Benefits of positive work relationships

Work relationships play a key role in promoting employee flourishing as researchers from the USA revealed in a series of qualitative and quantitative studies. The authors studied positive work relationships, which serve a broad range of functions: task assistance (e.g. receiving help with a certain task), career advancement (e.g. being promoted), emotional support, personal growth, friendship, and the opportunity to give to others. Results revealed unique associations between different relationship functions and their outcomes: Task assistance was most strongly associated with meaningful work, personal growth was most strongly associated with life satisfaction, giving to others with meaningful work, and friendship with positive emotions at work.

Colbert, A., Bono, J., & Purvanova, R. (2015). Flourishing via workplace relationships: Moving beyond instrumental support. Academy of Management Journal, 59(4), 1199-1223.

Thinking about something happy at work is better than suppressing anger

The management of emotions as part of one’s work role (i.e., emotional labour) is especially important in jobs that require frequent customer/client contact. There are two main strategies to manage emotions: Suppressing negative emotions and pretending good mood (surface acting) and trying to actually create positive feelings (deep acting). Surface acting is related with lower well-being, whereas deep acting has no such detrimental effects, according to a recent study. Workers in a service job should therefore try to create true positive feelings at work instead of only pretending positive emotions. So how about instead of suppressing your anger think about something positive in your live when the next costumer wears you down ?

Journal of Applied Psychology