Last month we described the value of emotional coherence - bringing synchronization to your thoughts, emotions and body -- within each person. The times when you have felt most productive, satisfied, and energized, you were probably quite emotionally coherent. Things felt right. You were in "the flow." Unfortunately, those moments can be difficult to sustain or to re-create when pressure is high and time is short. The intent of this series has been to show that each of us has more power to create our own internal coherence - regardless of external pressures and stresses - than we realize. It starts with learning to regulate our own emotional capacity: catching negative attitudes we have fallen into, neutralizing them, and replacing them with more positive attitudes and feelings. The benefits of increasing our emotional coherence include improved cognitive performance, increased calmness and well-being, increased emotional stability and improved health.

There is an organizational corollary: Just as an individual´s lack of emotional coherence can result in poor performance and health, the collective incoherence within an organizational system creates a workplace climate that compromises the performance, well-being, stability and health of that organization.

The degree of organizational incoherence is driven by the collective level of individual emotional self management. This emotional incoherence is revealed in attitudes like judgmentalism, anger, blame, constant complaining and an ´us versus them´ stance. The greater the incoherence, the more "nutrients" these attitudes have to feed on, until the net effect is an emotional virus, a highly infectious critter that impairs the organization´s ability to innovate and remain resilient.

"If we knew nothing about a store except that employee attitudes had improved 5%, we could predict that its revenue would rise .5% above what it otherwise would have been."--Sears executives, Harvard Business Review, 1/98

HR professionals today have unprecedented levels of pressure. Not only must they master ever-changing technology, be aware of workplace policies and laws, and study market conditions, they must also attend sensitively to the needs of their people. All the while facing an often suspicious workforce or management team.

Employee Engagement

Recent Gallup surveys have found that only 26% of American workers are engaged (loyal and productive) at work and 19% are actively disengaged (i.e., not enthralled and fundamentally disconnected from work). The most engaged workplaces are 50% more likely to have lower turnover, 56% more likely to have higher than average customer loyalty, 38% more likely to have above average productivity and 27% more likely to report higher profitability.*
*Gallup survey of 7,939 business units across 36 companies (Harter, Schmidt and Hayes, 2002)

It´s hard to be engaged if an emotional virus has taken over your attitude.

Add to all this is the challenge that today´s workforce has a different set of standards for evaluating job satisfaction than did previous generations. They demand more harmonious working relationships. Salary, although still important, is not as high on the list as it used to be. It´s not unusual for workers to take less pay and move into jobs more in line with their core values: Working in an environment where people do not stab each other in the back, where management and employees have a more open dialogue and where the employee feels connected to and proud of the company and its products. Many people want a place to work where they do not have to witness water cooler and break room "assassinations" and where they feel a supportive management that evokes trust.

The emotional virus eats away at these organizational qualities. In the name of smart business, increased morale and productivity, less turnover and lower health care costs, the emotional virus eventually has to be dealt with.

The only way we have seen to eliminate the emotional virus or stop it before it gets out of control is to educate individuals on how to manage their own thoughts and emotions. This is especially critical in the education of leaders. It is well known that a single comment from a senior leader at an all-company meeting can send shock waves of discontent and insecurity through an entire workforce. The virus has turned into a full-blown plague.

Just as the emotional virus spreads from person to person, so can its antidote: coherence. By coherence in this context, we mean balanced clarity, without emotional overreaction. The same attitudes and emotions that generate individual coherence create a healthy organizational climate. As people in an organization, especially the most visible and influential ones, begin to actualize change within themselves, others will soon follow suit or move on to another environment that resonates with their attitudes.

The well known Service-Profit Chain model of James Heskett (HBR, 7/2000) outlines the link between the financial impact of having satisfied, productive, "engaged" employees.

• Profit and growth are stimulated primarily by customer loyalty.

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• Loyalty is a direct result of customer satisfaction

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• Satisfaction is influenced largely by the value of services provided to customers

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• Value is created by satisfied, loyal and productive employees

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• Productivity is largely the result of employee satisfaction

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• Employee satisfaction, in turn, results from high-quality support services and policies--the internal quality of an organization---that enable employees to deliver results to customers

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• Internal quality results from leadership, which understands that frontline workers and customers need to be the center of management focus. The flow of organizational care and appreciation must especially go to those key stakeholders.

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It is difficult for leaders to grasp the importance of this value chain if they are personally feeling intense pressure to deliver short-term results at the expense of lasting value built on the creation of lasting relationships with employees, customers and partners. It is the rare leader who can rise above the vortex of negative pressures to maintain a long-term vision that places personal and professional balance and coherence at the same level as financial results.

Care

While more and more organizations recognize and emphasize the importance of caring for the customer, staff can´t give what they don´t have. An organization must genuinely care for its employees and give them what they need to take care of themselves. Providing employees with skills to attain a new level of mental and emotional management is the first step toward -- and an essential aspect of -- showing care for customers.

Second, the individuals within an organization must demonstrate care for each other. The care you want an employee to show internal and external customers must be modeled in the organization´s day-to-day operations. Without that, customers will be cynical and suspicious, because the words won´t consistently match the actions.

To care is a basic human instinct. It is also a powerful enhancer of health. Biomedical research has shown that feeling sincere care for something or someone actually boosts immune system function, as measured by the antibody IgA. Clearly, care is a good investment of energy. You receive a payoff when you care, beyond just being nice or polite. Care is rejuvenating whether you give or receive it. It acts like a lubricant on mental, emotional, and physical levels while increasing adaptability, flexibility and resilience. If you can help employees develop more caring attitudes and actions, they will bring great value and authenticity to the process of consistently demonstrating customer care. Care cannot be legislated; it must be demonstrated, and it must be sincere.

Which leads to the third point: there is a huge difference between required courtesy and sincere, authentic care. Without sincerity caring acts ring hollow. Sincere care is required to achieve a true service attitude that people can feel. When care is mechanical or insincere, it causes resistance and reaction in others and can undermine productivity. Simply put, it is much easier to adapt healthfully to unpleasant or unexpected circumstances when people feel their workplace is caring. Care is the glue that keeps relationships and organizations together during stressful times.

Appreciation

Of all the building blocks that can rid an organization of the emotional virus and help to create ever more effective teams, appreciation is one of the cornerstones. Appreciation implies an increase in value: whatever you appreciate tends to increase in value. This is as true in relationships and the creativity and skills of a team as it is for tangible assets such as real estate or fine art.

An individual who never feels good enough or whose performance is never quite to the highest standard probably lives in a world of nonstop pressure to perform, i.e., stress. Stress blocks the pathways to greater physiological coherence. Biologically we know the lack of coherence impairs performance and obstructs optimal health. Appreciation and recognition are efficient tools that enhance every link in the service profit chain.

Many managers are taught to show appreciation to boost morale. But well-intentioned efforts like "employee of the month" awards and special parking spaces can lead to cynicism and disengagement if they are done without sincerity. Sincere appreciation boosts confidence and frees the spirit to do more of what was already worthy of appreciating.

Teams that sincerely appreciate each other´s efforts, skills and diversity are far stronger than those constantly competing for the spotlight. Many teams would say they value and appreciate each other yet in our experience, sitting down to go over the assets of each team member can create a coherent team more effectively then few other activities could. It is energizing, motivating and promotes cohesion. Appreciation is also powerful because it can help shift perspective quickly and keep you in touch with the big picture, what´s really important. Time after time, we have seen teams move from mediocre to exceptional when appreciation becomes an operating principle.

A Change of Heart Changes Everything

Throughout this series, we´ve presented many facts and well-researched aspects of human physiology that we hope will serve as a wake up call. The issues of human performance, stress and organizational climate need to become critical business strategies, not just brown bag lunch topics offered by a well-intentioned HR department. While these concepts and processes represent a philosophy that any organization can adapt and apply, we are not so naive as to think life is always neat and well-ordered. In fact, the very unpredictability and acceleration felt in organizations today propelled us to create this ´inner quality management´ methodology on a foundation of individual coherence.

Long term organizational success is built not on dogma and rigid principles but on coherence which, when it becomes the foundation of an organization´s culture, brings with it a flexible, adaptable and resilient workforce. There is a science to business effectiveness but there must also be heart for that science to have meaning.

This is part of a series of articles from Heartmath. Click on the number for previous installments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

The Authors

 Bruce Cryer, President and CEO

Bruce brings more than 20 years of experience in business management, human performance training and organizational change to the position of President and CEO for HeartMath LLC. Bruce helped launch the Institute of HeartMath with founder Doc Childre and is the key architect of the Inner Quality Management (IQM) training programs. Bruce successfully guided HeartMath programs into the global corporate arena, with significant projects at Motorola, Sun Microsystems, AT&T, CIBC (Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce), Royal Dutch Shell, LifeScan (a Johnson Bruce brings more than 20 years of experience in business management, human performance training and organizational change to the position of President and CEO for HeartMath LLC. Bruce helped launch the Institute of HeartMath with founder Doc Childre and is the key architect of the Inner Quality Management (IQM) training programs. Bruce successfully guided HeartMath programs into the global corporate arena, with significant projects at Motorola, Sun Microsystems, AT&T, CIBC (Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce), Royal Dutch Shell, LifeScan (a Johnson & Johnson company), Cathay Pacific Airways, and the World Bank.

Bruce is co-author of From Chaos to Coherence: The Power to Change Performance (pub. 1999) with Doc Childre, along with a multimedia interactive CD-ROM based on the book. For eight years, Bruce served as Vice President for a biotech company, where his broad-based senior level experience was in the areas of marketing, training, distribution, project planning, logistics and implementation.

Bruce is on the faculty of the Stanford Executive Program, and is a featured speaker across the U.S. in the Lessons in Leadership Distinguished Speaker Series. He has also lectured at the Stanford Sloan Program and the Stanford Executive Briefings series, University of California at Berkeley Haas Business School, the Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business, the Wharton Club of Northern California, and the Nanyang Polytechnic University School of Business Management in Singapore.

His views on developing a more coherent, effective workforce have been presented to business audiences such as Young President''s Organization (YPO), The Executive Committee (TEC), Women for Women (WOW) in Singapore, Systems Thinking in Action Conference, the International Society for Performance Improvement, American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), and several conferences on Emotional Intelligence.

He has also been interviewed in or written for such publications as New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Harvard Business Review, Computerworld, CIO, Customer Service Professional, At Work, Entrepreneur Magazine, Executive Excellence, and Executive Directions. He has been a guest on hundreds of television and radio programs nationwide. A former actor and singer on Broadway, Bruce lives in Boulder Creek, California, with his wife and daughter.

 Kim Allen, M.S., Director, Licensing Programs

As Director of HeartMath Certification, Kim Allen trains, manages and coaches HeartMath''s international team of organizational trainers. With over twenty years of corporate experience, Kim has been key in the development of HeartMath''s organizational workshops and programs.

Prior to her work with HeartMath, Kim was senior district sales manager for a multinational healthcare company, responsible for training and coaching sales professionals through organizational change and transition, helping them remain focused, stay balanced and healthy and achieve peak performance.

Kim''s work is inspirational to many audiences, including corporate executives, physicians and health professionals, human resource personnel, women''s groups, college students and parents. She has trained hundreds of individuals in a variety of HeartMath programs, and has worked with teams from business, hospitals and healthcare organizations, including Marriott, SmithKline Beecham, Sony, and Motorola. She has been a featured speaker at the Women in Technology International conference and other corporate and healthcare meetings.