Speech held by Professor Marco Sampietro, SDA Bocconi School of Management at the NASA Project Management Challenge 2008. In everyday life mood and emotions are often debated. A single person is well aware of their influence on his/her behavior but when we are in a working setting mood and emotions are often considered as secondary. However, studies indicate that mood and emotions have strong influence on work and team performance. Based on these results mood and emotions are additional variables that should be recognized and managed in order to obtain the desired project outcomes. Positive mood and positive emotions are often considered as related to higher performance and in general this is true, but there is more to say: counterintuitive effects are present too. In addition, if a project manager wants to improve project performance by leveraging mood and emotions, first he/she has to be able to recognize the variables that influence mood and emotions and then he/she has to work on them.

1. Mood and Emotions: Impact on Team
Performance
Marco Sampietro
marco.sampietro@sdabocconi.it
NASA Project Management 1/29
Project Management Challenge Challenge 2007
2008 – Reach Higher

2. Agenda
 Mood and Emotions: Definitions
 Impact of Mood and Emotions on Team
Performance
 How to influence Mood and Emotions
 Conclusions
NASA Project Management 2/29
Challenge 2007

3. Agenda
 Mood and Emotions: Definitions
 Impact of Mood and Emotions on Team
Performance
 How to influence Mood and Emotions
 Conclusions
NASA Project Management 3/29
Challenge 2007

4. Mood
 A relatively lasting emotional or affective state.
 Mood is an internal, subjective state, but it often can
be inferred from posture and other observable
behaviors.
 Moods are experiences that are longer and more
diffuse, and lack awareness of the eliciting stimulus.
 Moods can be created by stimuli of relatively low
intensity, or can be left behind by emotions that fade
so that the initial antecedent is no longer salient.
Definitions NASA Project Management 4/29
Challenge 2007

5. Emotion
 A reaction to a stimulus that has a range of possible
consequences and typically refer to discrete and
intense but short-lived experiences.
 A person's temporary internal state of being, which
has a clear start and end, and it is an involuntary,
subjective, physiological response to an object or a
situation, based in or tied to physical state and
sensory feelings.
Definitions NASA Project Management 5/29
Challenge 2007

6. Comparison between Mood and Emotion
Mood Emotion
Duration Relatively long-term Relatively short-term
Gradual onset, Rapid onset, episodic,
Time Pattern continuous, tonic phasic
Intensity Relatively weak Relatively strong
Not caused by specific Caused by a specific
Causation
events event
Provides information Provides information
Function about current state of about current state of
self situation
Directedness Unfocussed Takes specific object
Definitions NASA Project Management 6/29
Challenge 2007

7. Examples
 Positive Mood & Negative Emotions
The discrete event of encountering a malfunctioning
photocopier at 9:50 this morning while rushing to
prepare for a 10:00 meeting may cause one to feel
frustration or anger for a short while, even if you are
in cheerful mood. And so, for instance, one may
snap at a secretary while frustrated about the
photocopier.
 Negative Mood & Positive Emotions
Finding 100$ on the ground, thus feeling happy for
a while but being in black mood because of
continuous sentimental problems
Definitions NASA Project Management 7/29
Challenge 2007

8. Agenda
 Mood and Emotions: Definitions
 Impact of Mood and Emotions on Team
Performance
 How to influence Mood and Emotions
 Conclusions
NASA Project Management 8/29
Challenge 2007

9. The role of emotions
 “In decades past, workers were told to leave their
emotions at home and most complied.”
 There is little debate nowadays that organizational life
is saturated with emotion.
 People are emotional. Hebb once called humans “the
most emotional of animals.”
 Academics and practitioners alike have come to the
collective insight that emotion is a pervasive force in
the workplace that has the capacity to influence the
organization and its members in significant ways.
Impact on Team Performance NASA Project Management 9/29
Challenge 2007

10. The framework
Mood & Emotions
P
E
Soft Skills:
R Hard Skills:
Leadership
T F Methodology
Team Climate
E O Tools
Motivation
A R Procedures
Communication
M M
Conflict Mgmt
A
Decision Making
N
C
E
Impact on Team Performance NASA Project Management 10/29
Challenge 2007

11. Leadership
Team
Sentiment
Leader’s Leader’s
Team
Emotional Emotional
Performance
Display Intelligence
Team
Performance
Inference
Impact on Team Performance NASA Project Management 11/29
Challenge 2007

12. Leadership and Team Climate
 A leader's emotional expressions may affect
performance by evoking affective reactions in
followers that may influence their performance.
 Several studies have demonstrated that people that
work together may converge emotionally over time.
 R e s e a r c h e s f o u n d t h a t l e a d e r s ' e m o t i o n a l
expressions instilled congruent moods in followers
and influenced their liking of the leader as well as
ratings of the leader's charisma and effectiveness.
 Emotional Contagion: leaders affect the group’s
mood, both at individual and collective level.
Impact on Team Performance NASA Project Management 12/29
Challenge 2007

13. Motivation
 Scholars attest that human emotions and mood are
likely to influence the processes underlying
motivation.
 Emotion constitutes an important source of influence
on human thought and behavior.
 Mood and Emotions influence work motivation via
their influence on judgment components (expectancy
judgments, utility judgments, and progress
judgments) involved in conscious behavioral choices.
Impact on Team Performance NASA Project Management 13/29
Challenge 2007

14. Communication
 Emotions can be useful in terms of directing attention
to pressing concerns and signalling what should be the
focus of attention.
 Being able to provoke emotions while communicating
improves the information retention and the ability to
recall information.
Impact on Team Performance NASA Project Management 14/29
Challenge 2007

15. Conflict Management
 Conflict is an emotionally defined and driven process.
 Affective – Relationship Conflict negatively affects
group outcomes.
 Studies found that induction of positve mood led to
more cooperative and to less competitive behavior in
negotiation than either neutral or negative mood.
 Positive emotional experience within the work team
facilitated open discusssion of differences, which has
been found to facilitate constructive conflict
management.
Impact on Team Performance NASA Project Management 15/29
Challenge 2007

16. Decision Making
 Mood states often bias judgments in a mood
consistent manner:
 People in positive moods make more positive
judgments, whereas people in negative moods make
more negative judgments.
Positive Moods Negative Moods
Creativity Attention to details
Detection of errors and
Integrative Thinking
problems
Inductive Reasoning Careful information processing
Impact on Team Performance NASA Project Management 16/29
Challenge 2007

17. Agenda
 Mood and Emotions: Definitions
 Impact of Mood and Emotions on Team
Performance
 How to influence Mood and Emotions
 Conclusions
NASA Project Management 17/29
Challenge 2007

18. How to Influence Mood and Emotions
Managerial Activities
MOOD &
EMOTIONS
Environmental Conditions
Influencing Mood and Emotions NASA Project Management 18/29
Challenge 2007

19. Managerial Activities: Leader’s Control of
Emotional Display
 A leader's emotional expressions can be thought of
as success or failure feedback that may influence
followers' inferences regarding their own
performance.
 Research has documented a positive relationship
between leader positive mood and group
performance, based on these findings a leader's
displays of happiness can be expected to inspire
better performance than displays of anger.
Influencing Mood and Emotions NASA Project Management 19/29
Challenge 2007

20. Managerial Activities: Emotional Intelligence
 Emotional Intelligence: ‘the ability to perceive
emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to
assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional
knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as
to promote emotional and intellectual growth’.
 Leaders who are high on emotional intelligence will be
better able to improve team performance by managing
their own and their collaborators’ mood and emotions.
Influencing Mood and Emotions NASA Project Management 20/29
Challenge 2007

21. Managerial Activities: Feedbacks and
Celebrations
 Giving feedbacks after goal achievement or special
efforts triggers positive emotions.
 Celebrating important events (project end, new
contract etc.) permits to link challenging activities with
positive emotions thus improving commitment.
Influencing Mood and Emotions NASA Project Management 21/29
Challenge 2007

22. Managerial Activities: Monitoring and
Improving Team Climate
 The creation of a playfull psychological safe
atmosphere that foster trust, friendliness, and
openess may help to induce positive moods and
emotions that will instigate organizational spontaneity,
creativity, innovation, and productivity.
 Group emotion results as from the combination of the
groups’ affective composition and the affective context
in which the group is behaving.
 One should try to create settings that have contextual
qualities of being playful, safe and challenging all
together; that is creating an affective context.
Influencing Mood and Emotions NASA Project Management 22/29
Challenge 2007

23. Managerial Activities: Humor
 Humor has been shown to be a powerful tool in
helping to manage such disruptive negative emotions
as anger and anxiety/tension.
 Humor can also elevate one’s mood from the depths
of the daily sources of “depression” we all
occasionally suffer from.
 Humor is especially effective in substituting a positive
emotion for a negative one.
 Humor lowers tension and improves divergent
thinking, and, especially in the outcome of laughing,
helps in reducing the negative effects of stress.
Influencing Mood and Emotions NASA Project Management 23/29
Challenge 2007

24. Environment: Lighting and Colours
 Bright light stimulates us, while low levels of
illumination quiet our senses.
 Insufficient lighting is linked to emotional stress and
to physical ailments.
 Light, especially natural light, has been shown to
enhance the performance of people while working.
 A bright room with light colors is preferred over a
room with dark colors.
 A dim space with low contrasts might contribute to
feelings of relaxation; a bright space with sparkle
could be stimulating.
Influencing Mood and Emotions NASA Project Management 24/29
Challenge 2007

25. Environment: Air Quality and Odors
 A number of studies have suggested that odors
affect mood and attitudes.
 It has been suggested that pleasant odors evoke
happiness and surprise and that unpleasant odors
evoke disgust and anger.
 Office air is typically highly filtered and de-
humidified.
 The latent scents from various cleaners and the
outgassing of many synthetic products fill the air with
what the brain perceives as dangerous smelling
chemicals, and that creates a lot of subliminal
anxiety in workers.
Influencing Mood and Emotions NASA Project Management 25/29
Challenge 2007

26. Environment: Temperature and Humidity
 High heat and high levels of humidity can create
problems because of difficulties in controlling body
heat. This can lead to increased levels of stress and
lower work efficiency.
 Temperature also tends to influence social behaviors
such as aggression. High room temperature can
easily lead to nervousness, tension, and negative
emotional reactions.
Influencing Mood and Emotions NASA Project Management 26/29
Challenge 2007

27. Environment: Ergonomics
 Companies can encourage team productivity and
innovation, as well as positive mood and emotions, by
providing staff members with comfortable, attractive
areas for team meetings, as well as individual work
stations that can be tailored to personal needs and
preferences.
 When people are working at improperly designed
workstations, muscle fatigue, eyestrain, headaches,
and other discomforts can become factors that
negatively influence mood.
Influencing Mood and Emotions NASA Project Management 27/29
Challenge 2007

28. Agenda
 Mood and Emotions: Definitions
 Impact of Mood and Emotions on Team
Performance
 How to influence Mood and Emotions
 Conclusions
NASA Project Management 28/29
Challenge 2007

29. Conclusions
 Mood and emotions are well debated in the private
life but their impacts on individual and team
performance are underestimated.
 Mood and emotions could be shaped even inside the
company’s boudaries.
 Managerial behaviours and work environment can be
leveraged as tools to change mood and trigger
emotions.
Conclusions NASA Project Management 29/29
Challenge 2007