Is it professional to show or hide emotions and frustrations?

Originally published in Finnish by HR Viesti https://www.hrviesti.fi/natiivi/4045/onko-ammattimaisuutta-nayttaa-vai-piilottaa-tunteet-ja-turthautumiset

In the leadership culture of coaching leadership and especially community-oriented leadership, you have to be prepared for the fact that there are more emotions than in a traditional leadership culture. Conflicts arise between people, because we don't agree on everything and it is no longer the role of the leader to dictate the way things are done. In the culture of the new leadership, recovery from conflicts emerges as a special skill. Is it professional to show or suppress one's emotions? Where is the line between these?

If we try to avoid conflicts, we go back to traditional leadership cultures. Avoiding conflicts is equivalent to suppressing emotions and frustrations. Is it unprofessional to bring up feelings, because the work is not personal therapy and dealing with traumas. However, you can show your feelings, and you have to communicate to others how I want to be treated as an individual.

In terms of community control, the work community should define these things itself, but can it? Whose job is it to do the dismantling of emotional labor and do employees want emotions as part of their daily work? Are people ready to talk about their feelings?

With frustration, a person's behavior becomes more cynical and a conflict begins to loom.

The most common feeling is frustration. In this case, the person feels unfit and the work situations impossible to solve with a good mood. The background may be identity shame born in childhood, which is reflected in the adversities of working life. Identity shame can arise from not understanding the meaning of the work task or feeling that the task has been given to the wrong person. With frustration, a person's behavior becomes more cynical and a conflict begins to loom ahead. The bean stew is waiting to overboil and a small incident can cause a bigger stir in a person.

Who should vent frustrations with? Is the main character a real person and can he handle being a punching bag for other people's emotions? Has the supervisor been trained to deal with other people's emotions and does he want to change his current role to that of a job supervisor? Sometimes you have to talk about things and let the so-called you steam into the yard. A person who has not received training or is not in touch with his own emotional life, may not know how to help his subordinates to unload their emotional burden. A supervisor can understand conversations with a subordinate too concretely and draw the wrong conclusions about the employee's motivation.

Normally, steam is let off with colleagues during coffee breaks and informal peer support is created. In remote working, the opportunities for these situations are reduced and employees are more responsible for their own well-being. People should understand that the choice to stay at home transfers responsibility for these matters to themselves, because the employer cannot offer the possibility of peer support in remote work as easily as in close work.

Remote work therefore means that the responsibility to recognize frustrations and ask for help falls more on the employee than in close work. Otherwise, these issues could be observed from behavior at the workplace. Many do not think of this when they want to save time and comfort on their commute. However, does remote work have the problem of isolation and does it come at a high price?

Normally, steam is let off with colleagues during coffee breaks and informal peer support is created.

What causes frustration?

In some cases, can there be a "corporation game" in the background, in which superiors give their employees tasks according to their own visions. The assignment remains incomplete and the end result is not pleasing, because it does not match the vision of the supervisor. The task can be unclear from the beginning and impossible to carry out in a way that would leave you feeling successful. Is the employee's own history or the organization's leadership culture the cause of the employee's frustration? Thinking about these things alone at home doesn't help at all. In these situations, you should know how to make a long-distance call to the credit card company and unpack the heart.

If the emotional container is not allowed to be unloaded, it will come out in the wrong place. Some can carry more, others less. Some weeks, some years. Before long, however, it has effects on work, motivation and health. Recognizing these kinds of things in yourself takes employee skills, and it's professional to know how to ask for help. It's professional to be able to say that I'm struggling with motivation and would like to talk to someone about this.

Another thing that causes frustration is the feeling of "if you know what you want, why don't you do it yourself". You don't dare to say this feeling to a superior person, because the task is clearly delegated to you. Often, these tasks are carried forward, so that the assignment is never first-hand information, but resembles the children's game "broken phone", where the message changes every time it is moved forward.

If we talk about the employee skills of one employee, he should know how to control himself and communicate his case to his superior. The supervisor should recognize the situation and help solve the unmotivating work. Professionalism is learning to recognize things and learning to communicate about them. Unprofessionalism is venting bad feelings on others and not communicating what caused the outburst of emotion. It is professional to recognize an unprofessional emotional outburst and apologize afterwards.

If the emotional container is not allowed to be unloaded, it will come out in the wrong place.

In a communal leadership culture, these issues are taken into account. The task of the supervisors is to put their own hands in the clay and show by example how the work is done and how to act in different situations. It would be good to go over with your own team how everyone behaves when they are under the influence of different emotions and how they would like to be treated then.

Feelings are not often talked about. They should be talked about more often. You shouldn't get stuck on them or turn the conversations into someone's personal therapy sessions. The result of emotional work could be presented like occupational safety plans and written down how to act in different situations. At first, this kind of model can cause hilarity. When a person has a fit of rage or is completely exhausted, it would be really practical to be able to look at the instructions on how to act now.

After all, risk management is also one of the basic things in project work. Should management of emotions be an equally self-evident topic in management work?