Delegates at the GBTA Convention in Los Angeles were urged to regard emotional intelligence as a “skill-set” that can be improved, and used to influence other peoples’ behaviour and actions.
The seminar was presented by Sigal Barsade, professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s world-renowned Wharton business school.
Barsade told the audience that in evolutionary terms, emotions were essentially a pre-language form of communication – which means awareness of both oneself and emotional responses from others that have a big impact on working relationships and interactions with colleagues, employees and clients. “Emotions are information, not just noise – so pay attention to them,” she said.
The professor told travel buyers and suppliers that 30 years of research showed emotions are a key influence on behaviour, performance and absenteeism at work. She cited one study of call centre employees, who were all given brief ‘mood questionnaires’ on arrival at work. Their call interactions were tracked and coded and a range of other factors were included in the data. “The number one predictor of work performance was the employee’s mood on arrival,” said Barsade.
She warned delegates to avoid the risks of ‘Amygdala hijacking’, by using emotional regulation.
This is a stimulus of a part of the brain that provokes an instant “fight or flight” response, usually caused by fear or rage – milliseconds before the rational part of the brain can evaluate the situation.
She said awareness of your emotional responses enables you to pause for just a couple of seconds, potentially avoiding actions with disastrous consequences. Barsade illustrated Amygdala hijacking with a video of Zinedine Zidane head-butting an Italian player in the final minutes of the final game of his career of the 2006 Fifa World Cup Final. Zidane’s instant response to an insult, and France’s subsequent loss of the penalty shoot-out made headlines around the world. “As he is sent off, you can see in his face that he’s devastated by what’s just happened. You feel amazing from the adrenalin surge, then immediately afterwards you realize the consequences of your actions.”
A moment’s emotional regulation would have made Zidane aware that the Italian defender was deliberately provoking him, and he could have responded differently.
Emotional contagion enables people to regulate and affect others’ emotions, with wide reaching potential in managerial, client and sales scenarios, GBTA delegates heard. Medical research shows this in a “mirror neuron system” – the stimulated areas of a person’s brain mirroring that of someone they are interacting with.
Awareness of this combined with regulating one’s own emotions mean you can influence behaviours and outcomes in a range of interactions such as business and staff meetings, said Barsade. This was born out with laboratory-condition studies where research academics attended corporate salary negotiation meetings, their varied projected moods having significant impact on the outcomes.
“If you ignore the emotional information, you are playing with one hand tied behind your back,” she said.
Earlier this week Delta CEO Richard Anderson warned the GBTA conference about the dangers of unfair competition from Middle East carriers. Saying these airlines have “huge subsidiaries” and “structural advantages”.