One implication from the evidence on EI is that employers should consider it a factor in hiring employees, especially for jobs that demand a high degree of social interaction. In fact, more employers are starting to use EI measures to hire people. For example, a study of U.S. Air Force recruiters showed that top-performing recruiters exhibited high levels of EI. Using these findings, the Air Force revamped its selection criteria. A follow-up investigation found hires who had high EI scores became 2.6 times more successful than those with lower scores.

Moods and emotions have effects on decision making that managers should understand. Positive emotions and moods seem to help people make sound decisions. Positive emotions also enhance problem-solving skills, so positive people find better solutions.74

OB researchers continue to debate the role of negative emotions and moods in decision making. One recent study suggested that people who are saddened by events may make the same decisions as they would have, absent those events, while people who are angered by events might make stronger (though not necessarily better) choices.75 Another study found that participants made choices reflecting more original thinking when in a negative mood.76 Still other research indicated that individuals in a negative mood may take higher risks than when in a positive mood.77 Taken together, these and other studies suggest negative (and positive) emotions impact decision making, but that there are other variables which require further research.78

As we see throughout this text, one goal of leadership is to maximize employee productivity through creativity. Creativity is influenced by emotions and moods, but there are two schools of thought on the relationship. Much research suggests that people in good moods tend to be more creative than people in bad moods.79 People in good moods produce more ideas and more options, and others find their ideas original.80 It seems that people experiencing positive moods or emotions are more flexible and open in their thinking, which may explain why they’re more creative.81 All the activating moods, whether positive or negative, seem to lead to more creativity, whereas deactivating moods lead to less.82 For example, we discussed earlier that other factors such as fatigue may boost creativity. A study of 428 students found they performed best on a creative problem-solving task when they were fatigued, suggesting that tiredness may free the mind to consider novel solutions.83

Several studies have highlighted the importance of moods and emotions on motivation. Giving people performance feedback—whether real or fake—influences their mood, which then influences their motivation.84 For example, one study looked at the moods of insurance sales agents in Taiwan.85 Agents in a good mood were found to be more helpful toward their coworkers and also felt better about themselves. These factors in turn led to superior performance in the form of higher sales and better supervisor reports of performance.

Research indicates that putting people in a good mood makes good sense. Leaders who focus on inspirational goals generate greater optimism, cooperation, and enthusiasm in employees, leading to more positive social interactions with coworkers and customers.86 A study with Taiwanese military participants indicated that by sharing emotions, transformational leaders inspire positive emotions in their followers that lead to higher task performance.87

Leaders are perceived as more effective when they share positive emotions, and followers are more creative in a positive emotional environment. What about when leaders are sad? Research found that leader displays of sadness increased the analytic performance of followers, perhaps because followers attended more closely to tasks to help the leaders.88

Workers’ emotional states influence the level of customer service they give, which in turn influences levels of repeat business and customer satisfaction.89 This result is primarily due to emotional contagion—the “catching” of emotions from others.90 When someone experiences positive emotions and laughs and smiles at you, you tend to respond positively. Of course, the opposite is true as well.

Studies indicate a matching effect between employee and customer emotions. In the employee-to-customer direction, research finds that customers who catch the positive moods or emotions of employees shop longer. In the other direction, when an employee feels unfairly treated by a customer, it’s harder for the employee to display the positive emotions the organization expects.91 High-quality customer service places demands on employees because it often puts them in a state of emotional dissonance, which can be damaging to the employee and the organization. Managers can interrupt negative contagion by fostering positive moods.

Ever hear the advice “Never take your work home with you,” meaning you should forget about work once you go home? That’s easier said than done. The good news is that it appears a positive mood at work can spill over to your off-work hours, and a negative mood at work can be restored to a positive mood after a break. Several studies have shown people who had a good day at work tend to be in a better mood at home that evening, and vice versa. Other research has found that although people do emotionally take their work home with them, by the next day the effect is usually gone.92 The bad news is that the moods of the people in your household may affect yours. As you might expect, one study found if one member of a couple was in a negative mood during the workday, the negative mood spilled over to the spouse at night.93 The relationship between moods and job attitudes is reciprocal—the way our workday goes colors our moods, but our moods also affect the way we see our jobs.

Anyone who has spent much time in an organization realizes people can behave in ways that violate established norms and threaten the organization, its members, or both.94 These counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs; see Chapter 3) can be traced to negative emotions and can take many forms. People who feel negative emotions are more likely than others to engage in short-term deviant behavior at work, such as gossiping or surfing the Internet,95 though negative emotions can also lead to more serious forms of CWB.

For instance, envy is an emotion that occurs when you resent someone for having something you don’t have but strongly desire—such as a better work assignment, larger office, or higher salary. It can lead to malicious deviant behaviors. An envious employee could undermine other employees and take all the credit for things others accomplished. Angry people look for other people to blame for their bad mood, interpret other people’s behavior as hostile, and have trouble considering others’ points of view.96 It’s not hard to see how these thought processes can lead directly to verbal or physical aggression.

One study in Pakistan found that anger correlated with more aggressive CWBs such as abuse against others and production deviance, while sadness did not. Interestingly, neither anger nor sadness predicted workplace deviance, which suggests that managers need to take employee expressions of anger seriously; employees may stay with an organization and continue to act aggressively toward others.97 Once aggression starts, it’s likely that other people will become angry and aggressive, so the stage is set for a serious escalation of negative behavior. Managers therefore need to stay connected with their employees to gauge emotions and emotional intensity levels.

Research relating negative affectivity to increased injuries at work suggests employers might improve health and safety (and reduce costs) by ensuring workers aren’t engaged in potentially dangerous activities when they’re in a bad mood. Bad moods can contribute to injury at work in several ways.98 Individuals in negative moods tend to be more anxious, which can make them less able to cope effectively with hazards. A person who is always fearful will be more pessimistic about the effectiveness of safety precautions because she feels she’ll just get hurt anyway, or she might panic or freeze up when confronted with a threatening situation. Negative moods also make people more distractable, and distractions can obviously lead to careless behaviors.

Selecting positive team members can contribute towards a positive work environment because positive moods transmit from team member to team member. One study of 130 leaders and their followers found that leaders who are charismatic transfer their positive emotions to their followers through a contagion effect.99 It makes sense, then, to choose team members predisposed to positive moods.