Keeping Your 'Game Face' On May be Depleting Your Wellbeing

Maintaining a calm and pleasant demeanor with people at work can be hard work, and   then it can feel downright exhausting. For many of us, being able to maintain a level of control over who we interact with, and how or when, is helpful. But what if you are in a role where you are required to be nice to people all the time? How do you keep your energy levels up and your professionalism intact when people are difficult, or angry or rude?  Or even when others are just slow, and you feel as though they are wasting precious time in your busy day.

This drain on energy levels from dealing with people is known as “emotional labour”. Author Susan David describes it as the “effort it takes to keep your professional game face on when what you’re doing is not concordant with how you feel”.

This mismatch between how we might feel (frustrated, enraged, exhausted) and the demeanor we need to show, (calm, interested, patient) can be exacerbated for people in roles where they need to show emotions or behavior that are in line with organisational or professional codes of conduct. For example, always smile when greeting a customer. Always say thank you, even after a customer has been outright rude to you.  This mis-match creates emotional dissonance.

As well as creating emotional dissonance and exhaustion, several decades of research has clearly shown that emotional labour also impacts on our health and performance.  Highlighted adverse health outcomes include insomnia, loss of memory, depersonalisation, hypertension, heart disease, and burnout.

From the performance angle, maintaining your ‘game face’ can create an additional attention demand that detracts from your ability to do a task well.  When our cognitive resource is drained by emotional energy it is more likely we will make mistakes, take longer to complete tasks, produce reduced quality outputs or be more rigid in how we undertake activities.

In summary, emotional labour produces emotional exhaustion that results in diminished well-being and poorer performance. Neither is good for people or organisations!

The Umbrella team provide expert psychological help for individuals and teams wanting to reduce the negative impact of emotional labour, and consult with people leaders to support the development of a positive team culture that involves emotional safety.  The Umbrella strengthening resilience programme also teaches people effective skills for managing the emotional impact of demanding roles, so for more information on workplace wellness, employee wellbeing and wellness at work please go to http://umbrella.org.nz .