We are all emotional beings, but workplaces vary enormously in the degree to which emotion is actually shown. Think about the offices you’ve worked in or visited – some may have been fun and full of free expression, some may have been characterised by heated exchanges or management tantrums, while others have probably seemed grey, sterile and almost emotionless.
The extent to which employees express their true emotions in the workplace plays a big role in determining what it feels like to work there – and therefore affects things like morale, resilience, social support, employer of choice status and ultimately results. The emotionality of your workplace depends on various factors – the culture of the organisation, the nature of its business, the way that it is led / managed and the kind of people that it recruits.
But what is the right temperature? Should the workplace be quiet with an air of diligence or should it be all about enthusiasm, whooping and high fives when something is achieved…..or somewhere in between? Well, I guess this really depends on the context because working in a high street bank is very different to working in a sales call centre which, in turn, is very different to working in a squad of police officers. But we are all emotional beings and, as such, we all need the freedom to express our emotions appropriately during the working day if we are to perform to our potential.
Now, of course, this needs to be managed and we can’t have employees openly weeping at their desks or whooping their way through the day on the hospital ward, but there is a serious point here – that feeling like you can express your emotions in a way suited to the context is important for us all.
So do you feel free to express your emotions to the extent that you want to during a typical working day? Or do you have to hold back and be another person for most of the day which can actually be pretty stressful itself? Managers and leaders play a key role here in developing and maintaining an environment that strikes the balance between the needs of the organisation and those of its employees. You have probably experienced managers who create a climate or atmosphere in which no one feels like they can express themselves freely – which leads to tension and ultimately affects results. The best managers know how to give their team members enough space so that their individuality adds value to the end product of their labours, but also know when to remind staff of what the company needs them to focus on. When companies get this right they tap the unique talents of their workforce and invariably see the benefits on the bottom-line.
It is equally important to manage negative emotions like anger – at all levels of the business. Anger is seldom expressed constructively at work so finding the right way to channel this kind of emotion for positive outcomes is particularly important. Line managers, of course, have a critical role to play in role modelling how to do this, but that’s not to say that it’s easy. I’ll leave you with a quote from someone I wouldn’t like to argue with that illustrates the difficulty of the challenge:
“Anyone can become angry – that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way – this is not easy” Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics
