Supporting team relationships and reducing staff conflict through emotional health Developing interpersonal competencies to foster positive relationships (related asset: relationship skills): Developing the relationship skills of employees – for example, through assertive communication skills or conflict resolution training – can support staff to manage differences and challenges while maintaining positive relationships. In a recent survey by CPP Global (ibid), only 55 per cent of employees in the UK have had any kind of conflict resolution training. Conflict resolution training was associated with positive relationships, and respondents stated that when handled properly, working through differences with colleagues had actually led to improvements in team relationships (ibid). Encouraging reflective practice (related asset: self awareness): Research has shown that self awareness is significantly associated with the ability to manage conflict and build positive team relationships. Employees with high levels of self awareness show significantly better scores on a number of dimensions than employees with low self awareness. This includes being able to admit when wrong, develop and sustain close relationships with others, being open to others’ ideas, and feeding back without being defensive (Srivastava and Yadav 2017). Ongoing reflection at a team level, including the social processes within the team, can also improve how teams work together (Sutton et al 2015). Supporting healthy self regulation (related asset: self regulation): Emotion regulation strategies in the workplace are most commonly employed as a result of emotions generated from difficult interpersonal encounters, such as a challenging interaction with a customer (Diefendorff et al 2008). Unhealthy self regulation strategies, such as rumination, can lead to passive-aggressive responses. This not only impacts on the relationship, but also can lead to emotional exhaustion (Liu and Roloff 2015). Furthermore, employees who suppress their emotions at work may be less able to form positive relationships with others; when police officers masked their reactions after tragic events, it led to decreased empathy and reduced connection with citizens (Pogrebin and Poole 1995).
3.5 CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION The business case Organisations are placing increasingly higher value on entrepreneurial tendencies and creative thinking, with a survey of over 1,500 CEOs identifying creativity as the most important leadership quality (IBM 2010). Creativity and innovation encompass generative thinking (including forming and implementing new ideas) as well as evaluative thinking (i.e. creative problem-solving skills) (Mumford et al 2012). Rank et al (2004) argue that creativity is generally used to denote individual thinking and idea generation, whereas innovation usually refers to implementation of ideas and occurs at a team or organisational level. While creativity is often considered to be an individual trait, contextual variables within the workplace can enhance creativity and innovation (Raja and Johns 2010; Baer 2010). Employers can take steps to support and nurture creativity among their employees (Anderson et al 2014), and research suggests that the organisational culture is more closely related to innovation than levels of employee creativity (Cekmecelioglu and Gunsel 2013). Supporting creativity and innovation through emotional health Enabling choice and autonomy (related asset: self agency): Having a sense of autonomy and feeling able to take action promotes intrinsic motivation and, consequently, innovation. Employees who are more proactive (linked to the emotional health asset of self agency) demonstrate higher levels of creativity (Gong et al 2012). Self agency can be supported through enabling choice and Family Links/IPPR | Emotional health at work Why it matters and how you can support it
29