Emotional Virus: have your staff caught it yet?Article in Conscious Leadership - Emotional Virus:have your staff caught it yet? • How often have you heard someone complain and moan about the difficult-to-deal with co-worker, the unreasonable boss, the work group that can't get their act together? • How many people do you know who say they work better to a deadline? • How many times have you heard people grumble and whine about how rushed they are, how often they have to skip lunch, how late they have to stay at the office? • How many staff do you think jump out of bed each morning anxious and happy to be working in your organisation? • Have your staff absenteeism rates been increasing? • Are the number of negative comments and grumpy faces more prolific?
Do the above questions sound familiar?If you, your employees, colleagues, or someone you know experience problems similar to this - which many of us do - the following article may present you with some ideas on prevention and intervention.This is a virus that is being caught by the majority of businesses and organizations today. Ignoring it could lead to disturbing consequences, which could potentially affect the health, wellbeing and the very survival of your organization. What is emotional virus?Emotional virus is the consequence of emotions that have been mismanaged in a range of ways within an organization. The virus grows and thrives on emotional imbalance, aggravated by and also causing rising stress in the organization.Early warning signs of emotional virusAlthough immediately invisible, it is important to realise that an emotional virus could already exist in your organization and may already be embedded in your organizational culture. The following symptoms are early warning signs that your organisation has embedded emotional virus. Symptoms include:• Constant streams of complaints • Frequent communication breakdowns • Us vs. them mentality • High levels of absenteeism • Difficult interpersonal relationships in the workplace • Resentment and judgemental attitudes among people • Constant conflict and friction between team members • Defeatism • Distrust and mistrust • Sarcastic humour • Ongoing fatigue or an over rushed pace of work • Increased signs of anxiety, intolerance, antagonism, despair, resignation. All these symptoms can be seen, heard and felt in the car park, in the staff room, at happy hour, over lunch, by the water cooler or copier and in the boardroom. Management often tend to think that these symptoms are natural and are often unaware of how serious the consequences are. After all, everyone seems to be going through the same difficulties. The emotional imbalance and stress becomes such a part of everyone's daily routine that we hardly notice and it feels normal. It is not normal. Each of these symptoms can quickly spread the contagion of negative emotions and create a contemptuous, nit-picking, unproductive and infertile environment. Without tools for effective self-management, people cannot work in an emotionally contaminated environment for long. They become emotionally and physically drained. It takes a highly conscious person to work in this emotionally contaminated environment and to maintain a consistently high level of mental and emotional stability and flexibility. Immunising against emotional virusThe causes or sources of emotional infection are numerous. They may stem from:• Organizational structure and policies, • Work task factors, • Organization climate • Managerial expectations • Work overload or underload • Ethical dilemmas and dissonance • Job position and level of experience • Competition or disputes among employees and colleagues Some employees tend to have a natural predisposition towards catching the emotional virus. These are the people we call "stress-prone individuals". These are the people who do not have inner resources or tools for effective self-management. They become psychologically worn out. Invariably dissipated, they are unable to regain the lost emotional power, and the people around them soon become affected or infected. The "stress-prone individual" is a person who is hard-driving and demanding, both of self and others. He or she is ambitious, particularly in the material sense, highly competitive, works at a number of different tasks at the same time and constantly looks ahead, works under pressure of time and always seems rushed. He or she is likely to be antagonistic, critical, unreceptive, intolerant, undemonstrative, rigid, less interested in family than work, and more likely to blame others or external circumstances when things go wrong. How to spot symptoms of emotional infectionThe following is a checklist for leaders to use to discover whether their colleagues or staff may have a predisposition towards catching emotional infection.Does the person seem to display these traits or behaviours? • Always seems to act overloaded or rushed • Overly competitive, or very hard driving • Tries to do more than one thing at a time • Over reacting • Critical and judgmental attitude • Rigidity/by the book • Inability to work well with others • Poor time management • Creates tension in others • Poor communication • Unable to complete tasks • Intolerant or lacks respect for others • Crisis oriented • Too controlling In general, if the person has been rated with a lot of the above behaviours, he or she has a predisposition towards catching an emotional infection. They may be a candidate for occupational stress. Without tools for effective self-management, these individuals will burn out emotionally and physically and will not be able to recover lost energy, and the people around them soon become affected/infected. Like any infection, it is highly contagious and can spread quickly if the organizational immune system is weak. How can Emotional Infection be minimised by Leaders?As a first priority, a leader must evaluate the condition of his or her organization to discover the extent to which emotional infection may be present. This may be accomplished through observation, work climate assessment, employee questionnaires and surveys or through a formal complaint system. Opinions, input, and suggestions from all employees should be regarded as highly valuable.The collective lack of emotional self-management within your team can create a toxic work climate. Work environments characterised by excess stress, contention and anxiety breed insecurity and non-productivity and inhibit creativity. It is vital that leaders monitor their employee's level of stress and evaluate their team level of coherence on a frequent basis. This can be done by monitoring specific individuals and/or by conducting work climate assessments. Work climate assessments (WCA) are very useful when you sense a high level of chaos and disharmony in your team. WCA can be used to evaluate workplace climate and employee perceptions of the workplace and their work groups. WCA can help measure the overall coherence in a work group. How to strengthen your employee's immune systemFor your employees to cope with emotional infection, they need increasing flexibility, resilience, adaptability, care and appreciation.Here are some of the qualities of your employees that should be cultivated to strengthen your employee's immune system to emotional infection: • Ability to detect emotional infection symptoms early • Emotional balance, not reactivity • Self-awareness, seeing the links between thoughts, feelings and reactions; knowing if thoughts or feelings are ruling a decision • Ability to understand the way others feel and are capable of making and maintaining mutually satisfying and responsible interpersonal relationships without becoming dependent on others • Balance between work and life • Resilient approach to crises • Ability to adapt to changing environments, whether technological, social or competitive • Appropriate, timely and sensitive communication • Ability to learn quickly and deeply • Optimistic, flexible, realistic and able to cope with stress without losing control. People need emotional self-management tools to boost their energy, vitality and creative insight while neutralising the effect of emotional infection. For these reasons, the integration of emotional self-management skills training programs has become an increased priority in many organizations. What can be done to minimise emotional infection?1. Identify the problem • Conduct regular walk-around inspections• Investigate incidents which might be related to stress • Review health, absenteeism, and other available records • Learn to recognize stressful situations and workers suffering from stress • Review changes in work practices and procedures for potential as stressors • Identify work practices that result in stress in your workplace • Survey employee perceptions of job conditions, stress, health and satisfaction • Document activities and events related to potential stressful situations 2. Raise general awareness about job stress prevention • Provide stress management training for your employees to train them to understand their stressors and teach specific techniques to enable them to reduce its effect • Provide employee assistance programs to improve the ability of workers to cope with difficult work situation • Publish news articles on job stress in employee newsletters • Develop stress-related materials for dissemination to employees and new staff during orientation sessions • Publish articles on stress management and stress prevention in employee newsletters 3. Refer stressed employees for help • Provide 1-on-1 stress management coaching to improve the ability of the individual employee to cope with difficult work situations • Provide 'Stress Management Counselling and Therapy' for employees who display stress symptoms
About the author: Chutisa Bowman is a qualified ergonomist, licensed HeartMath facilitator and behaviour change facilitator specialising in stress management and emotional mastery for personal and corporate counselling. Author of Conscious Leadership-the Key to Success, and Prosperity Consciousness: Leading Yourself to Money with Conscious Awareness. . . . This article may be distributed or reproduced as long as the copyright and an active URL is included.
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