Financial Feeling: An Investigation of Emotion and Communication in the Workplace

Abstract

There is growing interest in the role of emotion when considering communication in the workplace. This work has most often considered workers in front-line service positions in investigations of emotional labor, and human service workers in investigations of empathy and emotional work. In this study, we consider processes of both emotional labor and emotional work in the financial planning profession. Financial planners occupy a role requiring ongoing relationships with clients, conversations about the often emotional topic of money, and a need to manage emotion in a variety of interaction contexts. Thus, from extant theory and literature regarding emotion and communication, we proposed research questions regarding the roles of emotional labor and emotional work in the financial planning profession. These questions were investigated in a web-based survey study of almost 300 professional financial planners and supporting interviews with 14 financial planners. Results indicate support for existing theory on emotional work, extensions to current research regarding emotional labor, and important implications for the role of emotion and communication in a range of professional service roles.

Keywords:

• Emotion
• Client Relationships
• Financial Analysts

Notes

1. Pseudonyms are used throughout when quoting the financial planners interviewed as part of our research.

2. This shift to a counseling posture in financial planning is particularly apparent when considering the way financial planning is now marketed and advertised in the popular media. Consider, for example, television ads in which the financial planner gives the first toast at the wedding of a client's daughter or in which the financial planner lounges with a couple on a peaceful shoreline while talking about property for a vacation home.

3. All procedures and materials for this research were approved by the Institutional Review Board of the university by which the junior author was employed at the time of the study.

4. It should be noted that these months were part of a larger span of time in which financial markets were not performing at levels that had come to seem normative in the late 1990s and the early months of the 21st century. Thus, it is likely that financial planners were coping with client relationships that might include both emotional labor and emotional work.

5. The similarity in these regression results could lead to the speculation that the dependent variables are actually a second-order factor model representing overall happiness with the job. In examining the correlations among these variables, we find that they are all, indeed, significantly correlated (with correlations ranging from .367 to .568). However, because these correlations are all still in the moderate range, we concluded that these variables measure distinct concepts, and we chose to continue considering them as individual dependent variables.

6. Specific items in the emotive effort subscale were as follows: “When working with clients, I try to create certain emotions in myself to present a desired image”; “I talk myself out of feeling what I really feel when helping clients”; “If I think the company would not approve of my real feelings about clients, I try to change those feelings”; and “When helping clients, if I pretend an emotion, I can actually start to feel it.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katherine I. Miller

Katherine Miller is a Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University

Joy Koesten

Joy Koesten is on the faculty at the University of Kansas