A new study suggests that workers that are friendly at work are more productive. Researchers at the University of Michigan claim that keeping emotion out of the workplace also cuts down on the “bandwidth” of communication.
Friendly workers pay attention to indirect meanings, work well with other cultures and are perceived as trustworthy, Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks said. An impersonal style blinds workers from noticing differences in style. They often fail to notice nonverbal communication.
“An impersonal style tends to restrict the bandwidth of information a person attends to in the workplace. What is literally said will be followed closely but information about the context in which the information is conveyed — information often critical for task success and productivity — is lost,” he added.
There’s a valuable lesson in there somewhere…
