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6/12/05 WORKPLACE If the dog ate your shoe while you were getting ready for work, or you were rear-ended during your commute, pick another day to talk to your boss about why you deserve a raise, a promotion, or perk. So says Jennifer S. Lerner, the Estella Loomis McCandless associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Lerner and three Carnegie Mellon researchers say a person's emotions can govern how well he or she will do in negotiations with others. The researchers report that incidental emotion, or ''emotional hangovers,'' play a key role in how successful those talks will be. Incidental emotions are those lingering feelings of anger, sorrow, rage, or anxiety that can plague you after you've had a bad encounter, an accident, or experience some other stressful situation that might have nothing to do with your job. In other words, emotions don't evaporate when you're ready to sit at the bargaining table. They linger and are just as likely to be present when you're ready to sit down and talk. ''Emotions of all types alter our thoughts, behavior, and underlying biology,'' writes Lerner in the June 2005 edition of ''Negotiation,'' a newsletter from Harvard Business School Publishing. ''In negotiations, the fact that emotions triggered by the negotiation itself affect outcomes is well documented. For instance, if you found yourself negotiating with an old nemesis, you would experience integral anger.'' Lerner says less attention has been paid to the emotional state that arises from factors unrelated to a current negotiation. These factors may range from concerns about pending bills, an errant child, the hassle of car repairs and insurance claims, or a spat with a spouse. Those emotions can hurt or help talks, depending on how they are used. ''Displaying anger has powerful effects,'' says Lerner. ''As a negotiator, you may be susceptible to yielding too much power to an angry counterpart. Conversely, if you want to maintain power after making a mistake, public displays of anger, when justified, may serve you better than expressions of remorse.'' Harvard University psychology professor Dan Gilbert, the director of the Social Cognition and Emotion Lab, has found that angry people can wind up ''miswanting,'' meaning they may decide that a particular decision is unwise for the corporation or an individual, but they could change their minds once their anger subsides. One Carnegie Mellon research professor calls this phenomenon the ''hot-cold empathy gap.'' This means that when we are angry or in a ''hot'' state of mind, we are more likely to misjudge and incorrectly determine what we might want than if we were in a calmer or ''colder'' state of mind. Lerner says there is a way to avoid misjudgments due to ''hot'' emotions. She advises that negotiators institute a cooling-off period to allow bad feelings to dissipate or subside. ''If you suspect your counterpart is experiencing incidental emotions, you might suggest postponing the difficult stages of the negotiation until after a break for lunch, exercise, or sightseeing or until another day,'' she says. ''Don't reveal that you suspect emotional issues are at play, lest the other party take offense.'' Secondly, good negotiators understand and recognize that outside events can be emotional triggers and they try to diffuse the emotions that might occur as a result. ''Whenever we make a decision, most of us assess our feelings to some degree,'' writes Lerner. ''If we can label the source of an incidental emotion, then it is significantly less likely to affect our negotiation decisions.'' She points to an experiment conducted by researchers from the universities of Virginia and Michigan in which some participants were asked to answer questions about personal satisfaction on a sunny day and others were asked the same questions on a rainy day. Respondents who were questioned on the sunny day reported that they were more satisfied with their lives than their counterparts who answered the questions on a rainy day. However, when the researchers asked the rainy day respondents about the weather, they, too, had a more positive view of their lives. The researchers attributed the change in their answers to the fact the researchers had given the participants an opportunity to acknowledge the weather was bad. That lessened the weather's impact on the their responses. DISCRIMINATION Aetna has one. So do Agilent Technologies Inc., American Airlines, Bank One Corp., Capital One Financial Corp., Intel Corp., and Levi Strauss & Co. All are top US firms that have instituted antibias policies barring workplace discrimination against gays and lesbians. A report released last week by the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C., reveals that the number of Fortune 500 employers with such policies increased to 2,867 in 2004, up from 2,293 in 1999. The study, an annual report whose findings are culled from a survey of 8,250 employers, also found that gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual employees were more likely to receive domestic partner benefits last year, suggesting greater awareness of their needs among big employers. Of those polled, for example, 82 percent said they have policies barring discrimination against gays and lesbians, though not all offer protection to transsexuals. In all, 51 companies reported they have adopted antibias policies that include transsexuals, up from 3 in 2000. ''Many companies think this is good for business,'' said Joseph Solmonese, the president of the 600,000-member Human Rights Campaign. ''They are genuinely committed to attracting a broad workforce; it is a way for them to keep their competitive edge. They must foster a welcoming workplace if they want to attract the talent they need.'' Darryl Herrschaft, the deputy director of the campaign's Workplace Project, attributed the increases to a variety of factors, including greater familiarity with the everyday lives of gay people. ''Everything we know suggests that when someone knows a person who is openly gay, the stereotypes vanish and they are much more likely to understand the struggles,'' he said. ''They are also more likely to understand the way people are discriminated against in subtle ways and support equal treatment.'' Herrschaft added that ''there are more positive portrayals of gay people on television today, but executives need to be convinced that this is good for their business and, ultimately, good for their bottom line.'' PRODUCTIVITY Work less, achieve more? Margaret Heffernan, contributing editor to Worthwhile magazine, a new publication about workers, says shorter workdays may make people more productive and happier. Heffernan points to SAS Institute Inc., a North Carolina firm that develops business intelligence software, as an example. The companies' developers work 35 hours per week, resulting in an annual turnover rate of just 3 percent compared to the industry average of 20 percent, says Heffernan. Diane E. Lewis can be reached at .
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