EVALUATING WORKPLACE SPINNING AND EMOTIONAL TORNADOS

The effects of emotions in the workplace are significant and measurable. There is not a strong or long history of evaluating the effects of misplaced emotions in the workplace. Research is just beginning to ask the right questions. Feelings have been diminished in value to an extreme. Companies continue to spend millions of dollars evaluating tasks , performance productivity, IT security, competitive market strategies, ergonomic furniture, and customer service and still spend little or nothing on how people are feeling at work. Eventually research will catch up and prove its worth ” but, in the meantime, managers have to convince themselves and others that emotions are a risk that employers need to consider.

Evaluating workplace emotions and more specifically , emotional spinning in its overt and covert expressions is no different than measuring other "intangibles" in the universe. The work begins subjectively and includes empirical data. Most scientific endeavors begin with a feeling, hunch, idea, hypothesis, belief, or partial observation that requires data to be complete. Only a few decades ago, scientists were unable to evaluate or measure many things we now take for granted. Evaluation starts when someone has a question and then gets an idea about how to measure it in order to answer the original question. Thus begins a rather tedious process of developing standards and practices, tests and measurements, assessments and evaluations. Although we are far from having an Emotion-o-Meter, (thank goodness!) science has come to standardize other important life-saving information through thorough and thoughtful evaluations, tests, tools, measuring devices, and is now able to make some generally consistent predictions .

Only a few decades of science and advocacy has produced the wonder of measuring and assessing such variables as: (1) fevers, with a thermometer; (2) elevated blood pressure, with a sphygmomanometer; (3) earthquakes, with a Seismograph; and, (4) blood glucose , with a glucometer. But some effects of nature do not so easily lend themselves to physical tools and measurements so they have needed other means of measurement. Science is constantly evolving ways to effectively assess such intangibles as intelligence, learning, personality, anxiety, trauma, and joy. Other methods used to evaluate and predict visible and invisible effects are comparative scales and graphs. One such tool is used extensively in tornado evaluations. It is called The Fujita Scale .

Ted Fujita and Allen Pearson were scientists who wanted to predict and evaluate the activities of tornadoes. Prior to 1971, weather experts used a variety of means to try to measure and describe tornadoes. Now experts use the Fujita Scale (also known as the Fujita-Pearson Scale) as a way of linking damage risks to wind speed. It is an easy, simple and accessible tool to use for describing and categorizing tornadoes. Fujita and Pearson organized the size of tornadoes into categories from F-0 to F-6, determined by the amount of their damage potential.

The following is a basic interpretation of the now well-accepted and used scale:

THE FUJITA-PEARSON SCALE ( adapted from www.disastercenter.com )

F-0 Gale tornado 40 “72 m.p.h.	Damage to brick structures such as chimneys; breaks tree branches and limbs ; pushes over shallow -rooted trees; damages billboards
F-1 Moderate tornado 73 “112 m.p.h.	Peels surface off some roofs; mobile homes moved from foundations or overturned; blows moving autos off roads ; may destroy attached garages and outbuildings
F-2 Significant tornado 113 “157 m.p.h.	Tears roofs off frame houses ; mobile homes and boxcars demolished; large trees snapped or uprooted; makes light objects act like missiles flying through the air
F-3 Severe tornado 158 “206 m.p.h.	Roofs and walls are torn off well- constructed houses; trains can be blown off tracks or overturned; trees can be uprooted
F-4 Devastating tornado 207 “260 m.p.h.	Can level well-constructed houses, structures with weak foundations can be blown some distance; cars can be thrown with other large objects that become flying missiles.
F-5 Incredible tornado 261 “318 m.p.h.	Strong frame houses can be lifted off their foundations and carried considerable distances to disintegrate; automobile sized missiles can fly through the air in excess of 100 meters ; trees become debarked; steel reinforced concrete structures are badly damaged.
F-6 Inconceivable tornado 319 “379 m.p.h.	This force is unlikely . The small area of damage they might produce would probably not be recognizable along with the mess produced by F-4 and F-5 winds that would surround the F-6 winds. Missiles, such as cars and refrigerators would do serious secondary damage that could not be directly identified as F-6 damage. If this level is ever achieved, evidence for it might only be found in some manner of ground swirl pattern, for it may never be identifiable through engineering studies.

Even an F-0 tornado has structure, substance and merit. It causes damage. The tornado is a natural event. What it does to living things is simple: it destroys. A tornado has no conscience, nor does it necessarily have evil intent. The damage it does, however, can be significant and have long- term impact on the victims and survivors in its path .

What if an F-1 tornado ran smack dab into another F-1 tornado? Would an F-2 be created? If an F-2 joined another F-2 might an F-4 be a potential risk? Add more energy and force and, before long, you have a big, fat, nasty F-5 tornado with significant destruction potential and collateral damage risk. It makes sense to hit the basement cellar if tornadoes began to clump together and combine forces.

There is another, smaller tornadic process which is euphemistically called a dust- devil or whirlwind . These small gusts and breezes rarely cause significant damage and require little or no attention. They are not significant although they can blow your hairdo a bit, rearrange napkins during a picnic, or cause a few weepy eyes with their dust. They are worth mentioning in any discussion of wind. How many little dust-devil breezes does it take to make a gust? How many gusts make an F-1? What level of wind force creates damage?

Now, translate that wind into an analogy to discuss emotional energy. What is an emotional dust devil? Gust? Gale? Tornado? How much emotional wind at the work site will it take to create chaos? Carnage? What level emotional force can temporarily annoy productivity and what level can level it into rubble ? What can your company manage?