WEEK 6 6.1 This week's focus This week's topic is Emotions and stress. Last week, we looked at motivation but this week, we look at a potentially demotivating and demoralising feature of workplaces: stress. Firstly, key human emotions are defined and described and then we investigate how emotions influence behaviours. Finally, the topics of emotional intelligence and work-related stress are presented. This week's objectives By the end of this week you should be able to: · explain how emotions and cognition (logical thinking) influence attitudes and behaviour . articulate the dynamics of emotional labour and the role of emotional intelligence in the workplace · summarise the consequences of job dissatisfaction, as well as strategies to increase organisational (affective) commitment · describe the stress experience and review three major stressors · identify five ways to manage workplace stress. 6.2 Stress and emotions We're almost at the halfway mark. Is your stress level also at the halfway mark? · Think about the role of stress in your life. Is it always bad or unhealthy? . Can you think of times when stress (not adrenalin) has been productive or positive? · How do you cope with stress? Last week we looked at motivation but this week, we look at a potentially demotivating aspect of the workplace - stress. We begin by defining and describing the emotions and explain why it is so important to discover how emotions influence behaviours. We then follow up with the topic of emotional intelligence and work- related stress. The TED talk 'How to make stress your friend' features psychologist Kelly McGonigal arguing that while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, and introduces us to a previously unrecognised mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out to others.
How to make stress your friend | Kelly McGonigal (2013) <http://bit.ly/1iXdVlz> Emotions defined Emotions are psychological, behavioural, and physiological episodes that create a state of readiness. Most emotions occur without our awareness. Two features of all emotions: · all have some degree of activation . all have a core effect in order to evaluate that something is good/bad. Our emotions influence attitudes - feelings and beliefs are influenced by cumulative emotional episodes. In practical terms, we 'listen in' on our emotions. In all kinds of situations, there is the potential conflict between cognitive and emotional processes - you may have heard this referred to as 'your head or your heart'. Emotions also directly affect behaviour e.g. facial expression that sometimes convey what we'd rather hide! Emotional labour Emotional labour is the effort, planning and control needed to express organisationally-desired emotions during interpersonal transactions. This is a particular requirement for jobs that require frequent/lengthy emotional displays, a variety of emotional displays or intense emotions display. Interestingly, this varies across cultures. In countries like Ethiopia, Japan and Austria, we see minimal emotional expression and