Emotions and Passion at Work - Essay Example

Emotions and Passion at Work Customers’ Name Grade Course Tutor’s Name Date All institutions are composed of people. By nature, people are emotional beings. Management in the recent times has focused on harnessing emotion and passion at workplace to capitalize on customer care and motivation. Emotions can be acquired through a learning process and that emotional intelligence controls the learning process. Emotions are considered social occurrences and are shaped by various social cultures. When displays of emotions are socially regulated, there exists a conflict with personal feelings. To reconcile the two, the psychological work is represented by emotional labor. Emotions affect the body. The body is considered more than just a psychological system; it is taken as a social product modeled by various social factors. The body is the vessel that the mind uses as a medium of social interaction that people communicate, categorizes and interacts. Just as emotions do, the body plays the role of linking the outside and the inside of self and others. However, the body and the mind are seen to be one. When we take the contemporary body as channel, it may be considered an integral to the identity and the presentation of an individual. To begin with, the need to exploit employees’ maximum potential has seen various organizations become challenged by the requirement of maintaining a healthy workforce. A relationship exists between employees’ activities and the general success of an organization. When employees do not work to their expectations because of illness, the profitability of organizations must come down. Healthy bodies are considered to be professional bodies and of much profit to an organization because they are resources for jobs (Gini 2000). When actions are based on the urge to be taken or be seen in a given way, the body ceases to be a product resulting from the social forces. It assumes the shape or direction that people act while responding to the social discourses. In this, the relationship that exists between social identity and self-identity is communicated by the body. It is considered an asset that requires urgent investment. In industrialization, the body is taken as a physical tool that emphasis is put towards manual skills and the ability to endure tasks at the workplace (Waring & Waring 2009). The impression of similar job and body image highlights conformity and commitment. Conformity and commitment communicate to the public or the customers of an organization about professional characteristic. It takes an individual to desist from conducting their job with much seriousness to ensure that they perform their tasks with great sense of humor. Hard job situation make the employees identify less with their work, and it does the job seem like an illusion. When feelings are taken to be instruments, emotional labor remains a potential challenge to an individual’s sense of self (Hochschild 1983). Increased demand for success of an organization that operates in a competitive setting influence the work of employees, thereby offering personal performance and attitudes that relate to professionalism. In recent times, managers have shifted their focus from the body surface. They consider the body a representative of an organization’s corporate culture and hence it is taken as an aesthetic resource. Aesthetic labor gives a clear description to the achievement of embodied potential and competencies that employees of organizations have (Pierce 1999). Managers need to play a big role to tap emotions by coming up with possible measures aiming to encourage body and emotional attachment. This gesture results to the evaluation and exploiting human emotion as a resource. In the corporate world, organizational bodies must put much focus on the forms of embodiment-the body’s presentation that must be available and maintained at all costs for individuals to continue working for their organizations (Redman & Wilkinson 2002). In many situations, physical fitness and body appearance are considered as the professional self. The perception of one being taken as a professional revolves around a variety of social and economical aspects that includes pressures from organizations, priorities of institutions, expectations of customers and the requirements of managers. In 2006, a New York based hotel was accused of forcing its female waiters to slim. The female bar waiters working at Sutton place bar reported that their managers forced them to weigh in order for them to keep an eye on their weights. On several occasions, the waiters were also forced to repot to work while putting on tight-fitting clothes and were required to avoid baggy clothing. It is widely considered that slim and fit bodies are best for professional purposes and therefore they are hired. This is outright discrimination towards bodies that do no meet the organizational expectations. Organizational bodies are not supposed to be over exploited and/or modified since they are aesthetic resources (Bone 2006 p. 45). Emotions may refer to complex social relationship activities that are related to the way people feel and how they react and express these feelings. That emotion can be intertwined in the organizational setting and therefore greatly influence how events in the organization are conducted. In order to encourage employees to be important aesthetic resources, emotional identification is greatly influenced by culture management. When emotions are suppressed, authority as bureaucracy draws closer to the organizational forms. This in return poses as a challenge to modern organizations that encourage freedom of employees and reduced supervision. Work is considered meaningful on conditions that it provides employees’ self-actualization as in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It is required that managers must encourage emotional agreement in their organizations. When emotions are sometimes considered as a resource, there is need to tap emotional intelligence. Tapping emotional offers protection to the workers’ sense of self-actualization (Tyler 2000). Workplaces that entail customer facing require the presentation of bodies that are branded. Girlie Glitters, is a chain of retail shops whose products and services are targeted at little girls, sales staffs view themselves as performers but not as sales assistants. Store managers are asked to consider themselves coordinators of leisure. These employees are instructed to enjoy themselves as they think about their sales. In this sense, the sales assistants and the individual customers feel or consider themselves special. They are put in two situations that include self body images. It is important for employees to believe in the idea of personality and emotional advancement. Emotion management is important in self-actualization. At Girlie Glitters, it is of great importance to smile. Through smiling, sales assistants learn how to cope with embarrassment. There are various techniques of body management and they include training and development, monitoring and supervision, recruitment and selection. Self-belief results to improved self-esteem and self-actualization. When employees do not believe in themselves, they may opt for a change in their careers. Coping with emotional stress and emotional labor requires one to go the back stage in order to let of the steam. It allows an individual to adjust to various situations and gain composure to continue working. There is importance of fostering customer and employee identification. In this context, gender plays a big role in the performance and the management of emotional labor (Tyler & Hancock 2012). The relationship that exists between work and organizations, increasingly internalize embodiment as a possible focus concerning the body at work. It provides information on the fact that the workplace is a platform of both material and cultural production. The incidences of assuming gender or choosing to prefer provides the lines of weakness in the segregation of labor markets. This is because gender is seen not only to be on the surface of the employees’ body, performance and work, but also plays a big part in the shaping of their emotions and who they are, both psychological and in the physical state. Most organizations tend to prefer male to female embodiment. As a result, they disqualify most of the women from assuming authority and positions in the workplace. This practice of qualifying and disqualifying certain gender in organizations results to the development of cultures and different new ways of doing things. There are direct links of embodiment or gender to the emerging trends of labor market segregation-emotional labor calls for individuals to manage their feelings and create body and facial expressions that are visible and acceptable to the public. This idea places the performers of tasks on the social order and makes them feel as if they are all the same. Women are believed to learn to display bodies in a manner that relates to aesthetic codes that are feminine (Gottfried 2003). The management of the bodies can result to resistance in every day and minimize on the ideas of self-presentation. Gender preference and bodies aesthetic at the workplace are organizational processes that must be taken with seriousness. It thus requires that there be labor regulations at work. The idea of gender regime assists in our conceptualization of how events of an organizational, results to different ways of embodiment in complex societies (Gottfried 2003). When a specific task entails body display, it makes people have the feeling that there is need to change. When certain conditions that turn people’s faces occur, their feelings turn as well. Facial connotations must be sincere and not subject to alteration. Different organizations prefer variations when choosing the required form of sociability. The essence of employee training is to create an acceptance of the claims and perceptions of an organization. This makes employees question which sections of their behavior, and emotions will be controlled by an organization. The deep beliefs that people have, and the physical appearances are separated by an area of emotion management. For example, in the Delta Company, although the trainers had to work for many hours, they maintained enthusiasm (Hochschild 1983). A majority of employees do not agree to involve in emotional labor simply because of the effects of speedup that results to stress. Many of them believe that an individual’s smile is the biggest of all their other assets and there is need to put it in use. Team solidarity raises morale too. When employees’ emotions are affected negatively by emotional labor, cases of situational depression such as alcoholism and late reporting for work may occur. Employees who feel dejected because of emotional labor take their feelings as objects they can control well and not as natural happenings. Employees’ feelings are hidden by surface acting. The process of acting requires that there be some connection between the employee and the customers (Hochschild 1983). One of the main challenges for managers is to identify emotions, and understand how it affects others in their organizations. Emotions do influence the activities in an organization. Managers must understand employees are connected to what they are doing at the workplace, and that this attachment to work plays a big part in the development of passion. Coordination will help managers manage these energies for the general good of any institution. Emotions and passion ensure great performance capabilities in various organizations. In order for managers to develop emotional intelligence at their work place, self-management skills and working with others must be considered (Pierce 1999). Managers must develop self-awareness aspects. This is the potential to identify and understand employees’ emotions and moods, and their effects on the organization. Secondly, that self-regulation calls for the ability to think before they act. There is also the motivation aspect that demands a passion to undertake allocated tasks with a lot of energy and persistence surpassing position or money. Motivation ensures a strong desire to achieve; it drives passion and eagerness to take up new challenges at the workplace. Managers must also know the emotional make up of their employees so that they can manage their moods appropriately. Social skills demand that managers be proficient in building rapport, networks and managing relationships. Social skills ensure that people in organizations are connected and do relate properly. Emotional intelligence is more important in a variety of managerial environments. In situations that managers put much emphasis on control and their independence, creates a conflict between their employees’ emotions and their emotional intelligence. In order to improve on the organizational and personal performance by managers, there is need to hire, improve, promote and reward emotional intelligence other than only hiring, training and offering rewards to cognitive potentials and technical skills. Emotional intelligence is therefore easy to learn when people seek for it, and is easily recognizable when employees and managers look for it (Goleman 1998). Emotions and passions do affect emotional labor and the learning process. Learning at all levels is an important aspect in developing emotional intelligence when trying to deal with emotional labor. To all individuals, learning is considered an emotional process. A majority of jobs in today’s institutions greatly rely on emotional skills that range from self-awareness, motivation, recognition of other employees or people’s feelings to skills of emotion management. The quantity of emotional intelligence can be measured through the ability of employees to make sure deals, to be team leaders and manage relationships. Managers have neglected the emotional part of employees for along time and have focused so much on taking employees as mere tools of trade. This in return has resulted into a poor organizational performance (Pierce 1999). In conclusion, all institutions are composed of people. By nature, people are emotional beings. Emotions are considered social occurrences and are shaped by various social cultures. When displays of emotions are socially regulated, there exists a conflict with personal feelings. The body is considered more than just a psychological system; it is taken as a social product modeled by various social factors. When the contemporary body is taken as channel, it may be considered an integral to the identity and the presentation of an individual. In industrialization, the body is taken as a physical tool that emphasis is put towards manual skills and the ability to endure tasks at the workplace. When feelings are taken to be instruments, emotional labor remains a potential challenge to an individual’s sense of self. Emotional intelligence is more important in a variety of managerial environments. Emotions and passions do affect emotional labor and the learning process. Emotions and passion ensure great performance capabilities in various organizations. In order for managers to develop emotional intelligence at their work place, self-management skills and working with others must be considered. A relationship exists between employees’ activities and the general success of an organization. Different organizations prefer variations when choosing the required form of sociability. The essence of employee training is to create an acceptance of the claims and perceptions of an organization. This makes employees question which sections of their behavior, and emotions will be controlled by an organization. Passion ensures a strong desire to achieve; it drives passion and eagerness to take up new challenges at the workplace. When employees do not work to their expectations because of illness, the profitability of organizations must come down. Managers need to play a big role to tap emotions by coming up with possible measures aiming to encourage body and emotional attachment. This offers the potential to identify and understand employees’ emotions and moods, and their effects on the organization. References Bone, J 2006, World News: Waiters forced to weigh in sue bosses for $15 m, The Times, 16 September, p.45. Gini, A 2000, My Job My Self: Work and the Creation of the Modern Individual, Routledge, New York. Goleman, D 1998, ‘What Makes a Leader?’, Havard Business Review, November-December. Gottfried, H 2003, ‘Tempting Bodies: Shaping gender at work in Japan’, Sociology, vol. 37 no. 3, p. 257, viewed 7 December 2012, Sage, DOI: 10.1177/0038038503037002003. Hochschild, A 1983, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, University of California Press, Berkeley. Pierce, J 1999, ‘Emotional Labor Among Paralegals’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science vol. 561, p. 127–42. Redman, T & Wilkinson, A 2002, Contemporary Human Resource management, Pearson Education Limited, Edinburgh Gate. Tyler, M 2000, Contemporary issues in HRM Lecture: Emotion and Passion at work Tyler, M & Hancock, P 2012, Emotional management at Girlie Glitter Co. Case study. Waring, A, & Waring, J 2009, ‘Looking the part: Embodying the Discourse of Organizational Professionalism in the City’, Current Sociology, vol. 57, no. 3 p. 344, Sage, DOI: 10.1177/0011392108101587. Read More