Drawing from the theories on emotion management, the current research attempts to provide insights on the role of mentoring relationships in helping employees manage their emotions during customer interactions. While, the past decade has witnessed the increased focus of researchers and practitioners in demonstrating the prominent impact of mentoring in governing individual and organizational outcomes (Sun, Pan & Chow, 2014; Arora & Rangnekar, 2015; Blake-Beard et al., 2017); there has been scarcity of scholarly work that recognizes the pivotal role of workplace mentoring in influencing employee’s positive display of emotions and their emotional labor. Feeling
rules (what to feel), display rules (what to express), and behavioral rules (how to act in given situations) tend to reflect patterns of group membership or group status (Hochschild, 1983). Some rules may be nearly universal, whereas other rules are unique to particular social groups. Emotions can be successfully used as a tool to manage the demands of customers (Bhave & Glomb, 2016). In this regard, mentors can greatly help protégés in overcoming stress arising out of their work roles as well as in dealing with difficult situations at ease. Mentors’ can equip them with emotion management skills as well as for deploying different strategies for quality customer service through speaking in a friendly tone, maintaining eye contact, adjusting emotions, shifting one’s focus and 3 encouraging reciprocal emotion management among coworkers (Diefendorff & Gosserand, 2003; Lively, 2000). For example, flight personnel in the airline industry are trained to cope up with impatient customers who face challenges of running late for a flight, waiting for long for the security check process by exposing them through emotionally charged counters for longer duration (Lee et al., 2017). Additionally, flight attendants are encouraged to do reciprocal emotion management among coworkers as they are more likely to be bullied by passengers (Lively, 2000). Mentoring employees’ for managing emotional labor is equally important considering its significant
implications for employees’ outcomes such as job satisfaction, turnover intention, stress, emotional exhaustion and overall well-being (Mishra, 2014).