To Reveal or Conceal? Managers' Disclosures of Private Information During Emotional Intelligence Training

• Published date: 01 March 2016
• Date: 01 March 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21222
• Author: Kathryn Thory

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY, vol. 27, no. 1, Spring 2016 © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/hrdq.21222 41

To Reveal or Conceal?

Managers’ Disclosures of Private

Information During Emotional

Intelligence Training

Kathryn Thory

To date, emotional intelligence (EI) training interventions have been

underresearched. This study responds to this paucity of scholarship by

investigating the occurrence of private disclosures during managerial

EI training. While an unorthodox practice, this article argues that

trainers introduce opportunities to reveal private information to develop

participants’ EI. The aims of this study are to explore the role of such

disclosures and how emotion infl uences managers’ decisions to reveal

or conceal private information. Data are drawn from participant

observations and interviews with managers and trainers attending three

externally provided, “popular” EI training courses. Applying Petronio’s

communication privacy management theory and Stiles’s fever model

of distress disclosure to analyze the data, a typology is presente d that

suggests managers reveal private information for “self-awareness” and

“catharsis” and conceal private information for “self-protection” and

“disengagement.” By applying Petronio’s theory to a new work context of

training and extending Stiles’s model to a range of emotions, the article

provides novel insights into managerial control over disclosures, privacy

boundary turbulence, and how emotions serve as a resource and condition

to disclosure practices. These fi ndings have relevance for trainers and their

strategies to develop EI.

Key Words: emotional intelligence, employee development, training,

management development, disclosure

QUALITATIVE STUDY

42 Thory

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY • DOI: 10.1002/hrdq

Introduction

“There is a danger to such [emotional intelligence] training, of course, and

that is exposing people to emotions that they do not wish to feel. There

is also a considerable ethical issue facing trainers: to allow participants to

easily opt out, to protect personal disclosures as confi dential information

and to provide emotional support after the end of the session” (Caruso,

Bienn, & Kornacki, 2006, p. 203).

This article explores managers’ disclosures of private information during

“popular” emotional intelligence (EI) training courses, which are externally

provided by independent management consultancies and are open enroll-

ment. Private information refers to anything disclosed or given access to that

results in vulnerability, as perceived by the owner (Child, Petronio, Agyeman-

Budu, & Westermann, 2011). Self-information may refer to feelings, thoughts,

and experiences, refl ecting issues that matter deeply to the discloser. To date,

there is a small but growing body of literature on the topic of work-based

disclosures (Allen, Walker, Coopman, & Hart, 2007; Gordon, 2011; Peters

& Brown, 2009; Stanton & Stam, 2003). This article represents a contribu-

tion to this area of research by exploring a new work context of management

training. While disclosure of private information during EI training may reap

personal and professional rewards for managers, the argument presented here

is that there may also be private and public losses. These losses refer to the

(in)voluntary nature of such activities, privacy management to third parties

(employer), and whether trainers are qualifi ed to manage such confi dences.

These are important issues for the training and HRD community in relation to

best practices and policies.

While there has been a recent rapid growth of academic and practitio-

ner EI literature including workplace accounts (Cartwright & Pappas, 2008),

we know very little about EI training in management studies. This is despite

the fact the number of EI training programs available has proliferated since

EI has been linked to organizational performance (Clarke, 2006a). Of those

few studies, the focus tends to be on whether EI can be learned during train-

ing and whether this learning has an impact on organizational performance

(e.g., Clarke, 2006a; Groves, McEnrue, & Shen, 2008; Slaski & Cartwright,

2003). One key problem is that the type of training (tools and materials),

underlying principles, concepts, and theory are rarely documented in aca-

demic studies (exceptions being Clarke, 2010a, 2010b; Slaski & Cartwright,

2003; Thory, 2013a). Without progressing our understanding of what goes

on during EI training, its contribution to how EI is learned and what training

works best remains undertheorized and poorly understood (Schutte, Malouff,

& Thorsteinsson, 2013).

There are suggestions in the EI literature that personal disclosures

enhance the development of one’s emotional intelligence (Clarke, 2006a,