High Team Quality Relationships Can Lead To Positive Emotions For Team Members

Today’s best managers know that TMX stands for team member exchange and refers to the quality of the relationship between team members. Team members who have high quality relationships with their team members tend to assist each other and share information more than teams with low TMX. Teams with higher TMX tend to have higher positive emotions, such as excitement, enjoyment, satisfaction, and enthusiasm, compared to teams with low TMX. This happens because over time teams become more experienced, and negative emotions are reduced due to familiarity and understanding among team members.

Source: Tse, H. H M., & Dasborough, M. T. 2008, April. A study of exchange and emotions in team member relationships. Group & Organization Management, 33, 194-215.

Getting Emotionally Involved May Be A Better Way To Cope When Giving Employees Bad News

Sometimes managers must do things that hurt employees, such as firing them, demoting them, or giving them bad news. Managers used to believe that doing these necessary but evil activities required managers to be cold, emotionless, and to deliver company-written scripts in an almost robot-like manner. Today’s best managers know that it can be better to show one’s feelings and to identify with the person receiving the bad news, rather than to hide from those feelings. Sharing the bad experience with the employee may actually help the manager cope better when performing necessarily evil behaviors in the workplace.

Source: Margolis, J. D., & Molinsky, A. 2008. Navigating the bind of necessary evils: Psychological engagement and the production of interpersonally sensitive behavior. Academy of Management Journal, 51, 847-872.

Positive Employees Tend To Have Positive Emotions That Increase Attitudes And Performance

Today’s best managers constantly look for ways to improve employee attitudes and performance. Positive employee emotions can influence employee attitudes and behaviors. Four traits help determine whether an employee is positive or not: hope, efficacy, optimism, and resilience. Hopeful employees find multiple pathways to success. Employees with efficacy believe in their abilities to get the job done. Optimistic employees expect good things to happen to them. Resilient employees can recover easily from adversities. Being positive can influence positive employee emotions, and that can increase employee attitudes and behaviors.

Source: Avey, J. B., Wernsing, T. S., & Luthans, F. 2008. Can positive employees help positive organizational change?: Impact of psychological capital and emotions on relevant attitudes and behaviors. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 44, 48-70.

Expressing Emotions In Constructive, Productive Ways Can Improve Employee Performance.

Organizations typically have unwritten rules about when, where, and how much employees can display their feelings and emotions. Some organizations specially require employees to suppress, hide, or manipulate their emotions at work, in order to maintain a machine-like atmosphere. Managers used to believe that emotions got in the way of rational, logical business thinking and behavior. Today’s best managers know that such strict workplace regulations can hurt employee attitudes and performance. Instead, they adopt healthy and supportive rules that help employees share how they feel with each other in constructive and productive ways.

Source: Coupland, C., Brown, A. D., Daniels, K., & Humphreys, M. 2008. Saying it with feeling: Analyzing speakable emotions. Human Relations, 61, 327-353.

Build Teams That Can Better Withstand Downsizing

Unfortunately, in organizations today layoffs and downsizing are often everyday events. For example, team leaders may be laid off and teams are left to fend for themselves. Today’s best managers know that some teams can cope better than others when team leaders are let go. Teams that are emotionally stable where team members are typically calm and even-tempered will perform better after a team downsizing. Also, teams where members have positive interaction, exchange information, and cooperate with each other will survive a leader layoff better than teams that don’t behave. In other words, create teams that are emotionally stable and extroverted and they may better withstand the loss of a team leader.

Source: DeRue, D. S., Hollenbeck, J. R., Johnson, M. D., Ilgen, D. R., & Jundt, D.K. 2008. How different team downsizing approaches influence team-level adaptation and performance. Academy of Management Journal, 51, 182-196.

Employees Can Fake Emotional Intelligence So Use Additional Measures When Making Decisions

Today’s best managers know the importance of being able: 1) to recognize one’s own emotions, 2) to manage those emotions, 3) to recognize the emotions that others are experiencing, and 4) to manage our relationships with others based on those emotions. The ability to do these four behaviors is called emotional intelligence or EI. Today’s best managers don’t hire, fire, or promote an employee solely based on emotional intelligence because it is possible to fake being emotionally intelligent. For example, employees may work extra hard to make a good impression when they are being evaluated, but then may not act this way normally on the job.

Source: Day, A. L., & Carroll, S. A. 2008. Faking emotional intelligence (EI): Comparing response distortion on ability and trait-based EI measures. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 761-784.

Agreeable, Conscientious, and Emotionally Stable Employees May Quit Less Frequently

Today’s best managers know that most organizations use job applicant information to predict future job performance. However, they also know that personality information, measured during the application process, may also be important for improving job satisfaction and lowering turnover. Employees who are more conscientious and agreeable are more likely not to quit. An agreeable employee is warm, likeable, and caring. A conscientious employee is dependable, prepared, and detail oriented. Employees who are less emotionally stable may be more likely to quit. Employees who are low in emotional stability tend to be unsure about their ability to perform their job. Using personality information in your hiring process may help lower employee turnover.

Source: Zimmerman, R. D. 2008. Understanding the impact of personality traits on individuals’ turnover decisions: A meta-analytic path model. Personnel Psychology, 61, 309-348.

Be A Safe Haven To Help Employees Improve Negative Emotions At Work

One of the most common sources of negative emotions at work is the relationship between employees and their boss. Feeling badly about work for a long period of time can lead to burnout, lower job satisfaction, decreased motivation, and increased turnover. Today’s best managers know that one way to help improve employee emotions at work is to become a dependable base of security. Employees may improve their attitudes toward work if they can temporarily go to their manager for support in times of need. Today’s best managers provide employees with a safe haven where they can securely discuss and work through their emotions.

Source: Game, A. M. 2008. Negative emotions in supervisory relationships: The role of relational models. Human Relations, 61, 355-393.

Employees Who Can Manage Their Emotions Can Increase Customer Satisfaction

Today’s best managers know the importance of managing one’s emotions in the workplace. Employees who can manage their emotions will have more positive feelings when interacting with customers. As a result, customers will also have more positive feelings from the encounter with the employee and the company. In response, customers will then have higher levels of customer satisfaction, which could result in more sales for the company. Today’s best managers know that helping employees to manage their emotions and recognize the emotions of customers can be a win-win situation for both employees and customers.

Source: Giardini, A., & Frese, M. 2008. Linking service employees’ emotional competence to customer satisfaction: A multilevel approach. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 155-170.