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