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2016-01-21 09:32:36
Sigal BarsadeOlivia A. O Neill
January 06, 2016
Managers tend to view emotions as something soft that can t really be measured. But you can and should track emotions quantitatively, the same way you d track employees other attitudes and behaviors: through surveys. There s a key difference in approach, however.
In a survey we ve used in many organizational settings, people don t tell us how they feel. Rather, employees or outside raters observe the emotional culture around them that is, the norms, values, artifacts, and assumptions governing which feelings people can have and should express at work. This helps us get a birds-eye view of what s happening with the group as a whole. We ask: To what degree do other people in this organization (or division or unit) display the following emotions? The options include enthusiasm, caring, compassion, frustration, anxiety, and energy, to name a few. We then ask which emotions people should or shouldn t express in their organization.
We also measure how the basic emotions anger, companionate love, fear, joy, and sadness intersect with one another. That s because our research over the past decade shows that groups can have multiple emotional cultures at the same time. For example, in a metropolitan hospital we studied, we found that a strong culture of companionate love within certain units served as a buffer for an equally strong culture of anxiety. Managers are also likely to find different emotional subcultures throughout their organizations. Once they gauge which cultures are prevalent, they can determine which ones they must focus on the most to meet their strategic goals. For example, when we analyzed emotional-culture survey data at Cisco Finance, we found that fostering joy was a high priority because of its impact on employee commitment and satisfaction. As a result, management has doubled down on initiatives that promote fun at work. At other companies, reducing anger or fear matters more than increasing joy. Needs vary
widely by context.
Of course, employee surveys aren t the only way to track emotional culture. We have used interviews and on-site observations as well. A culture interview usually starts with questions about the job ( What is the biggest challenge of working at your company? ), followed by questions about what it takes for employees to do well in the organization and what can derail them (a good shortcut for understanding culture), and then more-direct questions about culture ( What words would you use to describe the culture or personality of your unit? ). Because it s important to capture both highly salient and hidden aspects of emotional culture, we also look for spontaneous, nonverbal cues such as facial expressions, posture, gestures, and vocal tone. We ve even analyzed office d cor, rituals, and routines. In our research and practice, such indicators have correlated closely with the survey data, which helps confirm accuracy all around.
You may be wondering: At what level should you measure emotional culture? Your immediate work group, division, or function? Or the organization as a whole? That decision depends on a host of contextual factors, such as where your strategic priorities lie and where you re seeing performance problems. No matter what level you choose to focus on, it s critical to keep tracking emotional culture over time once you ve determined what it is and what it needs to be. Cisco Finance now measures its emotional culture yearly, which allows senior managers to gauge how well their culture change initiatives are working.
Once you ve measured your group s emotional culture, remember that your behavior as a leader is one of your most effective tools for changing it. When we hear that a group has low morale, the first question we ask is: What kind of emotional expression and attitude is the manager or leader coming in with each day? A leader s attitude has an enormous effect, so it, too, needs to be measured and managed perhaps above all else.
Sigal Barsade is the Joseph Frank Bernstein Professor of Management at Wharton.
Olivia A. O Neill is an assistant professor of management at George Mason University and a senior scholar at the school s Center for the Advancement of Well-Being.