This chapter discusses the role that emotions and moods play in the workplace. In early OB literature, emotions and moods were largely ignored. It was assumed that employees left their feelings at home when they came to work. However, in the mid-1980's and the 1990s, organizational researchers began examining the effects of emotions and moods. The study of emotions and moods has revolutionized thinking about OB. In fact, by 2003, scholars referred to this research as the affective revolution in OB. Nowadays, it is argued that emotions and mood play an important role in the workplace. The remainder of this chapter focuses on how this is the case.

How are emotions and mood related?

Affect is defined as the range of feelings that employees experience at work. Affect consists of both emotions and mood. You can visualize this as a triangle, with affect on top and emotions and mood at the bottom. An arrow is drawn from affect to emotions and from affect to mood. State affect refers to feelings that are experienced in the short term. They fluctuate over time. In contrast, trait affect refers to stable individual differences. Emotions are triggered by specific events. They are short, but intense enough to disrupt a person's thinking. Emotions last only seconds or minutes. Some emotions are internal to a person, such as pride or love, whereas other emotions emerge in relationship with others, such as shame and guilt. Moods, on the other hand, are general feeling states that are not connected to a specific event. In addition, they are not intense enough to disrupt regular thought patterns or work. Emotions are more fleeting than moods. A felt emotion, for instance anger at your boss, may pass. Emotions are directed at another person or situation. Obviously, emotions and moods are related. For instance, being in a good mood can result in the experience of feeling happy (an emotion). 

What are the characteristics of the Affective Events Theory?

The Affective Events Theory (AET) provides a useful framework for the material that is covered in this chapter. The work environment, events, personality, and moods combine to evoke emotional responses, which can be both positive and negative. The AET can be visualized as follows:

A review of AET resulted in the following statements of what we know about affective events at work:

• Satisfaction is not an emotion.
• Events cause emotions.
• Affect-driven behaviors are different from judgment-driven behaviors.
• Affective experiences change over time.
• Affect is structured as emotions and moods. 

Positive state affect (PA) refers to the extent to which a person feels enthusiastic, active, and alert. A person with high PA is in a state of high energy, full concentration, and pleasurable engagement. Negative state affect (NA), on the other hand, refers to a general dimension of subjective distress and unpleasant engagement that subsumes a variety of aversive mood states, for instance anger, contempt, disgust, guilt, fear, and nervousness. 

A key feature in AET is the work environment. Research has shown that the overall emotional climate of the work group matters. This is also known as the affective climate. To put it differently, the affective climate refers to the shared affective experience of a work group of the team. They can be either positive or negative. A positive affective climate includes participation, warmth, social rewards and cooperation. A positive affective climate in the work group enhances the effects of good leader-member relationships. Emotions can both broaden experiences of employees and allow them to build better functioning in organizations. This is also known as broaden-and-build model. Positive emotions, for instance pride in one's work, can transform organizations and the people in the organization. This is because positive emotions open people's minds, and they begin to build personal and social resources, which in turn enable them to work more effectively. The broadening and building of emotions is also related to creativity at work. 

Gratitude is defined as a generalized tendency to recognize and respond with grateful emotion to the roles of other people's benevolence in the positive experiences and outcomes that one obtains. Gratitude has both been studies as a trait (that is; some people are more grateful than others) and a state (that is related to being in a particular work situation).

How does emotional labor influence organizational success?

Emotional labor refers to the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display. To put it differently, it is the effort required to effectively manage emotions to be successful on the job. When someone has to act differently than they actually feel, it creates emotional dissonance. Emotional dissonance is the result of the difference between the organizationally expected emotions and the 'real' emotions of the worker. To put it differently: 'Fake it till you make it'. 

• Deep acting occurs when a desired emotional expression is achieved by changing one's underlying felt emotion. Employees start to actually feel the emotions they are acting out. 
• Surface acting refers to producing a desired outward emotional expression without modifying one's true underlying emotions.

When members of a team engage in deep acting, this spreads to their team members. Hence, not every person in a team has to deep act. There is an emotional division of labor in the team. Emotional division is defined as any implicit or explicit division of roles in which individuals vary in their requirements to use emotional abilities. Emotional labor causes stress. However, when properly managed, it increases performance. To engage in emotional labor, a worker has to be sensitive to their own emotions and those of others. 

Can emotional intelligence be learned?

Emotional intelligence (EI) consists of four aspects:

1. The ability to perceive emotion in self and others.
2. The ability to use emotion to facilitate cognitive activities like thinking and problem-solving.
3. The ability to understand emotional information.
4. The ability to manage emotion in self and others.

Can EI be learned? Many scholars believe it can. First, people need to develop emotional literacy and be able to label their own emotions. Second, they need to learn how to manage or regulate their emotions. For instance, FedEx Express implemented a training program for new managers following these three steps: know yourself, choose yourself, give yourself. Results of this training program indicated an 8% to 11% increase in EI competencies. 

The following statements summarize what we can safely conclude about EI:

• EI is different from, but positively connected to, other intelligences (such as IQ).
• EI is an individual difference. Some people are more endowed than others.
• EI develops over one's life span. It can be enhanced through training.
• EI involves, at least partially, individual's abilities to effectively identify and perceive emotion, as well as possession of the skills to understand and manage those emotions successfully. 

Emotion regulation refers to the processes by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions. For example, by engaging in affect spin, employees can reduce feeling of burnout. Affect spin is the ability to read other people's emotions and change their reaction to fit the person's expressed emotions. Another emotion regulation strategy is affect relabeling; verbally labeling the initial reaction of something negative and then relabeling it to be less intense. 

In addition, positive emotions can be contagious; a person's positive outlook at work affects emotional reactions of that person's colleagues. Emotional contagion is defined as the negative mood of one employee spreading in the group. Both positive and negative emotions (and moods) are contagious.

What are the implications for leaders?

We probably all have had the experience of asking someone what is wrong and receiving the answer: 'Nothing, I am fine'. But from the tone of voice and body language, you know that person is upset about something. The bottom line here, according to psychologist Leon F. Steltzer, is that people do not trust others to respond in caring, supportive ways. One way to improve this is through training mindfulness. Mindfulness is a state of open attention on what is happening in the present without thinking about the past or worry about the future. Being mindful is significantly related to well-being. The following three steps help a leader to begin the coaching session by the following steps:

1. Based on your preparation, start with an empty mind.
2. Be nonreactive.
3. Practice permissive attention. 

With a bit of practice, leaders should be able to create an affective coaching environment where they attend with a focus on their followers' emotions. Mindful coaching is about preparation and execution of only a few steps in each phase. Like any skill, with practice, a leader can become more mindful and in turn use that skill to understand the entire range of emotions and moods expressed by his or her employees.

To conclude, emotions are a relatively new area of organizational behavior, but an affective revolution has taken place in the field, which has led to new implications for effective leadership.