Emotive Skills Are Work Skills

• Published date: 01 September 2020
• Date: 01 September 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0091026020917711
• Subject Matter: Guest Editorials

https://doi.org/10.1177/0091026020917711

Public Personnel Management

2020, Vol. 49(3) 327 –330

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0091026020917711

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Guest Editorial

Emotive Skills Are

Work Skills

For centuries, Westerners have deluded themselves into thinking that emotion is sec-

ondary to cognition in the workplace. For English speakers, language is filled with

words that describe cognitive functions, making it easy to write job analyses and job

descriptions that focus on cognitive demands. At the same time, practitioners are well

aware of the emotive demands in their jobs but they struggle to articulate this because

language—especially English—does not contain words refined enough to describe it.

In this essay I argue that our human resource (HR) scholarship has failed to embrace

the totality of work skills that are necessary in the citizen–state encounter and I argue

that Asia has lessons to teach us.

Let’s face it. In public service, managing feelings is part of the job in terms of feel-

ings of the worker as well as feelings of the citizen. Emotion matters, just as cognition

matters. Both are skills that must be applied to complete tasks, care about the work,

and return tomorrow to do more of it.

It is time that HR processes build recognition of emotional labor into job descrip-

tions, training and development, performance appraisals, and reward systems. As

sophisticated as our data analytics are, as much as information and communication

technology shapes how we communicate what we know, emotion is the very human

element that is as important now as it has ever been. The proliferation of emoticons in

electronic messages reflects this necessity, for they reflect the desire to communicate

not just words but the affect that rounds out the message and makes it whole.

Emotion humanizes the citizen–state encounter. It is the source of job satisfaction

and meaningfulness for public service professionals and it produces feelings of trust

(or distrust) on the part of citizens. The citizen–state encounter is the crux of public

service, humanizing practice and playing a constitutive role emblematic of a demo-

cratic republic. And it is a two-way street. The feelings that citizens have about the

state result, in large part, from how they feel about their interactions with public offi-

cials. This gives rise to the central question for government: what is the quality of each

encounter between citizen and state? Trust and engagement do not arise from negative

encounters. Confidence, belongingness, safety, security, and respect, do not result

from threats and cold formalism. The human touch makes a difference.

The emotive component to governance is the connective tissue in the citizen–state

encounter. For citizens to be engaged with government, they must care about it. It is

not spreadsheets that cause people to love their country or hate it; it is feelings. The

feeling that citizens have for their government is the beginning point and the end point

of the citizen–state encounter. Citizens want public service professionals to have cool

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