Harnessing Fire: Managing Emotions for Successful Organizational Change
Emotions can spread across organizations like fire, including during periods of change. When employees are fired up by a positive emotional environment, it can lead to increased productivity. But when an organization is caught in the wildfires of a negative emotional environment, it can result in more burnout, turnover, absenteeism, and poorer performance. The impact of emotions can be particularly intense during times of change, as employees may be more anxious than usual, adding more kindling to the fire. Recognizing and harnessing the fire of emotions is one of the most important jobs of managers.
"It is becoming increasingly recognized that skills in managing your own and other people's emotions are as critical as anything else for work success," says Sigal Barsade, academic co-director of Wharton's Leading Organizational Change program, and associate professor of management at Wharton. "But we are generally not trained in this. We are left to figure this out on our own."
A rising interest in "emotional intelligence" has led to a growing recognition of the role of emotions in the workplace. "Managers need to consider the emotional responses to what they are doing as seriously as they consider anything else," says Barsade. "A manager who is making an important presentation is going to double-check and triple-check the PowerPoints, making sure all the numbers are right. But the manager also should be thinking about how Maureen in accounting is going to react to the increased cost of the project and its impact on her ability to get her bonus this year. If she gets angry, how will the manager respond? Emotions convey important information, so managers who want to be most effective need to be able to read emotions to know what is really going on, and then need to explicitly consider them when going about their work."
Emotional Contagion
Our emotions influence others, and others' emotions influence us. Barsade has studied the phenomenon of "emotional contagion" — how negative emotions, or positive, can spread across an organization like a virus.
She proposes a simple exercise. Go into a group of people and cross your arms. See how long it takes for others to do the same. Then try it with a smile. "We are exquisitely sensitive to other people," she says. "If someone is feeling an emotion, we will also feel that emotion to some degree or another."
While leaders of groups may exert a bit more influence in setting the emotional tone, the emotions of anyone in a group can influence the organization. "You might think that the more powerful person would be more contagious," she said. "But in one study where people were put in the role of leaders or followers, there was actually more contagion from followers than from leaders."
How can you deal with negative contagion in the workplace? Sometimes you can avoid it. For example, if you walk past the desk of a colleague who is always in a foul mood in the morning, take another path to your office. You also can work around other people's emotions. You can present ideas when people are prepared to receive them. Finally, you can sometimes defuse emotional contagion just by calling attention to it. "A lot of times just calling people on what they are doing can help. Say to someone expressing lot of anger and frustration that this is not constructive. It is getting all of us down. Just having that conversation could stop the person from doing it."
Emotions of Organizational Change
Understanding the impact of emotions is crucial in successful organizational change. "Even a positive organizational change can lead to uncertainty, which leads to fearfulness," Barsade says. Change involves loss. Losses evoke a predictable set of emotions, as described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her work on death and grieving. When faced with a change, people run through these stages of denial, anger, acceptance, and adaptation.
While people have to go through all these stages of grieving, managers can help them to move through them as quickly as possible. For example, in the anger phase, managers have to give employees an opportunity to vent. In the denial stage, leaders need to make the reasons for change very clear. When Carlos Ghosn took the helm of Nissan, he made it clear to employees that they had to make radical changes to save the company. "Nissan was burning, so they had to make changes or there would not be a company," Barsade says. "That is a very compelling reason for change."
Building Emotional Intelligence
While some people have a natural aptitude for emotional intelligence, it can be learned. Among the most important skills:
- See the emotions: The first step is
to recognize the emotions for what they are, to read other people's
emotions, and be able to express your own feelings.
- Use emotions: Use emotions to best
effect. "If
you know you work better when you are in a particular mood, get yourself
into that mood."
- Understand the sequence of emotions: "You
need to understand how emotions transition into one another," she
says. "A perception of injustice will lead to anger. Uncertainty
will lead to anxiety and fear."
- Regulate your own emotions: "This means being open to both positive and negative emotions and not letting them overwhelm you."
Managers also need to be aware of emotions in choosing communications channels. Studies have found that 55 percent of communication is conveyed through facial expression and body language, 38 percent through verbal tone, and just seven percent through words. This means that an email message is missing about 93 percent of its emotional content. A phone call can take it up to 45 percent. But for more complete communication, you need to be in the same room. "If you are on email and you are thinking there is something hard you want to say, at a minimum, pick up phone," Barsade says. "A phone call can get you quite a ways. If necessary, get on a plane."
For leaders, a tissue box may be as important as a computer on the desk. "Just about every senior manager I've worked with has a tissue box in their office that is used with some frequency," Barsade says. "They are usually shocked by how much time they spend in managing the emotions of employees. We are human. We have emotions. They influence our work performance."
