Do you ever go to work full of excitement? When you open that office door, are you brimming with joy and eager anticipation? Or are you already frustrated, annoyed and anxious about what the day might bring?
These are just a few of the many emotions that can be experienced in the workplace. However, if you display too much excitement, sadness, or joy in the workplace, you could get a funny look from your colleagues. Indeed, consistent research in organisational behaviour shows that unwritten rules limit the expression of emotion at work. There is an expectation that we restrict our emotional displays in the office to maintain professionalism.
Pity then, the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, who was tearful in the House of Commons on Wednesday. She was only displaying emotions, but the outcry over a few tears was huge. Indeed, she was the main item of news on Wednesday evening. She was on the front pages of every newspaper the next morning, and both Reuters and Associated Press put it on their wires around the world. If one thing is clear from this sad episode, it is that we don’t like people crying at work. Worse still for the Chancellor, research shows women’s visible distress is judged more harshly than men’s.
However, it is OK to cry outside a football stadium. Understandably, former Liverpool Captain Jordan Henderson was grief-stricken when he laid flowers at Anfield yesterday in memory of the team’s star player, Diogo Jota, who was killed in a tragic accident on Thursday. Indeed, you may have shed a tear too.
For all we know, Rachel Reeves’ tears resulted from something like grief because she said it was a personal issue. Yet somehow, it’s not acceptable for her to cry in public. That’s because she was “at work”, whereas Jordan Henderson was not. It is this socially constructed idea that when we are in the office, we have to regulate our emotions.
You can read all sorts of “advice” on various websites and magazines explaining that when you control your emotions, you become a better leader. Similarly, you can read articles that tell you that people with high levels of emotional control are also more productive. There is, though, little evidence produced to support these ideas. However, there is plenty of evidence that shows suppressing our emotions is dangerous. Indeed, according to a study by the University of Rochester Medical Center, emotional suppression may shorten your life. Far from the business world asking people to keep a “stiff upper lip”, we’d be in a better place if people were able to “let it all hang out” (emotionally speaking).
I suspect that many offices do let some emotions “hang out”, though. These include annoyance, frustration, anger, fear, contempt and boredom. Walk around many offices, and you’ll find that the emotions expressed are generally negative. Where are the people showing happiness, excitement, enjoyment, admiration and wonderment? The people working in a hostile emotional environment will inevitably be more stressed and less productive than those in a positive one. Perhaps we should do an emotion audit of our workplaces?
Focusing on the emotional health of your colleagues is a good idea, but the unwritten rules of workplace etiquette often prevent us from doing so. Yet, elsewhere in your organisation, people are focusing on emotions. They are thinking about the feelings of their customers. Sales leaders, for instance, know that by focusing on customer emotions, they are more likely to sell their products or services. In the podcast, the Sales Chat Show, the concept of emotional connection was shown to be essential. And, according to the London School of Economics, emotion is fundamental to enterprise.
So, if emotion helps create and grow businesses, allowing us to produce more sales, why are we so obsessed with hiding it in the workplace? The problem is not the emotional display itself, but the potential consequences that it may have. Research shows that people inhibit their emotions in the workplace due to concerns about what might happen to them. That’s where we need to start. Change the consequences for people who display emotions, and they’ll be more willing to express their feelings. And that’s a good thing because if they inhibit those emotions, they are less valuable to you as a worker. They become uptight and stressed, which leads to lower productivity. If you want a more productive and happier workplace, just let people display their emotions, especially the positive ones. A good way to start is to have staff display a “traffic light” on their door – green for happy, amber for feeling a little down, and red for being in an emotionally damaging state. Simply doing this will trigger conversations that can help move people back to the green, where you want them to be.
