Surface Acting, a silent meeting killer

Ever been in a meeting and felt one way but acted another? Most of us have. This behaviour is also quite common in the medical profession when a doctor fakes empathic behaviours toward a patient. They act concerned because that is expected, deep down they might be more worried about their waiting list or getting home on time.

Psychologists call this ‘surface acting’. I recently read an interesting BPS article on how surface acting affects meetings and employee burn out.

It referenced a study in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology which focused on how masking our real feelings could negatively affect our contribution to meetings and our long term well-being.

The central idea is that surface acting requires significant self-control and this puts a strain on our mental resources. This can prove distracting and restrict the attention we give to what is really going on in the meeting.

The study collected online data from 178 participants from a variety of roles with a range of meeting regularity (from just over 2 per week to less than once per week). Participants rated items like 'I tend to fake a good mood when interacting with others in the meeting’ to produce a surface acting score. This score was negatively associated with their rating of typical meeting effectiveness, in terms of networking, achieving work goals, or learning useful information. The more they surface acted, the less effective they found the meeting.

It gets worse, the long term consequences of surface acting were also measured. Participants who indicated higher surface acting felt emotionally exhausted and were prone to burnout. Acting one way and feeling another was emotionally draining, both in the meeting and afterwards. Habitual surface actors were more likely to have an intention to quit their job at short notice. That is not good for anyone.

Guess the point here is that masking how you really feel in work, while required every now and again, it not a good idea in the long term. If you chair meetings try and make it possible for people to express how they really feel. They may be a little more attentive and focus better on the agenda items or discussions.

Aside from meetings, if your organisational culture requires people to surface act or hide their feeling on a regular basis e.g. when dealing with customers, superiors, other departments, be aware that burn out and sudden departures may follow. If this is hard to avoid and the ‘customer is always right’, then give staff some recovery time and let them vent a little. Everyone might feel better and get more done.