn’t consistent with the findings in many other studies. Power, it seems, does corrupt – if only to make people more focused on their own needs, less focused on others’ needs, and more likely to behave as if the rules expected of others didn’t apply to them.

To change a bad habit – stop trying.

Studies in neuroscience show how the brain constantly prunes and removes unused links. Any pathways that don’t get used slowly get disconnected.

So, here’s the new formula for changing a bad habit: Stop trying to change it. In fact, don't give it another thought. Leave the old habit alone and create an entirely new one. Take your energy away from fighting the old and give all your attention to the new – those behaviors and attitudes you want in your life.

Reinforce the new habit by linking it to different parts of your brain. You make these links when you utilize a variety of modes: Visualize it. Write it down. Talk about it. Create a strategy. Take action.

Still not easy. But a lot more productive than giving good energy to a bad habit!