Emotion, seduction and intimacy: alternative perspectives on human behaviour

RIDLEY-DUFF, R. J. Available from Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/2619/

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RIDLEY-DUFF, R. J. (2010). Emotion, seduction and intimacy: alternative perspectives on human behaviour. Silent Revolution Series . Seattle, Libertary Editions.

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Silent Revolution Series

Emotion
Seduction
& Intimacy

Alternative Perspectives on
Human Behaviour

Third Edition
© Dr Rory Ridley-Duff, 2010

Edited by Dr Poonam Thapa
Libertary Editions

Seattle

© Dr Rory Ridley‐Duff, 2010

Rory Ridley‐Duff has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Acts 1988.

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Social Exchange logo designed by Natasha Ridley‐Duff

First edition commissioned by Social Exchange Ltd.
Social Exchange Logo by Natasha Ridley‐Duff.
First edition published by Men’s Hour Books, 2007.
Second edition published by Rory Ridley‐Duff on www.scribd.com, 2009.
Third edition published by Libertary, 2010.

ISBN 978‐1‐935961‐00‐0

DISCOUNTS OR CUSTOMIZED EDITIONS MAY BE AVAILABLE FOR EDUCATIONAL AND OTHER GROUPS
BASED ON BULK PURCHASE.

For further information please contact [email protected]

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010939463

Contents

Introduction.................................................................................. i

Acknowledgements................................................................................i Setting Out the Terrain....................................................................... iii The Structure of the Book................................................................ xiii

Chapter 1 – In the Beginning……............................................. 1

Overview ................................................................................................1 A Perspective on Sexism......................................................................4 Setting the Agenda for Equality........................................................10 To the Reader......................................................................................12

Chapter 2 – What are Emotions?............................................ 17

Overview ..............................................................................................17 Emotional Knowledge.........................................................................21 Stories of Emotional Intelligence......................................................26

Emotional Defence and Emotion Management ..............................30

Emotion, Blame and Social Status....................................................32 Emotion and Perception.....................................................................34 Emotion and Sense-Making...............................................................36 Emotional Sensitivity and Performance...........................................38 Summary..............................................................................................39

Chapter 3 - Friendship and Flirting......................................... 43

Introduction.........................................................................................43
What is Seduction? .............................................................................47 Defining Seduction and Intimacy......................................................54 Seduction in Business.........................................................................59 Summarising the Seduction Process ................................................62 Redefining Intimacy............................................................................64 Corporate Seduction...........................................................................66 Seduction in the Sales Process..........................................................79 What Happens if the Seduction Fails? .............................................82 Summary..............................................................................................87

Chapter 4 - Control and Discipline..........................................94

Overview...............................................................................................94 Why Control and Discipline?..............................................................99 Stories of Discipline and Control.....................................................103 Feelings and Motives During Disciplining ......................................115 Learning from Conflict......................................................................119 Social Influence During Conflict......................................................122 A Second Case...................................................................................124 The Dynamics of Discipline and Control........................................130

Alternative Approaches to Managing Conflict...............................132

Summary............................................................................................141

Chapter 5 – Leaders and Followers......................................145

Introduction .......................................................................................145 The Five Components of Power......................................................154 Bottom Up and Top Down Leaders................................................156 Hazing and Harassment...................................................................163
A Second Case...................................................................................170 Reconsidering the Nature of Leadership.......................................177 Summary............................................................................................179

Chapter 6 – Sexual Conflict................................................... 183

Introduction.......................................................................................183 A Story of Sexual Conflict................................................................184 Confronting the Double-Standard ..................................................204

The Current State of the Gender Equality Debate.......................216

Obstacles to Resolving Sexual Conflicts ........................................219 Are Men ‘Naturally’ Violent? ............................................................221 The “Problem” of Courtship.............................................................226 Summary............................................................................................230

Chapter 7 – Copies Strategies............................................... 236

An Introduction .................................................................................236 The Impacts of Intimacy at Work ..................................................238 Tackling the Intimacy “Problem”....................................................242 The Centrality of Sexuality ..............................................................250 The Case for Change........................................................................255 The Case for Mediation....................................................................258 Reconstructing the Gender Debate................................................261 Leaders, Performers and Followers................................................265

Chapter 8 - Closing Thoughts…............................................ 272

Conclusions........................................................................................272

Appendix A – Body Language................................................274

Introduction .......................................................................................274 Speech Code......................................................................................277 Vocal Code........................................................................................281 Body Language Code........................................................................284 Facial Code.........................................................................................289

Bibliography, References and Recommended Reading......292

For Those With a Casual or Professional Interest........................292 For Those With a Strong or Academic Interest............................294

Introduction

Acknowledgements

All books are collective enterprises with the author taking the lead. This one is no different. My thanks must go to all the people who have touched my life in a way that informs this book, and particularly to those who have read, fed back and argued about its contents with me. I want to take this opportunity to thank you all. Special thanks are due to a number of people.
Firstly, my wife Caroline, who has ridden with me through the ups and downs of life. Her contribution to this book goes far deeper than the words on the page. She has her own stories to tell and hearing them over the years has been integral to my understanding of how relationships in the workplace reach into all parts of our lives.
To Poonam, my muse in business, I owe both a personal and professional debt. On a personal level, she has shown unstinting faith that I am “an honest sort” with something worthwhile to say. On a professional level, she has given tremendous support to the perspectives articulated in my earlier work and this book takes us both closer to making dreams come true.
Professors John Cullen and Phil Johnson deserve a mention for their guidance and insights into the material presented here, particularly with regard to social control and workplace culture. Minna Leinonen pointed me to the work of Jeff Hearn and Wendy Parkin, and followed this by building my confidence by writing with me on gender issues. Her contribution created more balance in my thinking. Stephen Robinson deserves credit for reading and raising issues in the early drafts of Chapters 1-5, while Jane and Andrew Cook’s thoughtful contribution to the discussion on defining seduction more

• positively (Chapter 3) deserves appreciation.
• My

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Emotion, Seduction & Intimacy

children, Natasha and Bethany, allowed me to share stories about our family life in ways that show how deeply our feelings underpin attempts to control or hurt others.
My thanks to Raymond Cuttill for accepting the challenge of first publishing this book. Following the print of 100 copies, an eBook version at Scribd triggered thousands of downloads indicating clear interest in the subject matter of the book. Publishing a text that questions prevailing wisdom on gender issues is a frustrating and occupationally dangerous activity, but in the last five years there has been a discernable change in the media and academia and the evolution of a more open-minded attitude.
My life has been a rich and varied one – there are so many people that I cannot name them all. There are a few friends, however, who I would like to acknowledge for developing my thinking on the matters in this book. My love to: Helen Peters, Richard Churches, Angela Howes, Clare Byrne, Iain and Marianne Carnegie, Sabine Maier, Steve Anscombe, Phil Cole, Karen Smith, Lawrence Clare, Lyndsey Maw, Suzy Brookes and Mike Haywood. For the last few years, I am indebted to professional colleagues at Sheffield Business School, particularly Liz Doherty and Tony Bennett who have provided feedback and support.

ii
Introduction

Setting Out the Terrain

This book is a natural evolution for me after finishing a study on which I worked full-time for three years. It was written to take a break from academic writing but as it developed I found more secrets of life revealing themselves to me and I quickly got hooked. My emotions were fired as everything else stopped to finish the text.
The content of the book is purposely aimed at working people, particularly managers and professionals, who want to understand how seduction and sexuality are continually used to develop the relationships upon which business (and families) depend. It may find favour with a secondary group studying or teaching business, psychology, philosophy, gender studies, governance, sociology, human rights, politics and law.
Life is an endless process of probing and searching for satisfying relationships for the purpose of economic and social gain. We constantly try to seduce each other for different reasons. Beyond seduction to satisfy our sexual desires, there are employers seducing employees (and vice versa), salespeople seducing customers, consultants seducing clients, advertisers seducing consumers, writers seducing readers, musicians seducing listeners, and academics, scientists, religious leaders and politicians presenting seductive versions of “the truth”.
The book contains stories of seduction in the public workplace and the impacts on our private emotions. In marriage, families and committed partnerships, we display our emotions more freely than at work. Learning to cope with them often leads to the most durable and meaningful relationships in our lives. Yet, at work, an “inappropriate” display of emotion can land a person in deep trouble, even result in their sacking or trigger widespread upheaval in the office. It made me question whether our attitude to emotions is actually helping business or hurting it.
I have adopted techniques common in social science to minimise authorial bias. One method is to focus on

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Emotion, Seduction & Intimacy

conversations taking place around us, rather than relying on one-off interviews. Nevertheless, I have my own biases. I write about issues that interest and concern me first and foremost. One purpose of this introduction, therefore, is to set out my concerns to you so that you the reader can assess the extent to which this impacts on what I say in the book.
My own interest is the way emotion and intimacy drives the way we govern each other and to organise ourselves into social groups. By looking at conversations, it is possible to discover that productive relationships, generally, are far more equitable than we realise. Only when one party wants to punish the other do relationships change dramatically. When hostility is triggered, one party cuts off or alters the way they communicate. Sometimes they start shaping situations so they can hurt those who they think have hurt them. When this happens, we discover how power is organised, because one party is usually able to punish “the other” more completely and effectively than the other way around.
The desire to punish is rooted in emotional hurt so a key objective of this book is to show where emotional hurt comes from, and the ways that people punish each other when it occurs. The results, I have no doubt, will shock you and perhaps even rock your world a bit – at least I hope it does. As a consequence, a new debate will develop about techniques to investigate “misbehaviour”, something I consider carefully in the final chapter.

Winning and Losing

In our closest relationships we learn many things: how to let others win as a way of developing their confidence; how to win sometimes so that others learn to deal with the emotions aroused by losing. Learning to establish a balance between winning and losing, and teaching others how to cope with winning and losing, is an experience that is quite different from the “win, win, win” mentality that now pervades workplaces.
Winning is over-rated. Management researchers have long noted the cycle of rapid business success followed by

iv
Introduction

• rapid
• business
• failure.
• Quick
• success
• breeds

overconfidence and arrogance. Moreover, when winning becomes more important than supporting the development of human life, we start to undermine the very people who contribute to our own survival. Sometimes we mindlessly hurt without pause to consider the long-term consequences, then compound the problems by getting angry when others react to our own insensitivity. Forgiveness is a quality much needed, but rarely found, in management thinking, despite the competitive advantage to be gained through its adoption.
Failure is not a blot on our character, because in the process we learn to reflect and develop new ways of thinking. In personal and social environments, failure is the catalyst for profound learning out of which develops

self-awareness, tolerance and competitive advantage.

When those who fail in the workplace are sacked rather than supported, we marginalize the very people who are in the midst of learning the most and who potentially

• have the most to contribute to the future.
• It is this

realisation that has fuelled an interest in the link between ‘no blame’ management cultures and commercial success¹.

The Story So Far…

Interest in emotion was fuelled by the runaway success of Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence.² As is the case with many popular psychology books, Goleman tends to view emotion as a product of genetic inheritance and upbringing. Branches of academia, such as cognitive and evolutionary psychology, also accept this presumption to understand ‘personality’.
In the social sciences (including business studies) the seminal works on emotion take a different view. In Stephen Fineman’s writings, for example, emotion is seen as a outcome of group life, something that is triggered by changes in our social status and relationships.³ This theme has been picked up by some psychiatrists, such as

William Glasser in Choice Theory.⁴

When people are asked to talk about emotions at work, they do not – unless prompted by researchers or

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Emotion, Seduction & Intimacy

managers – talk about “job satisfaction” or a desire for “self-fulfilment”. relationships with work colleagues, family and friends. What matters in assessing person’s emotional
Instead they talk about their abehaviour, therefore, is the situation in the here and now, not what happened 10 or 20 years ago. The past may influence the way a person understands and deals with the present, but the problem to be solved – the feelings that are being experienced – are in the present situation, not the past.
Arlene Hochschild has documented another feature of emotional life at work - the way we are encouraged to adopt emotions when we interact with work colleagues,

• managers, clients, customers and suppliers.⁵
• Her

concepts link back to Daniel Goleman but have a different slant. What Goleman calls ‘emotional intelligence’ Hochschild regards as ‘emotional labour’. Unlike Goleman, who argues that emotional intelligence is beneficial to us as human beings, Hochschild brings out another aspect: constantly pretending or withholding emotions undermines our sense of self, affects our physical health and undermines our capacity to act morally.
In my own research,⁶ I show how emotional skills – however we label them - take individuals into the heart of complex social networks. Whether in business or politics, in love triangles or large families, we are drawn to those who trigger positive emotions in us, and we consider them more desirable and trustworthy. People find themselves, whether by their own design, or the manoeuvrings of others, embedded in complex and intimate relationships. The way people handle this is an important dimension of leadership but it is rarely discussed as a management topic.
My own contribution, therefore, was to demonstrate scientifically how company governance practices, and the development of social structures at work, are partly rooted in the way we handle intimacy and emotionality. Courtship rituals, and our interests as parents, influence the development of workplace hierarchies. They have an impact that compares to market-forces, legal regulations and company rules.

vi
Introduction

Another couple who confront the issue of intimacy are
Andrew and Nada Kakabadse.⁷ They found that intimacy at work is a common experience, and the benefits are astonishingly enduring, often lasting a life-time. After my own study into workplace culture, I returned to their work and the stories had an even more profound effect on me. The insights that developed in second reading take form and expression in these pages. In their conclusions, the Kakabadses talk of a need for people at work, particularly managers, to develop greater sensitivity so they can handle intimacy and emotionality more effectively. This recommendation was underpinned by a survey finding that only 11% of people at work think relationship issues are handled well, and that only 2% believe that policy-based approaches to sexual conflict make a positive contribution.
The recent legislative attempts to bring about improvements in behaviour by making employers responsible for equality are – in the eyes of some – making matters much worse. Does it make sense to make managers legally responsible for preventing the accidental upset of people at work? A person who accidentally upsets another can now be sacked if it can be shown that the effect of their behaviour was intimidating (even if unintended). Managers can be found guilty of failing to prevent a hostile environment if they do not remove a person who accidentally causes another distress.
As I show in this book, a person’s motive may be to show care for another person or to debate discrimination

• issues affecting their own workplace, or just
• a

straightforward positive response to the other’s obvious interest. The result of legislative change is that we are developing a culture that frustrates the pursuit of equality by outlawing the emotionality of intimacy and debate. In effect, we are knowingly or unknowingly making democracy illegal.
At the same time, our world is increasingly driven by intolerance. In politics, we see world leaders ordering troops into Iraq justified, not on the basis of credible evidence of a threat to our nation, but to assuage the fears and suspicions of our leaders. Riots erupt the world over