Emotions have no place at work. At least, that is what we are led to believe. But, as most of us know, rationality does not always rule in the office. Today's demands, such as meeting tight deadlines, coping with increased workloads and dealing with difficult colleagues can generate strong feelings, including anger, frustration and bewilderment.
Walk into some offices and you can cut the atmosphere with a knife. This is why, according to a growing number of occupational psychologists, it is time for British workplaces to introduce regular "emotional audits" to help managers deal with emotions that turn toxic.
ILLUSTRATION: YU SHA
"Toxic emotions drain vitality from individuals, teams and, eventually, the whole organization because they interrupt the workflow," says Tina Keifer, visiting professor in Organizational Behavior and HR at the University of Columbia.
"A failure to recognize symptoms of toxic emotions could lead to higher labor turnover, relatively poor health and low levels of creativity and performance," she says.
Peter Frost, author of Toxic Emotions At Work, provides an example. "Vivien, an office worker in a branch of a national financial institution, approached her boss for permission to attend the funeral of a family member, a young nephew tragically killed in an accident," he says.
"When told that the funeral was on the following Monday afternoon, the manager, preoccupied with company deadlines, at first refused the request. He needed her to attend a meeting on Monday and urged her to try to get the family to change the funeral to another day. Vivien, who had been close to the young boy, was devastated by this response. Eventually, her boss allowed her to attend the service, but the hurt she felt toward him lingered long after the incident," he says.
Toxic emotions can also occur on a wider scale, Frost says.
"Fred is an example of this. He was a gregarious new CEO with an open manner, who encouraged his managers to talk with him about their concerns," he explains.
"Some of his managers became sufficiently confident in their relationship with Fred that, when pressed, they gave him their views on two of the vice-presidents who, while technically competent, created disruption and severe unhappiness among the staff. Fred then shared these views with the vice-presidents, including `who said what about whom.' The vice-presidents retained their positions and found ways to punish the managers who had talked with their CEO," he says.
You can't get rid of negative emotions at work, admits Frost, but you can prevent them becoming toxic.
"Negative emotions are as inevitable as positive emotions and are arguably just as useful," he says. "For example, negative emotions may be created by not being able to work professionally due to interruptions or ineffective procedures. From a psychological point of view, they are vital for dealing with difficult situations as they help us to identify what is important."
It is when negative emotions turn toxic that problems set in, he says. "This happens when they are handled inadequately due to insensitive or incompetent behavior of managers and colleagues, as in Vivien's and Fred's case."
Enter "emotional audits" -- the brainchild of Rob Briner, a reader in organizational psychology at Birkbeck College, University of London. These aim to ensure that managers are trained to deal with their employees' emotions to prevent negative feelings turning toxic. So how do they work?
"The first step involves organizations finding out how staff really feel -- usually through detailed questionnaires or independent interviews," he says.
"Many organizations have long carried out stress audits or job satisfaction surveys, but the conclusions tend to be vague. They might find, for instance, that employees feel dissatisfied or stressed. But they haven't been detailed or specific enough to discover that what staff really feel is actually deeper than that. Perhaps they are fearful of a tyrannical boss -- which requires very different handling from general dissatisfaction or stress," Briner says.
Sandra Wood, a legal secretary, describes the annual job satisfaction survey carried out in her department as "hopeless."
"Like most people," she says, "my feelings towards work are contradictory. I enjoy some aspects of it and hate others. But the survey doesn't allow for that contradiction to be recorded. Nor does it allow us to refer to individual incidents, only enabling us to speak generally. As a result, my colleagues and I feel our emotions are never truly recorded or acted upon."
The second phase of emotional audits involves training line managers to undo toxic emotions already there by getting to the root of them, and preventing future emotions turning toxic. Active listening, asking questions and paying attention to the emotional experiences of colleagues all feature in this training.
"If you're lucky, you will already have a line manager who picks up on how you're feeling quite well and responds appropriately," says Briner. "But it's unusual. They are generally too busy or simply not trained in picking up the emotions of others -- either on a mass level or individual level -- and the consequences this can have."
The third and final step of emotional audits involves identifying what Briner refers to as "toxin handlers" -- colleagues who listen to what is going on and make time for people's feelings, turning negative energy into positive.
"Fortunately for organizations, there are always people who step into toxic situations and take on, buffer, neutralize or heal toxic emotions so that others can re-focus their attention and efforts towards getting the job done," says Briner. "In some cases, it will be your manager, but it is just as likely to be a secretary who has an empathetic personality."
Although toxin handlers can be rewarded through grateful, satisfied and relieved colleagues, their job can be thankless. One reason is that such work is often informal and management fails to recognize it as contributing to the organization.
"This can be dangerous," cautions Frost. "Toxic emotions are contagious and handlers, while helping others, often take on toxins which can harm their own well-being and health. So once identified, these handlers need to be given adequate support from employers."
To date, emotional audits are more prevalent in the US than the UK, with companies such as Cisco and South West Airlines having invested in the concept.
"Over here, they are starting to catch on in varying forms, but it's still early days," says Briner, who predicts that larger companies are more likely to take them up -- particularly where there are behavioral indicators that emotions have already turned toxic.
He explains: "It might be that staff no longer get enthusiastic about the Christmas party or that everyone turns up late for meetings. It might be that people turn up on time but are psychologically absent when they're there. There are also examples of extreme cases, like the incident in America a few years back when a postal worker got so angry with his colleagues that he brought a gun to work and shot some of them."
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is one of the UK organizations supporting the idea of emotional audits.
"So many of us have experienced a boss who has said, `You've done really well, but next time, you need to do even better.' The boss thinks it's praise but the person on the receiving end could experience it as emotionally damaging," says Angela Baron, adviser to the CIPD.
"Ways in which organizations can help to overcome this kind of problem can only be welcomed," she says.
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