Managing Emotions at Work

Our understanding of emotions at work has increased rapidly in the past decade. We are now at the point at which we are capable of, or close to being capable of, managing the emotions of employees. For instance, companies that want to create open and friendly work places are using the selection process to "select out" job applicants who are not outgoing and enthusiastic and are providing training to teach employees how to smile and appear cheerful. Some organizations are going further in attempting to create "emotionally humanistic" work environments by not only shaping the emotions that workers evoke in their daily contacts with customers but also by selecting employee applicants with high emotional intelligence, controlling the emotional atmosphere of teams and work groups, and similar emotion-management practices.

Groucho Marx once joked that "the secret of success in show business is honesty and sincerity. Once you learn how to fake that, you have got it made." In many service organizations today, Groucho's remark is being applied. For instance, telephone-sales staffs in a number of insurance companies are trained to invoke positive feelings from customersto make it easy for them to say "yes." Employees are taught to avoid words with negative connotations and replace them with upbeat and confidence-building words such as "certainly," "rest assured," "immediate," and "great." Moreover, employees are taught to convey these "scripts" in a way that seems natural and spontaneous. To ensure that these "authentic" positive feelings are consistently evoked, the phone calls of these sales people are often monitored.

Organizations like McDonalds, Disney, and Starbucks select and program employees to be upbeat and friendly. They allow employees no choices. Moreover, these organizations export their emotional expectations to everywhere in the world in which they locate.

Questions to answer:

1.Should individuals not be chosen for jobs when they do not display the desired behaviors?