The Cringe Of A Cosplaying Emotive Boss

You may know the story of Braden Wallake, who laid off two (yes, 2) employees at some joint called “HyperSocial” and then cried on LinkedIn about it. Reaction was generally swift and fierce, with most people alluding to it as “performative,” which indeed it is. This all caused The New York Times to write an article entitled “When Your Boss Is Crying, but You’re the One Being Laid Off.” This is actually a much more complicated topic than most people are willing to dive into. Let’s break down a few things.

First: many people still do not think emotions are a part of the workplace. This might be changing with younger generations, but I wouldn’t think it’s changing writ large. In most jobs, and sadly this is especially true for females, if you show your emotions, you’re likely to eventually get terminated on a revenue dip. Most people in work settings view work as about tasks, productivity, success, achievement, beating rivals, etc. — and those ideas about work are even more ingrained in executive-level people. Tasks have long since mattered more than people, and many companies actually over-staff because they want their mid-line managers and executives to be able to manage by “warm body,” which means they emerge from their office or a conference room and say “You there, are you busy? Get on this thing for me.” COVID disrupted that style of management more than anything, and “find a warm body to do this thing for me” was the primary way a lot of people managed in 2018, so that caused a lot of shifts. Point being: work is about tasks and notions of control, success, and relevance — not, to most, about emotions.

Second: “There’s no crying in baseball.” We often think that applies to work as well.

Third: Why would YOU cry when SOMEONE ELSE loses their job? It feels not genuine and inherently performative. You’re still CEO of some “hyper social” company. You’re not the one now navigating a weird, off-task job market and wondering how to stretch whatever money you have or who to ask for money, etc. That person lost. The CEO won. The tears should be reversed.

Fourth: managers and emotions in general. Managers are honestly barely trained on anything except “Here’s a bit more money, now go do the exact same thing you did before except don’t manage these people under you, and when they quit we’ll claim it’s because they got more money elsewhere,” but managers are definitely not trained on anything emotional or people-wise aside from “don’t have sex with your subordinates.” (Some managers are not trained on that.)

The thing is, bosses don’t tend to care that much about emotional intelligence (in themselves or in subordinates), don’t realize the integral nature of human emotion to quality work, and won’t do anything unless their specific incentives change.

Most of us know this. It’s just a question of whether we can admit it.

As a result, work is supposed to be this singular swim lane where we focus on tasks, productivity (often not even concretely defined), our own notions of success (same), deadlines, meetings, calls … and we completely ignore the fact that people get divorced, kids get sick, married couples get in fights, dogs have to be put down, parents age, mental health struggles are rampant, etc. We want people to essentially ignore and avoid their emotions for 8–10 hours/day, even though we also want them to derive “meaning” and “purpose” from work. Newsflash: anything you get “purpose” from will hurt a little bit now and again. That’s how purpose gets built.

But now, into the void, we have this new business journalism ideology whereby executives are supposed to focus on empathy and caring and belonging and inclusion. I’ve had therapists trying to get into the “executive coaching” world tell me, “All these guys want someone to tell them a few hacks or tricks where they can pay attention to these things 3–4 times a year to quell the topic, and focus on what they really care about.” Indeed. I think we all know that too. We’ve been talking about “empathy” as a business concept since probably 2002, if not before. Definitely since 2008, post-recession, and definitely since the Trump-Clinton election, it’s been the focus of 3.5 out of every five workplace articles.

But empathy does inherently involve emotion, and because most managers don’t really care that much about emotions or can’t see the value in between “the real stuff” of making products, shipping code, and “being productive,” most attempts at managerial empathy come off as pure cringe. Braden above is but one example. I’ve got dozens in my own life.

Do you ever notice, too — I’ve seen this myself and heard it from dozens of people — that lots of managers tend to fire you either (a) without direct eye contact or (b) they let HR do it? So much for “empathy” or “emotions” or “emotional intelligence” in the actually tough moments, right? A good, emotional manager would come in and say “Hey listen, tough times here. We need to let people go. I really did like your work and believe in you” or come in and say “This didn’t work out with work styles but I do see your talent, and I hope you find success elsewhere.” Off-loading to HR Henrietta? No. But a lot of managers do choose that route.

I find it nearly impossible for a showcase of managerial emotions without cringe. What say you?