Emotions are part of being human — they’re proof that we’re experiencing the richness and complexities life has to offer. So, it’s normal that they come with us to work, especially where expectations run high and resources low. At the same time, the workplace is a professional setting and not all emotions or expressions of them are appropriate.
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Whether you’re an employee or a supervisor, it’s important to understand how to manage emotions in the workplace. Author Anne Kreamer and communications expert Jodi Glickman explain why an emotion-free workplace is unrealistic and how to handle work stress appropriately.
Skip the superhuman act
Randomized trial of cognitive-behavioral and interpersonal prevention programs. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 75 (5), 693-706. Social skills training for students with emotional and behavioral disorders: A review of reviews. Behavioral Disorders, 32 (1), 5-17.
The right therapist can help individuals build social skills and connect with others. Therapy can also help people recover from the effects of isolation. Emotional isolation can occur due to. The few studies with resistance training and flexibility have actually shown a slight increase in anxiety, but more research in this area is warranted. In regards to the actual aerobic exercise prescription, there appears to be much debate as to whether low-intensity (40-50% maximum heart rate MHR), moderate intensity (50-60% MHR), or high.
The demands of running a business or a department — personnel issues, budgets, expectations, deadlines — can often be overwhelming. As a manager, there’s also added pressure to maintain a management style that keeps a lid on emotions.
“I think a lot of us feel like we have to put on some kind of armor when we come into the workforce,” says Kreamer, “but, really, no one likes to work for Mr. or Miss Perfect.” With regard to managers and emotions, she explains that:
- Managers who are honest about their struggles will earn extra employee loyalty and trust.
- When your team knows that you’re under pressure to accomplish something, they’re better able to help you in the way you need them to.
- Keeping your emotions bottled up only to explode at the 11th hour, isn’t fair to your employees.
However, this doesn’t mean you should fly off the handle at the drop of a hat or complain to your employees about upper management. It just means that it’s ok to show some emotion and expressing feelings of stress or frustration.
Emotions and gender
In researching her book on emotions in the workplace, Kreamer discovered that women cry nearly four times as often as men. And why wouldn’t they? “Women have six times the amount of prolactin (the hormone that controls tears) than men do and our tear ducts are significantly larger,” she says. On the other hand, men are more likely than women to get aggressive and violent when they get angry.
Whether someone’s emotions are expressed through tears, a raised voice, or worse, their behavior should not be ignored. As Kramer notes, these expressions are the workplace equivalent of a “check engine” sign. They point to the fact that someone is overworked, sick, angry, frustrated, etc. Rather than seeing tears or emotions as a sign of weakness, we should simply take them as a cue to address the underlying issue.
Both Kreamer and Glickman see this as an area where great managers can really set themselves apart by approaching emotions as something healthy for business. Kreamer believes that “profound social changes, in tandem with the new scientific insights into the ways each gender operates, will transform the future of interpersonal dynamics on the job.”
Investigate the triggers
For Kreamer, managing emotions in the workplace starts well before the geyser erupts. Rather than “forced empathy,” she encourages supervisors to go deeper and look for what is triggering an employee’s emotional behavior in the first place. This positions you to deal with issues at their root level, which also helps you prevent an outburst in the future.
Kreamer also notes that managers should look for the same emotional triggers in themselves that they do in employees. Having that level of self-awareness allows you to better understand when you’re feeling overwhelmed, how you got there, and how to manage it.
Managing employee emotions in the workplace
That said, we all know things can get overly heated in the office at times. According to Glickman, the goal isn’t to pretend the emotions aren’t there, but to step in and help the employee gain composure. Some tips she recommends in dealing with an emotional employee include:
- If they look like they’re going to lose it, suggest that they take a break or a walk to get some air and clear their head.
- Allow them to get some distance from the situation to cool off and then ask to continue the discussion when things have calmed.
- Look beyond accusations and focus on intentions — acknowledging good intentions or efforts and pointing to the solution.
- Share concrete suggestions for improving the process going forward.
Glickman, who served as a manager on Wall Street, says the key to handling emotions in the workplace is to deal with them swiftly, but without making the other person feel attacked or threatened. “You should be clear about what’s being objected to or criticized but, typically, it’s the outcome, not the process,” she says.
Managing your own emotions at work
While emotions can help reveal problems which need solving, Glickman says that if you feel yourself getting overly emotional, it’s still best to head for the door. Instead of crying or creating an awkward, uncomfortable scene, let others know you need to take a break or burn off steam. As Glickman explains, “I don’t see the benefit in actually having that breakdown in front of others.”
Emotions and recruiting
Rarely do managers want to hire an automaton with no feelings. On the other hand, it would be great to avoid employees with the emotional maturity of a tantrum-throwing three-year-old. Perfection lies in the balance. Let Monster help. Sign up for Monster Hiring Solutions to receive expert recruiting advice, information on the latest hiring trends, and more.
Captain Sullenberger Conquers His Emotions
He was 3,000 feet up in the air when the sudden loss of power in his airplane put his life, as well as the lives of 150 other passengers and crew members, in his hands. Both of the engines on flight 1539 had shut down, and his options for a safe landing were limited.
Sully kept flying the plane and alerted the control tower to the situation:
32 How Emotions Help Usdialectical Behavioral Training Handouts
This is Cactus 1539…hit birds. We lost thrust in both engines. We’re turning back towards La Guardia.
When the tower gave him the compass setting and runway for a possible landing, Sullenberger’s extensive experience allowed him to give a calm response:
I’m not sure if we can make any runway…Anything in New Jersey?
Captain Sullenberger was not just any pilot in a crisis, but a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot with 40 years of flight experience. He had served as a flight instructor and the Airline Pilots Association safety chairman. Training had quickened his mental processes in assessing the threat, allowing him to maintain what tower operators later called an “eerie calm.” He knew the capabilities of his plane.
When the tower suggested a runway in New Jersey, Sullenberger calmly replied:
Figure 10.1 Captain Sullenberger and His Plane on the Hudson
Imagine that you are on a plane that you know is going to crash. What emotions would you experience, and how would you respond to them? Would the rush of fear cause you to panic, or could you control your emotions like Captain Sullenberger did, as he calmly calculated the heading, position, thrust, and elevation of the plane, and then landed it on the Hudson River?
Ingrid Taylar – Sully Sullenberger – CC BY 2.0; Dane Deasy – Flight 1549 Crash – CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
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The last communication from Captain Sullenberger to the tower advised of the eventual outcome:
He calmly set the plane down on the water. Passengers reported that the landing was like landing on a rough runway. The crew kept the passengers calm as women, children, and then the rest of the passengers were evacuated onto the boats of the rescue personnel that had quickly arrived. Captain Sullenberger then calmly walked the aisle of the plane to be sure that everyone was out before joining the 150 other rescued survivors (Levin, 2009; National Transportation Safety Board, 2009).
Some called it “grace under pressure,” and others the “miracle on the Hudson.” But psychologists see it as the ultimate in emotion regulation—the ability to control and productively use one’s emotions.
The topic of this chapter is affect, defined as the experience of feeling or emotion. Affect is an essential part of the study of psychology because it plays such an important role in everyday life. As we will see, affect guides behavior, helps us make decisions, and has a major impact on our mental and physical health.
The two fundamental components of affect are emotions and motivation. Both of these words have the same underlying Latin root, meaning “to move.” In contrast to cognitive processes that are calm, collected, and frequently rational, emotions and motivations involve arousal, or our experiences of the bodily responses created by the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). Because they involve arousal, emotions and motivations are “hot”—they “charge,” “drive,” or “move” our behavior.
When we experience emotions or strong motivations, we feel the experiences. When we become aroused, the sympathetic nervous system provides us with energy to respond to our environment. The liver puts extra sugar into the bloodstream, the heart pumps more blood, our pupils dilate to help us see better, respiration increases, and we begin to perspire to cool the body. The stress hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine are released. We experience these responses as arousal.
32 How Emotions Help Usdialectical Behavioral Training Reliaslearning
An emotion is a mental and physiological feeling state that directs our attention and guides our behavior. Whether it is the thrill of a roller-coaster ride that elicits an unexpected scream, the flush of embarrassment that follows a public mistake, or the horror of a potential plane crash that creates an exceptionally brilliant response in a pilot, emotions move our actions. Emotions normally serve an adaptive role: We care for infants because of the love we feel for them, we avoid making a left turn onto a crowded highway because we fear that a speeding truck may hit us, and we are particularly nice to Mandy because we are feeling guilty that we didn’t go to her party. But emotions may also be destructive, such as when a frustrating experience leads us to lash out at others who do not deserve it.
Motivations are closely related to emotions. A motivation is a driving force that initiates and directs behavior. Some motivations are biological, such as the motivation for food, water, and sex. But there are a variety of other personal and social motivations that can influence behavior, including the motivations for social approval and acceptance, the motivation to achieve, and the motivation to take, or to avoid taking, risks (Morsella, Bargh, & Gollwitzer, 2009). In each case we follow our motivations because they are rewarding. As predicted by basic theories of operant learning, motivations lead us to engage in particular behaviors because doing so makes us feel good.
Motivations are often considered in psychology in terms of drives, which are internal states that are activated when the physiological characteristics of the body are out of balance, and goals, which are desired end states that we strive to attain. Motivation can thus be conceptualized as a series of behavioral responses that lead us to attempt to reduce drives and to attain goals by comparing our current state with a desired end state (Lawrence, Carver, & Scheier, 2002). Like a thermostat on an air conditioner, the body tries to maintain homeostasis, the natural state of the body’s systems, with goals, drives, and arousal in balance. When a drive or goal is aroused—for instance, when we are hungry—the thermostat turns on and we start to behave in a way that attempts to reduce the drive or meet the goal (in this case to seek food). As the body works toward the desired end state, the thermostat continues to check whether or not the end state has been reached. Eventually, the need or goal is satisfied (we eat), and the relevant behaviors are turned off. The body’s thermostat continues to check for homeostasis and is always ready to react to future needs.
In addition to more basic motivations such as hunger, a variety of other personal and social motivations can also be conceptualized in terms of drives or goals. When the goal of studying for an exam is hindered because we take a day off from our schoolwork, we may work harder on our studying on the next day to move us toward our goal. When we are dieting, we may be more likely to have a big binge on a day when the scale says that we have met our prior day’s goals. And when we are lonely, the motivation to be around other people is aroused and we try to socialize. In many, if not most cases, our emotions and motivations operate out of our conscious awareness to guide our behavior (Freud, 1922; Hassin, Bargh, & Zimerman, 2009; Williams, Bargh, Nocera, & Gray, 2009).
We begin this chapter by considering the role of affect on behavior, discussing the most important psychological theories of emotions. Then we will consider how emotions influence our mental and physical health. We will discuss how the experience of long-term stress causes illness, and then turn to research on positive thinking and what has been learned about the beneficial health effects of more positive emotions. Finally, we will review some of the most important human motivations, including the behaviors of eating and sex. The importance of this chapter is not only in helping you gain an understanding the principles of affect but also in helping you discover the important roles that affect plays in our everyday lives, and particularly in our mental and physical health. The study of the interface between affect and physical health—that principle that “everything that is physiological is also psychological”—is a key focus of the branch of psychology known as health psychology. The importance of this topic has made health psychology one of the fastest growing fields in psychology.
References
Freud, S. (1922). The unconscious. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 56(3), 291; Hassin, R. R., Bargh, J. A., & Zimerman, S. (2009). Automatic and flexible: The case of nonconscious goal pursuit. Social Cognition, 27(1), 20–36.
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Lawrence, J. W., Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (2002). Velocity toward goal attainment in immediate experience as a determinant of affect. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32(4), 788–802.
Levin, A. (2009, June 9). Experience averts tragedy in Hudson landing. USA Today. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-06-08-hudson_N.htm.
Morsella, E., Bargh, J. A., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2009). Oxford handbook of human action. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
National Transportation Safety Board. (2009, June 9). Excerpts of Flight 1549 cockpit communications. USA Today. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-06-09-hudson-cockpit-transcript_N.htm
Williams, L. E., Bargh, J. A., Nocera, C. C., & Gray, J. R. (2009). The unconscious regulation of emotion: Nonconscious reappraisal goals modulate emotional reactivity. Emotion, 9(6), 847–854.