Ignoring Emotions at Work is not Human

Because we are all humans, we have emotions. And making us working doesn’t change the fact that we have feelings. These feelings concern both our personal life and work life. The issue is that when you look on the internet some researches about feelings at work, you only find articles about how to manage your feelings at work. They explain you that you should go for a walk if you are stressed or try to find something positive about a situation if you are frustrated. Thanks for the advice!

Instead of helping you, they basically tell you that you need to do something about your emotions because it’s not normal and not appropriate at work! The article of one website titles “ controlling your feelings…before they control you” and the first sentence of the article is a quote from Viktor Frankl : “ Everything can be taken from a man but the last of human freedoms _ the ability to choose one’s attitude is a given set of circumstances, to choose one’s way”. Basically, you are responsible of your emotions and handling with it is also your responsibility.

The main reason is that in a company, we ask employees to be productive and effective and we don’t need a master degree in psychology to guess that when someone is frustrated at work his productivity and efficiency is decreasing. That’s why some researches point out the necessity to handle with these emotions. I liked the vision of John Sporleder about handling with employees’ emotions that says:

“Compassion and motivation are not at opposite ends of the same spectrum. One does not need to be sacrified for the sake of the other (…) It is better to think of performance and employee emotions as complimentary to one another”.

The only problem with this way of thinking is that emotions are immediately related to business and performance. From my personal point of view, I much more prefer how Anne Kreamer tackles the question. First, she wanted to understand what an emotion was, physically speaking: an hardwired biological regulatory function. It’s a natural hormonal reaction to stress or danger like muscles.

Here is a video of Anne Kreamer who explain us how to handle with someone who start crying in front of you in the office. She says that tears are natural and always mean something. It can be basic tears (for dry eyes), reflect tears (something in your eyes) or emotional tears like joy, frustration and anger. Most important, crying doesn’t mean you are weak or inferior, especially for women who cry more because the amount of hormones is different. Judging tears leads nowhere.

If you haven’t seen the video, here are the 4 main suggestions to handle with tears at the office:

1)      Remember tears are a biological reaction

2)      Acknowledge the tears and don’t just ignore them

3)      Offer a tissue to introduce a discussion

4)      Recognize tears communicate a problem

Emotions should not be always treated as an issue for performance and productivity but definitely as a way to understand what is going wrong in the organization or at a job position. Take time to understand what is happening will bring you much more on the long term.