JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS EDUCATION - Naspaa

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Emotional Labor: Why and How to Teach ItIf a job requires its holders to project a particular feeling (e.g., politeness ortoughness) or to elicit a feeling in someone else (e.g., trust or fear), then emotionwork can do the job. The service person must deliberately involve his or herfeelings in the situation. He or she may not particularly feel like being cordial andbecoming a “one-minute” friend to the next customer or client who approaches,but that is indeed what frontline work entails (Wharton, 1993, p.208).Connectivity and relationship-building are key leadership traits. So, too,are the skills of developing rapport and emotional engagement. The bestadministrators are people who are trustworthy, empathic, and connected —those who make us feel appreciated, inspired, and energized. Feeling connectedrefers to the concrete emotional links between leader, worker, and citizen. Onepowerful method for fostering such links is to build the attuned relationshipbetween them.A study of “what middle managers in local government actually do”(Morgan, Bacon, Bunch, Cameron, & Deis, 1996) reinforces this point andillustrates the centrality of emotional labor skills on the job. Their findingsemphasize this observation by Stivers (2003):Communication links between top executives and linepersonnel, interpreting and synthesizing the views ofdisparate constituencies, developing consensus, facilitatingorganizational and jurisdictional collaboration, stimulatingintraorganizational cooperation, and in general creating asense of community (p. 225).Public servants who manage these relationship structures, and who are sensitiveand skilled at the relational side of face-to-face public service, help to humanizegovernment. If we are to emphasize and honor the people in public service —service providers and recipients alike — we must pay attention to how publicservants work “feelingly” in the citizen-state encounter. Preparing our graduatesto excel as a skilled partner in these exchanges is crucial.While the words “emotive skills” and “emotional labor” are not found inthe “NASPAA 2009 Standards & Self-Study Report Instructions” draft, thevocabulary of this language is clearly evident in the cross-cutting skills usedas examples in the proposed set of “Universal Required Competencies.” Theimportance of relationship (and negotiation) skills was identified by a 2009Standards discussion group as one of eight competencies that should be commonacross all programs. And the value of creating a quality learning environmentimplies the recognition of human processes. According to the “ProvisionalGuiding Principles” of the proposed 2009 standards, “the quality of educationis determined in part by the way that students are educated and treated withinthe context of their program...includ[ing] quality advising, [and] the quality ofJournal of Public Affairs Education 133
Emotional Labor: Why and How to Teach Itteaching,” as well as what is learned (Raffel, Maser, & McFarland, 2007, p.1).Similarly, a focus on “interpersonal skills, and cultural competencies” (p.3)are aligned with the importance of emotive skills. “Making a difference” and“changing the world” (p.2) are heady goals, and will require our graduates to befluent in the art as well as the science of public administration. Now we move towhere the devil resides — in the details. How can this new subject matter fit intothe curriculum without having to add a course to the core?How to Teach Content and StyleBy now you should be asking: How do you teach and measure enthusiasm,empathy, non-verbal skills, caring, responsiveness, and so forth? Where does itfit into the curriculum? Emotion work fits comfortably into courses that focuson interpersonal relations, as well as overview courses that describe the nature ofpublic service work. These include introductory courses such as “The Professionof Public Service,” “Introduction to Public Administration,” “Leadership inPublic Service,” and similar subjects. Courses that focus on organizationaldynamics include “Organization Development,” “Administrative Theory,”“Human Resource Management,” “Managing People,” “Public Management,”and so forth.Talking the TalkIn terms of content, lectures should delineate the nature of emotion work ascontrasted with cognitive work; the relationship of and the difference betweenemotional intelligence and emotional labor; the skill requirements of emotionwork as compared to knowledge work; the antecedents to and consequences ofits performance — including the feeling of making a difference through one’swork, and affecting another person’s life, as well as the risk of burnout. Suggestedreadings and resource material are listed in the Appendix. Following is a sketchof how four main points can be covered.Point 1: Explain emotional labor — including the relationship of and thecontrast between emotional intelligence and the performance of emotion work.While emotional intelligence refers to a person’s innate ability to be aware ofpersonal emotions and to sense the emotive state of another person, emotionallabor involves managing the emotional state of the self, as well as that ofthe other person. Artful affect is a useful term to explain the performance ofemotional labor. This term captures the artful sensing of another’s emotionalstate, while crafting one’s own affective expressions so as to elicit a desiredresponse. Practicing artful affect is both proactive and reactive. Proactive meansthe worker is required to anticipate the emotional state of the other person, andact to mitigate it. Reactive means the worker is required to respond to whateveremotional state the other person is in at the start of the interaction.134 Journal of Public Affairs Education
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