Stacey - the Professional Dancer

Bruises and blood rushes: Physical demands and the emotional roller coaster of a professional dancer

Stacey scored her job as 7.5/10 (ten being the most enjoyable job you can imagine).

by Florian Klonek

Stacey has been dancing since the age of 5 years. Trained in ballet, jazz, and acrobatics, she was a professional dancer for many years. It is a job with gruelling levels of physical demands.” [1] Stacey reported, “You cannot do it your whole life. Dance is not sustainable”. Once when Stacey was working professionally, she was hospitalised for exhaustion after a very intense weekend of performing. Shortly after the gig, her heart rate was at a dangerously low level and she was diagnosed with “adrenal fatigue”.“Obviously, your body can run out of adrenaline”, comments Stacey wryly.

The job of a professional dancer is not just physically gruelling, but also emotionally demanding. Dancers often face extreme criticism from their managers, sometimes effectively constituting what researches refer to as ‘abusive supervision’ [2]. Stacey observed: “You do get put down a lot for the way you look, the way your body looks… Your getting constantly drilled and told how shit you are and how bad you are (…)”. Working as a dancer – because of the long hours, the need to work nights and weekends, and the income variability – can also create home and family pressures. As Stacey described:

 “You can’t really be in a relationship and when you are, it does affect your training - because you just want to sit on a couch with your boyfriend and watch a movie -  and it will also affect your boyfriend - because when he asks you to do something on the weekend, you have to work.” 

A lot of her friends who have been doing this job for several years are single, which Stacey attributed to the demands of the work: “They go hard. There are days when they are literally in “a dark place” but they do it for that rush when they are performing”.

So how does one survive such high levels of job demands? How and why does a person stick at such a tough job? For Stacey, a lot of it comes down to her sheer love of dance: “With dance - I could just go on. The feeling is indescribable - When I am on stage in front of an audience… It gives me so much adrenalin. And so much... I just love it to bits”.Indeed, the tough times intermingled with performance highs to create an a “rollercoaster lifestyle.. During the week I’ll be like: ‘Oh I am such a bad dancer, this is so hard.’ And then during the weekend … I was thinking: ‘wow, I love the stage! This is so amazing!’ There was no day-to-day routine. It was more like ‘I am sad’, then ‘I am over-the-top happy’, then ‘sad again’. It is kind of bad for your mental health.“  In the end, Stacey’s passion for dance outweighed the demands, as shown by her rating of the job as a 7.5 out of 10. 

What also helped Stacey was her resilience (a person’s ability to bounce back from adverse events). In fact, the work characteristics of dancers rate #1 with respect to the extent to which this job requires resilience [2]. Stacey observed that over time, her ability to bounce-back increased:

"You become really thick skinned... over time you just become a little bit numb and you just become stronger…. if, now, someone said really mean things to me, I am not bothered by it." 

Not everyone, however, is able to develop the necessary resilience. “Some dancers …. will go off to teaching – the ones that can’t emotionally handle the pressure..” Such dropout effect is mirrored in the academic perspective on the work characteristics of dancers: 

“the design of work can foster resilience by fostering positive connections between emotional, cognitive, and physical self. If one trigger (e.g. physical) gets out of whack (e.g. mandated starvation diet for models, injury for dancers, hand abrasions for artists), it is unlikely over the long run that the individual will perform well or experience well-being on and off the job.” [2] (p. 760)

In Stacey’s case, the trigger that got out of whack was a physical one. A serious leg injury forced her to stop work as a professional dancer. Fortunately though, Stacey had a contingency plan. She had always been aware that professional dancing is rarely a job for life: “I have always had other jobs on the side because you are relying on your body. And sometimes your body can’t take it anymore - it is good to have a backup plan.” 

Now Stacey works about half of the time as a dance teacher and the other half as a baker. Just occasionally, because the passion is still there, she revisits her past to take a booking as a performer. But, these days, she limits her professional dancing “to stay healthy”. 

“Get the hell off the stage!!” A bit of ‘harmless’ pushing to get the job done or abusive supervision?

An important negative aspect that Stacey identified in her job as a professional dancer is the way in which some artistic directors treat dancers. Artistic directors can be highly confrontational, ruthless and “straight-out mean”. Stacey described an event in which she had to jump into a routine as an understudy. Because she was struggling with the routine, the artistic directors started yelling at her - ‘Get the hell off stage! What are you doing? We have a gig in one hour. That (dancing) is shocking!’. Injury is no protection from the abuse: “You get criticized when you are injured and literally cannot use your leg because you are so much in pain”. 

Stacey’s descriptions of artistic directors relates to the concept of abusive supervision, defined as the extent to which followers perceive that their supervisor engages in ‘sustained display of hostile verbal and/ or nonverbal behaviours’ [3] . Sometimes, supervisors might actually be trying “to elicit high performance or to send the message that mistakes will not be tolerated” (p. 265). But irrespective of the supervisor’s motive or intent, if the behavior causes harm and is repeated, then the supervisor’s behavior is likely to classify as abusive. 

Abusive supervision has severe negative consequences for those on the receiving end. These include decreased job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion, workplace deviance, job strain, and even aggression directed towards the supervisor )[4]. These negative consequences are reflected in how Stacey dealt with these situations. The comments of her artistic director affected her psychological well-being: “Sometimes, I didn’t cope with it, I crumble, go home and just… hide.”.  The abusive behaviour also impaired her job performance:

“You start second-guessing yourself because you think: Ok – I need to think about this better. But then your musicality is off because you are not actually listening to the music. (…) To me a good director – is someone who does not completely kill someone’s confidence. ... Is this making the dancers dance better? I don’t think so. … It is counterproductive”. 

One job resource that helped Stacey to deal with the supervisor criticism was the support of her dance team members. Her colleagues helped her to cope with the situation and sympathized with her by saying “He is an idiot. He just talked to me like this yesterday”. Several research studies confirm that co-worker support can attenuate the negative effect of abusive supervision on employee well-being [5] , although there is one study suggesting caution. This latter study showed that – when the support serves to remind the victim of the unpleasant experience - support from co-worker can actually make abusive supervision worse [6].

Research on abusive supervision also indicates that some industries (i.e., healthcare and military) might be particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon – probably because these are industries that require extreme levels of commitment. For example, in the military, workers can experience behaviors like hazing or exposure to humiliating language. “The logic associated with these practices is that the process of humbling and stripping away the self-confidence of newcomers sets the stage for strong identification with the organization”. [3] 

While this phenomenon has been described in the military, we can only speculate if abusive supervision is especially prevalent in the performing arts arena, such as dancing. Stacey’s experience suggests it might well be. And if it is, rather than building strong commitment to the job, such cruel behavior is actually more likely to cause talented dancers to leave the profession prematurely. As Stacey recalled some dancers “just walk away as its simply too tough”.

References

[1] Physical demands refer to the “ level of physical activity or effort required in the job, the physical strength, endurance, effort, and activity aspects of the job“. See Humphrey, S. E., Nahrgang, J. D., & Morgeson, F. P. (2007). Integrating motivational, social, and contextual work design features: a meta-analytic summary and theoretical extension of the work design literature. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(5), 1332.

[2] Kossek, E. E., & Perrigino, M. B. (2016). Resilience: A review using a grounded integrated occupational approach. The Academy of Management Annals, 10(1), 729-797.

[3] Tepper, B. J. (2000). Consequences of abusive supervision. Academy of Management Journal, 43: 178-190. 

[4] Tepper, B. J. (2007). Abusive supervision in work organizations: Review, synthesis, and research agenda. Journal of Management, 33(3), 261-289. 

[5] For example, see: Hobman, E. V., Restubog, S. L. D., Bordia, P., & Tang, R. L. (2009). Abusive supervision in advising relationships: Investigating the role of social support. Applied Psychology, 58(2), 233-256. 

[6] Wu, T., & Hu, C. (2009). Abusive supervision and employee emotional exhaustion: Dispositional antecedents and boundaries. Group Organization Management, 34, 143–169

Demanding Work of Spa Treatments

Tradies are Not the Only Manual Labourers: The Physically Demanding Work of Spa Treatments

Julianna scored her job 10/10 (ten being the most enjoyable job you can imagine).

by MK Ward

Julianna is a beauty therapist and the owner of Limon Health & Beauty Spa. She founded the business and answered our questions about how much effort she had to exert to create an effortlessly, relaxing experience for clients.

“People prefer to book with the owner so I’m 90% booked all the time, working 8-11 hours a day. At first I didn’t take a lunch break and would eat fast between appointments. My stomach said no, so I have half hour lunch breaks now.”

We see that physical demands of Julianna’s work context were too high at first. Even entrepreneurs need to eat! Sometimes loving the work can mean work engagement so high that it can be easy to forget to replenish your resources (e.g., eat, drink, take a walk) to meet the physical demands of a job. Yet it is critical for those who are highly engaged to adjust the work (just as Julianna protects her lunch break), to help them meet the demands of the job.

The physical demands of the job extend to the back due to hours spent bending over and/or massaging. These demands make it important to keep employees safe and healthy through ergonomics, equipment, and minimizing risks of accidents. This means paying attention to the physical environment as well as training employees.  

“I do have to keep up my back to strengthen it, and most girls here get back troubles because in beauty school here they don’t spend enough time on posture and back strengthening to properly do it and prevent injury.”

Although Julianna has given hundreds of facials, she says her work does not feel repetitive. Her expertise gives her a more nuanced view of the treatments, saying that waxing for different body parts gives plenty of task variety. The different conversational preferences of clients, perhaps add to the level of perceived task variety. Thus, social characteristics of work can influence our perceptions of task characteristics, in this case, for the better.

Three Work Design Essentials When Your Job is to Produce

Care-free Experiences for Clients

Julianna, owner of Limon Health & Beauty Spa, knows from experience that three work design elements are essential parts of providing top-notch spa experiences to clients.

1. Emotion Regulation of Yourself and Others

 

As a service provider, clients’ perceptions of the experience are important. However, the better you are at inspiring relaxation, the more comfortable clients feel to release all of the stressors in their lives. In many instances, this means sharing deeply stressful and personal life events.

“I do feel sometimes like I’m a psychologist when they ask, well, what would you have done? You have to pick up on if people just like talking, if they want you to say something or not. You also have to treat everyone from scratch so just because something happened to me, I’m not going to be rude to you as a result. Obviously as a beautician my life is perfect and I don’t have any issues to deal with at all.”

Tongue in cheek humour aside, Julianna has intuitively picked up on the importance of emotion regulation in the service industry, including day spas. Emotion regulation generally refers to how people manage emotional experiences, which can include talking about them or not. Social emotion regulation, managing others’ emotional experiences, is something we can see as essential to service businesses. Emotions influence the interpretation of an experience, and emotions spread among people. Emotional contagion, the spread of emotional states from one person to another, occurs in all workplaces including spas. Managing your own and others emotions are a type of work demand and part of the experience of the jobs employees perform.

2. Scheduling autonomy

Unlike most entrepreneurs, autonomy in the work was not as prominent in Julianna’s answers compared to her passion for providing health and beauty treatments to clients. Scheduling autonomy doesn’t exist in this type of business where you must be open during times that are convenient for customers. This also means staying on time during treatments, so meta-cognition is needed for an accurate time perspective is important to prevent frequent interruptions to check the time.

 

3. Feedback from Others

The devil is in the details to create and maintain a successful spa. You need to care and pay attention to the physical appearance of the space, the people, and the words used as well as how they’re spoken—and for good reason too.

“If you get negative feedback, that client will tell 10 other people. That negativity isn’t needed, there’s enough out there, so we try to keep it positive.”

The feedback that is fed directly back to Julianna comes from their appointment system, where she can see who returns and rebooks with them. She also checks online reviews. Technology makes much of the positive feedback visible.

Emotional demands, scheduling autonomy, and feedback are three work design elements that influence the customer experiences that service providers and entrepreneurs like Julianna create.

Adeib - The Airtasker

Airtasker Innovative Platform or vehicle for 'cowboy tradies'?

Adeib scored his job as 9/10 (with ten being the most fantastic job imaginable).

Adeib is a young computer science student from Afghanistan. He’s been doing airtasker[1] odd-jobs tasks part-time for about 3 months now, alongside his courier job and his studies.

Like other gig work, airtasker work is contentious. A recent ABC news story[2] described how the Airtasker site results in ‘cowboy tradies’ carrying out unsafe jobs, such as removing asbestos with insufficient protection or doing electrical tasks without qualifications.

And analysts have criticized Airtasker’s lack of essential employee protections, such as insurance, superannuation, and minimum pay rates[3], resulting in worker exploitation.

Unscrupulous clients

Certainly exploitation does happen. Adeib described how he accepted the job of moving a couch upstairs. When he turned up to do the work, there were five couches to move. Adeib didn’t insist that the client pay extra at the time, but he advises clients “next time just tell the truth…we just want to help”.

Airtasker’s rating system fuels the potential for exploitation. As Adeib described, “Good reviews are very important because they affect future work”. The fear of a bad rating prevents some airtaskers from chastising untruthful clients.

So far, in terms of ratings, Adeib is doing well: He has 22 reviews, with an overall score of 4.7 stars out of five (see below).

​Figure 1: Screenshot showing Adeib’s overall ratings, plus his review from me

Bad ratings

But sometimes the reviews can seem unfair, and there is little recourse. Adeib described his one star rating:

I got a bad rating moving a heavy fridge. The husband was drunk. He tried to tell my friend and I that we couldn’t move the fridge with the ute we had. We said, “ok, we don’t want to do it”. He said “you are here now, do it”.  The fridge got a dent and then they (the clients) put a bad rating and didn’t want to pay… Airtasker got involved. The client had to pay, but not as much, so I got paid less. Sometimes people are difficult.

The client, unsurprisingly, has a different view of what happened (see Figure 2). It is difficult to know where the truth lies, although perhaps a clue is how at odds the fridge-moving client’s view is with the other 21 reviews.

Figure 2: Feedback for Adeib from the fridge-moving task

A chance for skill development

In spite of these challenges, so far – just three months into the work – Adeib enjoys his airtasker work, rating it 9 out of 10. He welcomes using the skills his construction-engineer father in Afghanistan taught him. He likes the interaction with (most) clients. And he appreciates developing new skills, such as how he has learnt about gardening through helping out his airtasking friend.

Adeib even feels airtask work is reasonably well paid “most of the time”, although he feels that Airtasker’s 15% cut is “too much”.  Indeed, the Holy Grail for Adeib is when the airtasker job leads to more lucrative cash jobs, directly negotiated with the client.

So far Adeib is a happy airtasker worker. And with his almost-five star rating, and his success rate in getting work (estimating he gets “about 60% of the jobs he goes for”), perhaps this positive experience will continue. So long as he can stay away from ladies with lots of couches and drunk husbands...

References

[1] Airtasker is a service platform in which consumers advertise a task (with a suggested fee), workers then bid for the work, the client allocates the work to their preferred airtasker, and then, after it is completed, the client releases payment and rates the quality of the work. See airtasker.com

[2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-09/unions-raise-safety-concerns-over-gig-economy-cowboys/9529736

[3]https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Education_and_Employment/AvoidanceofFair/Work/Report

Behind the scenes

by Sharon Parker

Adeib came to my house to assemble IKEA furniture. I estimated it was 3 hours work and offered $100, using Airtasker’s suggested guide for an hourly rate. In suggesting this amount, I must admit I didn’t think at all that airtasker would take a cut (obvious in hindsight). It feels to me like Airtasker should be clear about their fee so clients can take that into account when costing the work.

After I posted the task, six airtaskers responded within about ten minutes. I chose Adeib because his price was in line with what I expected (he wasn’t the cheapest nor the most expensive) and he had good ratings. I felt mean not choosing the other fast-responding airtaskers, especially with their pleas for the job: “I am the best person to help you” and “Please assign me”.

Adeib was a gentle young man, a little overwhelmed by the whole experience of having a professor wanting to interview him whilst an artist sketches him! But he was obliging. I just tried to avoid asking questions when he was reading the instructions (Ikea instructions being as they are!). We talked about his job, how he came to Australia (a sponsored visa because of some volunteer work with the Australian defence force in Afghanistan), his family, and his country. He very much appreciates being in Australia, and having the chance to study.

As it turned out, the furniture assembly took longer than I had expected (almost certainly slowed down by me asking Adeib questions) so I increased Adeib’s payment on the Airtasker platform and gave him a small cash tip. I had a struggle “releasing the payment” through Airtasker (this has happened before) - stressful because I wanted to pay Adeib straight away. I wrote to Airtasker to get them to release the payment, which took a couple of days. At last the payment went through. I then rated Adeib (5/5) and he rated me (5/5).

Adeib seems to be a hardworking and conscientious young man. Strangely, I will be able “watch” his progress through airtasker: how much work he gets, his ratings and reviews, and how long he lasts on the platform.