business-decisionIn this post, César González Cantón, professor of the Official University Master's Degree in Corporate Responsibility at Bureau Veritas Centro Universitario, talks to us about business decisions. Despite the popularization of the concept of "emotional intelligence" by Daniel Goleman, emotions are still something that is not well understood in business today. This is a growing concern for both business management theorists and for entrepreneurs and managers.Because the quantity and quality of studies that demonstrate that:
Emotions are a key component of motivation , to the point where it can be argued that nothing is sufficiently attractive unless it comes with an emotional wrapper. For example, both negative and positive bank data emotions make commitments stronger. Self-referential emotions (such as pride, shame and guilt) are also crucial for proactive behavior.
Decision-making cannot be understood without feelings. A higher degree of emotional intelligence corresponds to a greater power to solve problems through intuitive means, as well as greater cognitive flexibility, the ability to gather information and integrate it in new ways. On the contrary, negative emotions are associated with more analytical and linear thinking styles and a propensity for excessive risk when making decisions.
Emotions are also at the root of ethical judgments and decisions. Thus, some people think that the cold and rational decision-making model taught in business schools is the reason why conventional management theories are intrinsically amoral and why we have so much difficulty understanding that a company must create not only economic value, but also social and environmental value.
Finally, marketing studies have shown that consumers make more rational decisions , maximize their utility more, and are more efficient when they follow their feelings than when they get lost in the tangle of reflection .
It seems, therefore, that if we could channel emotions towards the organisation's objectives, we would have gained a great ally in the company's performance. For this reason, in recent years we have gone from considering emotions as uncomfortable elements that must be avoided and blocked (a management guru said "it would be better to die than to cry") to fostering them.
Of course, they must be encouraged in a controlled environment . This is how what Rothschild called "emotional elaboration" was born: working on one's own emotions to always and only show those that serve to better perform our work.
Nurses, hostesses, customer-facing staff… they are all required to train daily to always offer the best smile, to know how to calm the angry customer and cheer up the apathetic one. It is the Disneyization of the service sector.
We can imagine that this has dire consequences for employees, from stress to deterioration of their own personality. Many employees testify that, after a long time struggling to repress certain emotions and allow others to surface, they have the uncomfortable feeling of living a life that is not theirs.
The use of therapy is becoming habitual. Of course, for the organization there are forbidden emotions (anger, rage, sadness, fear) and others that are desirable (joy, enthusiasm, passion). However, this emotional Manichaeism has no solid basis. Is getting angry always bad? Or does it depend on how, when and, above all, why?
There are no positive or negative emotions . They are all positive if they respond to an adequate evaluation of the environment, and negative if that evaluation is wrong (perhaps due to psychological biases or personal traumas).
If organizations really want more commitment and performance from their employees, they must provide healthy environments, free of instrumentalization, suspicions and taboos about emotions , where emotional life can develop fully .