I’d like to continue with the narrative I’ve started about knowing yourself and how it makes you a better leader with another story on that topic from Rice University. Researchers there found that conscientious people are more likely to provide good customer service because they are aware of how positive interactions affect perception. The study examined links between personality traits and effective behavior in customer service scenarios.

“Performance in a professional service capacity is not just knowing about what the product is and how it works, but how to sell and talk about it,” said Stephan Motowidlo, the Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Psychology at Rice University and the study’s lead author.

Motowidlo said that historically, institutions have been very good at examining the technical side of individuals’ jobs through IQ tests. However, an interest in the nontechnical side—the “softer, interpersonal” side—has increased.

“Much like intelligence impacts knowledge acquisition—driving what you learn and how much you know—personality traits impact how interpersonal skills are learned and used,” Motowidlo said. “People who know more about what kinds of actions are successful in dealing with interpersonal service encounters—such as listening carefully, engaging warmly, and countering questions effectively—handle them more effectively, and their understanding of successful customer service is shaped by underlying personality characteristics.”

Motowidlo hopes the study will encourage future research about how personality helps individuals acquire the knowledge they need to perform their jobs effectively.

(photo credit: wenno via photopin cc)

I wrote a blog post the other day about a trait that all successful leaders have. Today, I’ve come across another study that reinforces that trait—namely to know yourself. This time we’re talking about emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is the awareness of and management your emotions. Knowing how much emotion plays a part in your life can help you make better decisions.

“People often make decisions that are influenced by emotions that have nothing to do with the decisions they are making,” said Stéphane Côté, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, who co-wrote the study with lead researcher Jeremy Yip of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “Research has found that we fall prey to this all the time.”

Côté uses the work commute as an example.

“They get to work and the emotions they felt in their car influences what they do in their offices,” Côté said. “Or they invest money based on emotions that stem from things unrelated to their investments. But our investigation reveals that if they have emotional intelligence, they are protected from these biases.”

In one experiment, participants with low levels of emotional understanding allowed anxiety not related to their primary choices affect the decisions. Higher emotionally intelligent participants didn’t let the anxiety cloud their choices.

In another experiment, it was found that people with lower levels of emotional intelligence could block unrelated emotions from influencing decisions about risk if they were made aware that the anxiety was not related to the decisions being considered.

“The findings suggest that an emotionally intelligent approach to making decisions is if you’re feeling anxious because of something unrelated to the decisions, to not make the decisions right away,” Côté said.

Emotional intelligence is an on-going process, and Daniel Goleman—an expert in the subject—suggests five ways to build it up: 1) self-awarness, 2) self-regulation, 3) internal motivation, 4) empathy, and 5) social skills. All these can be grouped under the maxim “know thyself.”

Côté recommends that learning to pay attention to only the feelings—negative or positive—that are relevant to the decision at hand is what counts.

“People who are emotionally intelligent don’t remove all emotions from their decision-making,” Côté said. “They remove emotions that have nothing to do with the decision.”

(photo credit: garrettc via photopin cc)

We’re coming to the end of Movember, that annual time when men grow mustaches for a month to raise awareness for men’s health. Some of you may even think you look sharp with your new ‘stache and decide to keep it forever. You might even grow out the rest of your facial hair, because hey, it’s winter and your face could use a blanket of fur to shield it from cold winds.

If you’re in guest relations, though, you may want to reconsider that plan. According to a new study appearing in the November issue of Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, hotel guests found clean-shaven men more assuring than bearded men. The guests also found men and women who smile and are attractive to be more assuring.

“We know that customers prefer to interact with physically attractive employees, and meta-analyses find that employee physical attractiveness and nonverbal behaviors (such as smiling) are positively associated with employer evaluations,” the researchers wrote in “The Frontline Provider’s Appearance: A Driver of Guest Perceptions.”

The researchers said that past studies on physical appearance did not address features that elicit personality attributes, something their study would examine.

A panel of 102 participants were asked to evaluate knowledge, courtesy, trust, and confidence based on an employee photograph (pulled from Internet stock photos). The participants ascribed greater assurance ability to clean-shaven men. However, the beard effect did not change the assessment of African-American men. Just Caucasian men with beards were deemed less effective than those without.

“The practical implications of these findings are as follows: (1) Except under special circumstances, hotel firms should not permit their employees to wear beards; (2) hotel firms should incorporate genuine smiling training in their customer service training and should evaluate frontline provider smiling with programs such as mystery shopping; and (3) within appropriate legal and ethical boundaries, hotel firms should put in place, manage, and enforce grooming policies that could influence the facial attractiveness ratings of their employees,” the researchers wrote.

Granted, this study focused on hotel employees. I wonder, though, if its findings cut across a variety of industries. Do you find bearded men less assuring? Would you set a no-beard policy in your venue if you knew it would help with the guest experience?

(photo credit: Brother O’Mara via photopin cc)

There was a lot of industry news this past week you may have missed. Here are some headlines that caught our eyes.

Twitter Launches Advertising Tool to Target TV Conversations
—Cnet
“Called TV conversation targeting, the feature allows networks and brands to engage Twitter users talking about specific programs with Promoted Tweets, regardless of whether the marketer is running an ad with the program.”

What Business Are You Really In?
—Jesse Lyn Stoner’s Blog
“Is it possible to earn a living, have fun and make a difference in the world? Jocelyn Jackson and Keri Keifer have figured out how.”

8 Keys to Tradeshow Marketing Success
—Expo
“Understand your market, analyze it constantly and then act on what you’ve learned. That seemed the lesson to be shared at Expo’s Tradeshow Marketing Bootcamp.”

New 49ers Stadium: Is it Really Environmentally Friendly, or Just Eco-hype?
—San Jose Mercury News
“For more than a half-century, the San Francisco 49ers’ colors have been red and gold. But as the team prepares to move into its new $1.3 billion stadium in Santa Clara next year, a new color is emerging—green.”

Cree LED Lighting Saves Convention Center 32.4% of Total Energy Usage
—Semiconductor Today
“The Albuquerque Convention Center, a multipurpose event complex with more than 270,000 square feet of meeting and exhibit space, recently selected energy-efficient LED lighting from LED chip, lamp, and lighting fixture maker Cree Inc of Durham, NC, USA to improve the facility and provide better illumination for visitors.”

(image: Twitter)

I heard a statement today that epitomizes why associations matter: “You can’t just do it by your skills.” In other words, you can only get so far by yourself. To truly succeed, you need a network of peers and inspiration.

In fact, a new study from the University of British Columbia (UBC) shows that learning and observing from a wide range of teachers can help people better maintain technical skills and increase a group’s average skills over time.

Social networks, such as associations, are then pertinent for knowledge development.

“This is the first study to demonstrate in a laboratory setting what archaeologists and evolutionary theorists have long suggested: that there is an important link between a society’s sociality and the sophistication of its technology,” said Michael Muthukrishna, a PhD student in UBC’s Department of Psychology.

Muthukrishna—and the study’s co-author, UBC Professor Joseph Henrich—asked participants to learn new skills, such as digital photo editing and knot-tying. They then asked them to pass on what they learned to the next “generation” of participants.

The researchers said that the groups with greater access to experts accumulated significantly more skills than those with less access to teachers. Within 10 “generations,” each member of the group with multiple mentors had stronger skills than the group limited to a single mentor. Groups with greater access to experts also retained their skills much longer than groups who began with less access to mentors, sustaining higher levels of “cultural knowledge” over multiple generations.

IAVM is full of knowledgeable experts. Please feel free to share you knowledge by engaging with the community either through comments here on the Front Row News blog, by visiting VenueNet, joining our mentor program, or by attending any of the many conferences and events we stage each year.

(photo: Orange Photography)