Managing Emotions In The Workplace

Emotions play a very important role in the success of an individual. Since it is the individuals who make an organization, the emotions of these individual employees is a determining factor when it comes to the success of an organization. Such consequence warrants for the efficient management of emotions in the workplace.

When an employee starts working in an organization, he/she tries to find an idol and a support system which will help them in the long run. More often than not there is immense emotional attachment that goes into such relationships. With emotions being involved at each level it becomes imperative to ensure that the employees are safeguarded from any emotional trauma at any stage of work. The onus for this lies with the shoulders of the higher levels of management. Since most employees look up to the higher or the top level of management, it is this level of management that can bring about immense change in the manner emotions are handled in the workplace. The emotions that employees have are generally regarded with one of the three categories:

1. Short lived- These emotions are discrete and short lived. Emotions such as anger, joy etc come under this category
2. Moods- Moods often last longer than the previous category. However, moods may not have a particular reason that they stem from. For instance a generally cheerful person may feel blue due to some unknown reason.
3. Personality- At times emotions stem from a person’s personality as well. It is well experienced that in the corporate world while some people are very cheerful and supportive some others are of the jealous kind. Such emotions have a higher chance of impacting the organization’s performance in the long run.

Whatever category might the emotions fall in, these emotions have the potential of being contagious. They may have both obvious and subtle impact on the performance of other employees in the organization. Consider a manager who is always cheerful and supportive. More often than not his team will feel elated while at work. The productivity of such a team will be high and the feeling of confidence and self worth will sky rocket. While at the same time a manager who is gloomy and authoritative may get the work done on time but will have to face poor quality and missed deadlines. People may also try to pass the buck and get away with as much as they can. This is a sorry state for the organization as it will tremendously bring down the performance of the organization.

This gives the idea of the extent to which the employers or the managers can influence the emotions of the employees of an organization. With the understanding of the same it becomes the responsibility of the managers or the employer to ensure effective management of emotions in the workplace. It is also essential to ensure that the emotions of higher authority employees don’t unknowingly permeate to the lower level and cause disharmony.