The topic of the impact of emotion on employees in the workplace and customers is an important one. Essentially, people are inherently affected by their emotions, and it is impossible to contain them completely. As a result, particularly strong emotions can impact the way people make decisions and act in the workplace. The role of organizational leaders in such cases is to assist their workers in effectively managing their emotions and fostering more positive well-being in them, contributing to their performance (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2014). The current paper presents a comprehensive plan targeted at the promotion of the emotion of marketing employees with the aim of increasing their self-confidence and overall skills in the context of a Chinese educational company.
Problem Identification
As mentioned above, the factor of emotions constitutes a significant aspect of human psychology which translates into their decisions and actions and ultimately affects their professional performance. The negative emotions have a powerful effect on the mental state of people and can undermine their ability to think rationally and engage in sensible actions. In the workplace, all employees are expected to demonstrate high performance, but when affected by negative emotions, they may fail to act reasonably and choose the best options available to them. Moreover, emotions such as low self-confidence and fear of making a mistake may cause people to stop participating in group work at all. Subsequently, employees may start to be reserved and anxious about their work which will eventually hinder their ability to contribute to the company. The lack of engagement on the part of employees harms businesses, therefore, organizational leaders need to find ways to address such an issue.
There is substantial research on the topic of emotions and their role in human behavior. According to Hess (2014), cognition and emotion are inherently integrated, thus, emotions affect both deliberate and reflexive thinking of people. Such information indicates that it is impossible to remove emotions from the thinking process, and therefore the goal must be to learn to control them. As mentioned above, the goal of all leaders of any organization is to minimize the negative emotions and promote the positive ones among employees. Recent studies demonstrate that positive emotions can cause employees to exhibit better performance, higher motivation, reduce conflict, and see more alternative decision options (Diener et al., 2020). The aforementioned aspects are particularly important for people working in marketing teams since they are required to be creative and positive emotions can help them in this task.
Situation Analysis
As mentioned above, the current paper seeks to devise a plan promoting the emotion of marketing employees in order to increase their self-confidence and emotional skills. The organization in question is an educational company located in China that works closely with numerous students and provides high-quality services and training to them. Specifically, since the company is committed to international cooperation programs for student recruitment, the marketing team is engaged in the recruitment work. Such a profession requires the team to interact with a variety of people on a daily basis, and they need to have a positive mindset to do it (Moqbel et al., 2017). Moreover, as already noted, the marketing team needs to engage in creative work and generate ideas that could promote the brand further. At the same time, the organization in question occasionally experiences a certain problem. Specifically, the members of the marketing team may experience negative emotions which hinder their performance and ability to be productive.
One of the key examples of negative emotions present in the workplace is the anxiety of employees to handle a challenging task. The marketing team is always given difficult tasks, and therefore some people may feel overwhelmed. The fear of addressing the challenge eventually causes employees to underperform in terms of creativity. Moreover, the anxiety can undermine employees’ ability to comprehend the tasks allocated to them and use their good judgment. According to Hess (2014), people often fear risks related to challenging work situations and may try to avoid them. Essentially, such a problem affects the organization in question and has a negative effect on the employees’ ability to perform their tasks.
Alternatives
The leader’s goal in an organization where employees are impacted by anxiety and low confidence must be to provide their workers with a supportive environment that can contribute to the creation of a creative spirit. In order to achieve the desired result and improve the well-being of employees, as well as increase their sense of self-confidence, leaders need to have a clear vision of the future workplace situation. In other words, leaders have to understand what alternatives exist to the current situation in the workplace and what measures need to be taken in order to achieve a more positive result.
There can be two general alternatives to the situation in the educational organization presented above. The first one is the creation of an environment where all employees experience emotions only, which contributes to their high level of creativity and proper performance. Essentially, in such a situation, employees will not be subject to any negative emotions, including anxiety and fear of failure. Although such a situation is preferable, it is unlikely to be achieved due to the fact that it is impossible to completely remove negative emotions (Peñalver et al., 2019). At the same time, the second alternative can be a situation where people are committed to continuous learning and are provided a clear plan on how to manage their emotions. Basically, in this case, of the more realistic alternative situation, the efforts of the organization and its leader must be focused on providing employees with information and training on how to effectively manage their emotions. Such measures can ultimately improve the ability of employees to address their negative emotions, which will positively affect their professional activities and decisions.
Action Plan with Time Frames
The action plan chosen for the educational organization involves designing a learning strategy that will be implemented and offered to all marketing employees. The strategy will include different activities, including training courses and projects, new task projects, network learning, observations of other employees, and learning from the work experience of other staff through research and reflection. In order to ensure that the activities comply with the goals of the training intervention, it is important to determine the exact competencies that employees will need to gain after completing the plan. Due to the fact that the core aim of the action plan is to enhance the ability of the marketing employees to handle emotions, it is reasonable to use the concept of emotional intelligence when identifying the competencies.
Specifically, the most appropriate framework for the current action plan is the four-branch model of Emotional Intelligence. The first branch concerns the ability to perceive emotions which involves recognizing and appraising verbal and nonverbal information received as a result of interactions with other people (Prentice, 2019). Essentially, after completing the action plan tasks, employees will need to be able to effectively analyze the emotions of their colleagues and clients. The second branch of the model is the use of emotions, so employees must possess the ability to access and produce emotions which facilitate cognitive processes, for example, creativity and problem-solving. The third branch is the understanding of emotions which implies that employees will need to cognitively process and gain knowledge of their feelings and those of others. Finally, the fourth branch is the management of emotions which means that employees will need to gain the skill to regulate their own and others’ emotions.
The first stage of the action plan will involve conducting special training courses where all marketing employees will need to participate. The course will last for two weeks and will imply daily 3-hour sessions. Thus, every day, participants will be provided with information on how to perceive, generate, understand, and manage their emotions in the workplace. For instance, one of the key activities during the training course will involve asking participants to list their strengths and weaknesses concerning emotional management. Based on the results of the assessment, the participants will be given individual exercises. For example, people suffering from low self-confidence will be provided with training on how to improve their self-worth by recognizing their achievements and strengthening their ability to overcome challenges successfully. In the case of people suffering from anxiety in the workplace, exercises focusing on enhancing mindfulness and meditation will be offered. At the same time, there will be universal training activities such as compassion exercises. At the end of the course, participants will be asked to execute a training project testing their ability to handle stressful situations.
The second part of the action plan will involve network learning, where participants will be asked to implement the knowledge which they learned during the course. Network learning will imply simulating online communication sessions between employees and clients. Essentially, tutors and instructors will act as clients who will test employees by creating various challenging situations for them. For example, the participants will need to communicate with an angry customer and attempt to manage the emotions of their partner by regulating them. The network training is important because, in the company, the marketing staff often talks to clients over the Internet. The network learning is conducted in order to ensure that employees are prepared to handle the negative emotions of others and that they do not affect their mental state. Building resilience is the key goal of the network learning practice. The second stage of the action plan will last for a week.
The action plan will be offered only to the new employees and those who experience certain emotional issues. As a result, during the third stage of the plan, the participants will be asked to engage in observations of their colleagues who demonstrate effective and successful handling of emotions. The company has many high-level professionals who are ready to share their competencies and experience with the newcomers and other colleagues who may need their expertise. Thus, the company will save money since it will not have to hire external instructors to provide guidance. Additionally, the observation of colleagues also helps action plan participants to see the actual tasks which they will need to do in the future. Basically, the third stage of the action plan is, to some extent, the most relevant and beneficial one since it lets participants observe the environment in which they will work. The observation stage will last a week, and it will also allow participants to ask the colleagues whom they will watch questions that interest them.
The fourth stage, lasting two days, will require the participants to demonstrate all of the knowledge and skills which they have learned over the course of the previous stages. Specifically, the participants will be given their personalized task projects, which will primarily target certain possible situations. For example, the participants will be asked to create a project which does not particularly coincide with their particular professional responsibilities. In this case, the participants will need to demonstrate their ability to cope with new challenging situations to overcome anxiety. For instance, a marketing analyst can be asked to perform a task of a marketing strategist. The successful execution of the task will indicate that a participant has improved their self-confidence and the intervention was actually beneficial for them. At the same time, the new project stage also can demonstrate the skills that the participants have gained. Essentially, performing a new project is a measure that examines how the participants progressed in terms of emotion management.
Finally, the fifth stage of the action plan will focus on the exchange of information among the participants. In other words, the participants will engage in learning from the work experience of other staff members who through research and reflection. Specifically, the participant will be asked to share their notes about their progress throughout the previous fourth stages. For instance, the participants can discuss the main challenges they encountered during the studies and which solutions they found the most effective. Additionally, the participants can recommend the ways in which the action plan can be corrected to be even more beneficial in the future. The fifth stage is also important for understanding which problems the participants failed to address. Essentially, during the final stage, participants and instructors will need to reflect on their work and determine in which areas they still need to progress. The final stage will take one day, and it will be the end of the action plan.
Conclusion
A plan for the promotion of marketing employees’ emotional intelligence is an effective tool for helping workers to address their issues arising in the workplace. Emotions have a considerable effect on the ability of people to deliver on their professional responsibilities and tasks. Negative emotions can undermine employees’ motivation and performance and thus can harm organizational success and stability. In the case of the organization in question, some members of the marketing team of an educational company have several problems in terms of their emotion management. Specifically, employees occasionally experience low self-confidence and anxiety. The action plan involving five stages is targeted at improving the ability of the employees to perceive, generate, understand, and manage their own emotions and those of other people. The action plan can be beneficial to new employees and those who experience certain problems when dealing with emotions in the workplace.
References
Brynjolfsson, E., & McAfee, A. (2014). The second machine age: Work, progress, and prosperity in a time of brilliant technologies. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Diener, E., Thapa, S., &, Tay, L. (2020). Positive emotions at work. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 7, 451–477.
Hess, E. D. (2014). Learn or die: Using science to build a leading-edge learning organization. New York: Columbia University Press.
Moqbel, M., & Nah, F. F. (2017). Enterprise social media use and impact on performance: The role of workplace integration and positive emotions. AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, 9(4), 261–280.
Peñalver, J., Salanova, M., Martínez, I., &, Schaufeli, W. (2019). Happy-productive groups: How positive affect links to performance through social resources. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 14(3), 377–392.
Prentice, C. (2019). Emotional intelligence and marketing. Singapore: World Scientific.