Teaching Workplace Well-being Through the Lens of Professional Communication

This session presents a research-informed exercise that foregrounds professional communication as central to teaching workplace well-being in management education. Drawing on conversation analysis and elements of the Conversation Analytic Role-Play Method (CARM), the exercise uses a published study of authentic performance appraisal interviews in Sweden to examine how managers and employees address stress in real time. Participants analyze excerpts to identify dilemmas shaped by communicative structures and organizational norms of idealized professionalism and resilience. The session develops language awareness as a critical managerial skill and demonstrates how empirical communication research can be integrated into undergraduate and graduate management courses.