How can you understand emotions in the workplace, and the link to performance?
This is a hot topic: Companies are doing more ongoing sensing, using new technologies to track sentiment, in part because there’s a growing concern over wellbeing & anxiety, plus there is an awful lot of change happening, which always stirs up emotions.
This multi-level model of emotions in organisations was developed by Neal Mashkanasy and Ronald Humphrey.
What does it tell you? (Apart from things are complicated):
– Senior leaders need to understand that employees’ attitudes and behaviors are partly the result of an accumulation of affective events (shown here in Level 1)
– In this framework, level 2 highlights the importance of individual variability in personality and emotional intelligence
– Level 3 covers the role of emotions in interpersonal relationships, e.g., trust
– In group situations managers need to understand how the transmission of emotions impacts teamwork (Level 4)
– At level 5, the focus may fall on “emotional climate” and the impact on organisational performance.
It’s a useful picture to keep in mind when you come across simple displays of “emotions at work”.
There’s a lot to unpack, including effects across levels.
You can find the paper here:
It’s a fun read as the authors talk about leaders as “mood managers” and the potential damage caused by “emotional contagion”.
#Leadership #EmotionalIntelligence #OrganisationalCulture #PeopleAnalytics #BehavioralScience #Teamwork #HighPerformance
