May 17th, 2012
Do you work in an organization that demands your physical presence yet resists your emotional presence?
You can maybe be fired from your job for not being physically present … and also punished (implicitly or explicitly) for being too emotionally present?
Interesting.
And costly.
Emotions fuel motivation and behavior. We talk all day long about people’s motivations and behaviors, yet act like emotions have no place at work.
This is another indicator to me that a great deal of how we do work and organization and management is incongruent with our growing understanding of human beings and how human beings create value together.
We have to stop tip-toeing around a model of management that is too shallow and inauthentic to integrate the reality of emotion.
Emotions are dismissed as being too “touchy-feely” for work; they are “soft” and “irrational.” In reality, emotion is a big part of the truth. It is our management models incapable of embracing emotion that are actually irrational and at odds with reality.
We are emotional beings. We are emotional, and emotions are good. Feelings have value. And whatever the opposite of value is? That is what we get from the repression of emotions. How do we not understand this yet?
Much of what we refer to as organizational politics exists as a way to hold emotions at a distance. It allows us to move around things on the outside without dealing straight on with emotion. We have invented language and unwritten rules of behavior that are emotion-neutral. We say things to each other like, “Nothing personal, it’s just business.” We pretend like the people we work with are robots because that makes the task of management less complicated.
Do your emotions make it to work with you?
At the next meeting that you participate in, pay attention to whether anyone mentions emotions or how they feel about any of the issues being discussed.
You and your organization are likely being wasteful and reckless with one of the most potent “human resources” of all.
Be good to each other.
Joe!
I love, love, LOVE this post! I am a person with emotions and I have seen and learned throughout my career that emotions don’t belong in the workplace, unless we are high-fiving about a job well done and happy.
It’s kind of like that line from a movie a while back “There’s no crying in baseball!” only here at work we are expected to be super professional and many things reinforce that. Remember this line from a commercial “Never let them see you sweat.” Sure it was for a deodorant/antiperspirant, but the message I feel is the same. Keep your self in check, don’t show nerves, stress, sadness, etc.
Now that I think about it… maybe this mostly applies to emotions that are perceived as negative or weaknesses (crying).
But, yeah, let’s talk about feelings. We all have them!
Good thoughts there sir. I was thinking about my current experience with Starbucks and how they have a work/life balance model… though I still feel like emotions outside of “Happy” and “Bubbly” are discouraged.
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Joe,
I couldn’t agree with you more.
Our organizations in the main our not a safe place for our emotions.
At work we are reading a book together by Maria Nemath.
She notes the work of the “monkey” in the mind.
While I would whole-heartedly agree that organizations need to be places that value human emotion, I would also add that as professionals we need to understand “the chatter” working in our minds. We need to understand the difference between legitimate feelings and the “chatter” of the monkey saying, “You’re not good enough” or “She’s smarter than you are.” As professionals we have a role to play in our personal development and so does the community (the players at the workplace). When real issues arise that being negative emotions, as you noted, real, positive places of employment will value both the feelings of their players as well as think strategically to assure that the situations that brought on the negative feelings are eradicated or at least managed.