The Emotional Virus. Has your staff caught it yet?

Business success and sustained growth has a lot to do with an organization's emotional and organizational intelligence.

"There is a virus affecting the majority of businesses and organizations today. Ignoring it could lead to devastating consequences, affecting the very survival of the organization," according to Bruce Cryer, President of HeartMath LLC and co-author of From Chaos to Coherence; The Power to Change Performance. Cryer says the virus is based on a lack of emotional balance in people today, aggravated by mounting stress. He goes on to say, "Enlightened managers are starting to wake up to the fact that employee loyalty and productivity really do stem from the employees' sense of being cared for, recognized and valued by their managers and the company. This leads to bottom-line benefit."




What is an "emotional virus"?

In From Chaos to Coherence, they describe the emotional virus as "the net effect of emotional mismanagement within an organization", and say this kind of virus is highly infectious." People think it is okay to complain, whine, and sarcastically laugh -about the imbalanced coworker, the stressed out boss who ignores voicemail or email. Each casual complaint and unconscious judgment is like coughing in the coworker's face, thus spreading the germs of negative emotions and creating a caustic, unproductive environment." An emotional virus thrives on emotional imbalance, insensitivity, stress and overreaction in the organization. "It is the antithesis of organizational coherence," according to Cryer and his co-author Doc Childre.

Emotional EQ isn't a new concept. Dan Goleman, author of "Working with Emotional Intelligence," suggests that emotional skill development is perhaps the key to being successful. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Goleman says, "Emotional intelligence doesn't just mean being nice... [it's] a different way of being smart." What Childre and Cryer offer takes Emotional EQ into a practical dimension - through simple tools and techniques designed for today's high speed work environment. In 1991 Doc Childre founded the Institute of HeartMath (IHM,) a globally respected non profit research organization. IHM's extensive research resulted in numerous published studies in journals like The American Journal of Cardiology, Stress Medicine and Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science. From this research emerged a new "inner" technology - Inner Quality Management® (IQM.) This provocative management model has earned a unique position in the training and consulting field - utilizing disciplines of science, health, psychology, and business.




How do US workers feel about the workplace environment?

According to a recent survey conducted by Northwestern National Life, 4 out of every 10 US workers described their job as "very or extremely stressful." Experts at the federal government's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) say warning signs of a stressful environment include workloads that ignore workers skills and leave them with little sense of control, the lack of participation by workers in decision making, too much responsibility and too many hats to wear.

The December 1998 issue of Psychosomatic Medicine contains a recent study in which researchers recruited close to three hundred New York City men who worked in a variety of skilled and unskilled jobs. They wore a device that recorded their blood pressure at 15-minute intervals over a 24-hour period. The measurements were repeated in the men three years later. At the initial evaluation and three years later, men who said they had high-strain jobs had significantly higher blood pressure readings both at work and at home.




Emotional Intelligence at work

In a recent client case study, HeartMath (Stress Medicine, Vol 13, 193-201 1997) lead Motorola study participants through the Inner Quality Management program. The study involved 3 groups; managers, engineers, and factory workers. Results showed that contentment, job satisfaction and communication significantly increased after the training, while tension, anxiety, nervousness and physical stress symptoms significantly decreased. Before the IQM program 25% of the participants had high blood pressure levels. After only six months of using HeartMath's IQM techniques they all had normal blood pressure levels, and no conventional medical interventions had been used.

Other HeartMath organizational case studies demonstrate similar benefits. Carol Mortimer, Director of Health Care with Hewlett Packard in the UK, told the Sunday Times that Inner Quality management made an amazing difference to the team morale. Before the program, 46% said they often felt exhausted. After the training, this figure fell to 9%. A California state agency pilot program involving 161 staff revealed that after the HeartMath training there was a 75% decrease in the number of people reporting feelings of depression often or most of the time.




Detecting the virus

The Institute of HeartMath has developed several assessment tools for measuring an organization's emotional intelligence and overall coherence. Two of their frequently used instruments include the Personal and Organizational Quality Assessment (POQA) and the Organizational Coherence Survey. The POQA survey is a validated and normed assessment tool designed to provide a broad overview of the individual's emotional stressors and social attitudes, vitality and physical symptoms of stress as well as measures of workplace effectiveness. It consist of an 80-question survey that measures 8 personal constructs, 6 job-related constructs, and 5 individual physical stress symptom items. The survey also measures the extent of participants' use of the HeartMath tools and the value they place on them.

The Organizational Coherence Survey tool measures the overall coherence in an organization. It provides insights into the extent to which an organization is coherent and acts as an early detection mechanism to help identify how appropriate actions may be taken.




Advancing inner-technology

As the 21st century gets in high gear, many Americans say life feels as though it has spun out of control. Many feel pulled in a hundred different directions-from added demands and added hours at work, to feeling torn that they can't spend more time with their families, to a multitude of choices, a barrage of information and relentless electronic and wireless interruptions that are supposed to make life more convenient. Everyone has a threshold. If the majority of the American working population is hitting theirs, then the "emotional virus" has plenty to feed on. HeartMath contends that if we're increasing the capabilities of technology to do more in less time, then we also need to increase our internal ability with an inner-technology that can better prepare an organization and its people with tools for increasing emotional intelligence.

For Additional Information, Please Contact:
John H. Bishop
Solution Provider
Certified HeartMath Coach
Phone: 708-974-9490
Email: JohnBishop@EmotionalMastery.com

HeartMath®, Freeze-Framer® and Inner Quality Management®
are registered trademarks of The Institute of HeartMath.


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