Managing Emotions at Work: How Coaching Affects Retail Support Workers’ Performance and Motivation

• Main Authors: Elaine Cox, Claire Patrick
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Brookes University 2012-08-01
• Series: International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring
• Subjects: coaching; emotional labour; emotion work; emotional contagion; group-coaching; retail support workers
• Online Access: https://radar.brookes.ac.uk/radar/file/c045eaf3-3e43-4d1e-bf5a-fd3452e3b1b9/1/vol10issue2-paper-03.pdf

Working with people invariably involves managing emotions. This qualitative study examines a coaching intervention designed to help a group of retail support workers in one mobile communications organisation in the UK to articulate and manage their emotions more effectively in order to improve workplace relations and motivation. The paper discusses the concepts of emotion work, emotional contagion and emotion regulation in order to frame an action research study of a coaching intervention. Findings from the study suggest that following the intervention employees dealt with emotional situations in a calmer more measured way and that this impacted both individual motivation and working performance in the organisation.