Emotional labour in your team
Featured in the Developing an Emotionally Intelligent Team training manual
By Mike Bagshaw
Category: Emotional Intelligence
Credit price: 4 download credits (Single user)
We are expected to manage out emotions in the workplace. In some jobs, staff are required to express organisationally desired emotions even if these conflict with what they are really feeling. For example, a holiday courier is required to show enthusiasm the whole day, even whey they may be feeling totally uninspired and lacklustre. Abiding by these display rules can be quite stressful. In the team context, there may be norms that require the team members to withhold certain emotions and display others. This can lead to a lack of honesty and trust that militates against team synergy. This training activity introduces the participants to the concept of ‘emotional labour’ to describe the effort required to control our emotions in order to conform to organisation or team expectations.
You begin this training activity by asking the participants to discuss situations at work where they fake and control their emotions. You define the concept of emotional labour and follow this with an input and discussion on emotional harmony, dissonance and deviance. The participants then complete a questionnaire to determine how much emotional labour they experience in their teams. To close the training activity, you facilitate a discussion on how to minimise the adverse effects of emotional labour.
Who is it for: This training resource is intended for use by trainers to demonstrate the effects of genuine and faked harmony and show participants how to eliminate or moderate the negative effects of emotional labour.
| Resource Type: | Activity |
| Min Group Size: | 4 |
| Max Group Size: | 12 |
| Typical Duration: | 01:25:00 |
| No of Pages: | 21 |
Resources: View standard resources for Fenman training activities
Purpose: This training resource is intended for use by trainers on team-building programmes with existing teams or participants from different teams. It is a particularly useful activity for teams who work in situations where emotional labour is likely to be high, for example, where there is a great deal of customer interface and especially where interactions can be difficult or strained.
Download the training activity, Emotional labour in your team as featured in the Fenman training manual; Developing an Emotionally Intelligent Team