#20 The Good, Bad & Ugly of Getting Emotional at Work

THAT MOMENT WHEN YOU

• feel mad that your colleague keeps talking over you when you’re making a point.
• feel sad that your work BFF is going on maternity leave and you now have to find a new lunch buddy.
• feel scared that you have been pulled in last minute to lead the big presentation in front of upper management and that picky client
• feel glad that you managed to solve that really complicated Excel problem and you want somebody to celebrate your little win.

…you’re in the Good, Bad & Ugly of Getting Emotional at work.

THINK // 3 insights from the field

?? THE GOOD THING about getting emotional at work is that it is perfectly human and normal. To have emotions is part of being wholly human: a being capable of thinking, doing and feeling.

According to Dr Mark Brackett 's Mood Meter based on the circumplex model of affect , emotions can be defined as having two dimensions:

• level of “pleasantness” of the story in our mind (a subjective, private mental assessment of how good or bad is our experience)
• level of energy in our body (a subjective, private mental assessment of how mych physical energy is running through our body)

Just pause to consider the last time you felt an emotion at work,

• on a scale of +5 to -5, what was the level of “pleasantness” of the story in your mind? (-5 as the most unpleasant we have ever felt, +5 as the most pleasant we have ever felt.)
• on a scale of +5 to -5, what was the level of energy in our body? (-5 as extremely low energy, +5 as the most energetic we’ve ever felt.)

On Brackett’s Mood Meter, the two axes intersect to form 4 quadrants:

• red quadrant of unpleasant x high energy emotions: anxiety, rage, frustration, anger, and fear.
• blue quadrant is for unpleasant x low energy emotions: disappointment, sadness, discouragement, hopelessness, and loneliness.
• green quadrant is for pleasant x low energy emotions: calm, relaxation, serenity, contentment, and balance.
• yellow quadrant is for pleasant x high energy emotions: joy, excitement, enthusiasm, elation, and empowerment.

In a nutshell, every single person working around you will be bringing emotions to work as long as they have a living body with energy levels coursing through it + a living meaning-making story-telling mind trying to make sense of how “pleasant/unpleasant” life’s experiences are.

This is why “Don’t bring emotions to work” is bad advice and unrealistic.

You can only have no emotions at work if you are a robot working with robots.

?? THE BAD THING is so many of us are bad at navigating emotions and end up hurting people we work with because

• we have inadequate emotional vocabulary,
• less socioemotional skill or
• misunderstand that “being professional” = “having no emotions at work”.

In Brackett’s Mood Meter above, you learnt that every emotion is grounded in a key narrative of “pleasant” or “unpleasant”.

Think of every emotion as having a basic plotline: a key thought running under the surface.

Let’s focus on the basic plotlines underlying the big 4 emotions that our pre-schoolers learn for emotional literacy.

1. ?? mad: “I have boundaries, values and standards. They are being undermined, trespassed upon or violated.” (unpleasant)
2. ?? scared: “I might be losing something I need for my future safety and security.” (unpleasant)
3. ?? sad: “I have lost something that I identify with and see as a part of me.” (unpleasant)
4. ?? glad: “I have all that I want and need in this moment.” (pleasant)

To tell someone it is unprofessional to bring emotions to work is to tell them it is unprofessional to have concerns and beliefs around: boundaries, values, standards, needs for future security, things they identify with and things they want and need - and more.

So if someone is mad, sad, scared, glad or any other emotion, it’s good for us to not just validate people’s feelings but to also show curiosity for what might be the stories and beliefs going on for them under the surface.

Validation does not mean agreeing with another person’s emotion or even the story of what’s under their emotion.

Validation simply means agreeing that their emotion is valid because it is real for them. You validate to show you have no need or desire to control how they are feeling. You validate to acknowledge and even accept that they have beliefs, perspectives and stories that are different from yours.

To invalidate someone’s emotion = to tell them their emotion is invalid or wrong or inappropriate for them = to tell them their beliefs (about their boundaries, values, standards, needs for safety and security, things they identify with or love etc.) are also invalid, wrong or inappropriate.

Invalidation can sound like

• “You should not feel that way”
• “You don’t have to feel that way”
• “That’s how you feel. What about how I am feeling?”
• “I don’t see why you must feel that way.”
• “It’s ridiculous/unreasonable for you to feel X”

So this is why even if you are more rational and logic-oriented, you must learn to engage with emotions at work. You can consider that:

• Emotions are another layer of data that you must understand because they affect decision-making
• Emotions show you a different, deeper layer of "thoughts under thoughts". They are the deeper underlying logic beneath the logic.
• Logically speaking, learning to engage, validate and acknowledge emotions is how you build trust and connection with other people.

?? THE UGLY THING is navigating our own/others’ emotions well in the office takes skill and energy - but that is often not acknowledged, supported or compensated as labour.

In 1983, sociologist Arlie Hochschild who coined the term emotional labor defines it like this:

• “…the work, for which you’re paid, which centrally involves trying to feel the right feeling for the job. This involves evoking and suppressing feelings….The point is that while you may also be doing physical labor and mental labor, you are crucially being hired and monitored for your capacity to manage and produce a feeling. (2018 Atlantic interview)

In Hochschild’s The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, she shared some examples of work environments that ask employees to take on emotional labour without adequate psycho-social support, organisational recognition or financial compensation for the work:

• Flight attendants who are paid to be far more polite and positive towards difficult passengers than they really feel. Flight attendants must suppress feelings of annoyance, frustration, and boredom while conjuring feelings of calm in themselves and their teams.
• Debt collectors are trained to suppress sympathy and project harsh feelings, emotional severity and toughness when needed to extract payments from tough debtors.

We can add another more dramatic modern example such as:

• Content moderators for social media platforms like TikTok and Facebook who have to suppress feelings of empathy, disgust, rage and invoke apathy to continuously review and censor objectionable content on the platform such as live-streamed footage of murder, suicide, rape, porn etc. that violate “community standards”

When an organisation does not consider how much daily work revolves around emotional management and emotional leadership, it can lead to:

• more emotionally aware colleagues (usually women) taking on that emotional labour on behalf of the organisation.
• vulnerable people taking on the work of especially emotionally challenging labour that nobody wants to take on in the industry - e.g. financially needful people who persist in being social media content moderators despite feeling psychologically affected by extended exposure to extreme content
• individual professionals believing that they ought to just carry their emotional labour alone and not expect anyone else to help them with that task.
• lack of psychological, emotional or financial support systems to help those doing such ‘emotional labour’ do the work well.
• Burnout, relational strain, job dissatisfaction, decreased productivity, passive aggression, turnover, quiet quitting

We must create a psychologically safe work environment where we can normalise bringing up our emotions - positive or negative. Better yet, we can acknowledge that emotional labour exists in our organisation.

And if we expect some people to do that labour, there should be stronger support systems to enable them to carry on with that work in a more emotionally sustainable and psychologically healthier way.

FEEL // 2 links to help you feel less alone

WATCH/LISTEN

Common Ground’s podcast episode Practice Well-being in Team where two members on the CG team unpack how they support each other through thinking cognitively, feeling emotionally and doing productively.

READ

Bourree Lam’s interview with psychologist Susan David on how workplaces that ignore difficult or ‘negative’ feelings at work are setting themselves up for future problems:

DO // 1 strategy to try this week

Brackett teaches how everyone (even children) can use the R-U-L-E-R method as a guide to start practicing being more scientific, clear or structured in how we engage with each others’ emotions.

Learning to do R-U-L-E-R is a practical way we can all start building up more emotional vocabulary and intelligence.

The next time you are in an emotional situation:

RECOGNISE

• how pleasant is the story in my mind right now? (+5 to -5)
• how much energy is running through my body right now? (+5 to -5)
• (for others) how pleasant is the story they are telling me now? are they in high energy or low energy?

UNDERSTAND

• What happened before that caused me to tell myself a story that this is pleasant or unpleasant? What happened before that caused me to feel physically higher or lower in energy?
• If my energy level was different, would my story and emotion be different as well? (e.g. if I am exhausted and hungry, I may be more likely to be angry. If I was rested and full, I may be irritated rather than enraged.)
• (for others) what happened before that may have caused them to have a pleasant/unpleasant story? Or be in a lower/higher energy?

LABEL

• What emotional word best captures my feeling of pleasantness and energy?
• It’s ok to use existing words or even make up your own word just to get it out of your mind and make it visible. e.g. “I am in a fizzy tizzy right now. It’s kind of like anxious and running around”
• (for others) Validate whatever words they may be using to describe their emotions. You don’t have to agree with their choice of emotional words. You just acknowledge that’s the word they are using and consider it as true for them.

EXPRESS

• Does my face, body, voice, actions, posture align and express my feeling in a way that is helpful to the situation?
• (for others) If they are expressing their emotions in a way that is not helpful to the situation, you can validate + supportive statement + request for more helpful action: “You are feeling (X).” + “I want/I feel….”+ “Could…..?”
• e.g. “You are feeling angry. I want to hear your concerns. Could we step into this meeting room to talk for a bit?”
• e.g. “I hear you…you’re upset about how he spoke to you at that meeting. I’m really glad you’re telling me. Could we take a walk outside so we can talk more openly?
• (for others) If they are expressing their emotions in a way that is positive/helpful, you can validate + affirmative statement: “You are feeling (X).” + I want/I feel….”

• e.g. “You’re really excited! I’m really stoked for you!

REGULATE

• What is another way I could frame the story in my mind that is more helpful/pleasant yet still truthful to me?
• What is something I can do to shift the energy level of my body?

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