Emotions in the workplace: Suppress or express?
When should emotions in the workplace be taken seriously, and how should leaders respond? Natalie Whittlesey, Director of Technology Leadership & C-Tech Engagement at InX, recently sat down with organisational psychologist Marina Mayer, Chief Science Officer & Co-Founder at sway, a consultancy that helps build resilience in organisations, to explore this key topic.
For decades, business culture in the UK has been shaped by restraint. Calm, rational debate has been prized and when work-related emotions disturb the still surface, they have often been associated with weakness or lack of control. However, ‘emotionality’ is becoming increasingly valued and demands are rising for psychological safety at work, so how should leaders respond?
In this article, Marina and I discuss:
How to determine whether emotions are a ‘one-off’ or a symptom of a bigger problem
How business leaders can respond to patterns that emerge
What leaders should consider when responding to their own emotional spikes
Practical tips for leaders
Emotions at work: Research from the 1990s
“Emotions are a crucial part of how we operate as humans,” states Marina. “They help us to spot patterns, to pick up on social clues and to get-ahead of problems and make quick decisions.”
People with high EQ will be able to spot visible but subtle shifts in body language, for example, that those with lower EQ might miss, and a team with a high EQ and average IQ will outperform a team with high IQ and average EQ. Daniel Goleman’s 1995 bestseller, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, is an early reference point for this much covered subject.
In 1997, Bond University Professor Cynthia Fisher identified the most common negative emotions experienced in the workplace in her research titled Emotions in Organisations:
Frustration/irritation
Worry/nervousness
Anger/aggravation
Dislike
Disappointment/unhappiness
Marina points out that we all have emotions, it’s how we handle them that’s important.
“Crying, for example, often happens as the body transitions out of a fight-or-flight state and into recovery. It’s one way the nervous system releases tension, similar to how animals shake when faced with a stressful event. This kind of response is a natural expression of underlying emotions and helps restore calm. By contrast, explosive outbursts usually arise when emotions are suppressed rather than expressed. In those cases, the unacknowledged feelings build up until they surface in a less regulated, more reactive way.”
‘Emotionality’ — how people experience emotions — is important. If people experience emotions more intensely, and they encounter stress, tears are a way of allowing the emotion to be discharged. There’s a warning here: if someone has high emotionality AND high emotional suppression, they may be prone to explosive outbursts, which will impact others (and themselves) differently when compared with tears.
Gender and emotions
Research has shown that women are more likely to display tears and men are more likely to display emotions through outbursts and, as most boards are male dominated, angry outbursts can be perceived as more acceptable and ‘normalised’ than tears. Naturally, this is problematic for women, but it’s also an issue for men who may be suppressing emotions underneath the outbursts.
Marina points to research featured in the Harvard Business review last year, titled How Anxiety Shapes Men’s and Women’s Leadership Differently. In summary: men were far more likely to transmit their emotionality into toxic and abusive leadership behaviours, whereas the women contained that emotionality and showed up with caretaking behaviours and nurturing behaviours for their team.
Marina states:
“The data shows something so different than the stereotype, which is that women are more emotional at work when it actually shows that women are more practised and containing emotions."
Handling live emotions
So, how should leaders respond when faced with heightened negative emotion from a colleague or team member?
Hear the person and validate the emotion. “That sounds really frustrating, I’d really like to understand more.” Note: You don’t have to agree with them to ‘hear’ them.
Don’t jump to conclusions when faced with emotions. None of us know what people's intentions are, and usually people are just doing their best. Tears may be triggered by anger (not weakness), conversely, an outburst might be triggered by feelings of vulnerability. Assumptions and biases may lead to barriers rising.
Assess the response they need at that moment. A great communicator with good EQ will ask open ended questions to determine whether a person wants to spend time unpacking a problem or wants to jump to a solution finding conversation.
Respond with boundaries, if appropriate. “I hear you and can see how that’s frustrating. The business reason for that is A, B and C, but let’s find a way to address this problem.”
Co-solution-find. Great in-tune leaders will coach the colleague to be part of the solution-finding process, with questions like “What do you need?” and “How can we make this better?”
When a pattern emerges
Handling emotions in the moment is one thing, but what about when a pattern emerges and a proportion of your workforce are signalling that they’re in distress?
“It’s important to look for patterns”, says Marina, “or ideally, get ahead of patterns emerging. When they emerge, get curious and proactive to dig-in, because patterns can signal a wider systemic problem rather than one or two individuals having a bad week.”
Patterns can be both quantitative and qualitative, for example absenteeism and high turn-over rates provide quantitative data and interviews and surveys provide qualitative data to allow a deeper insight into what’s behind the data.
The ideal approach is to get ahead by investing in understanding how a business is doing in terms of organisational health before things break down. This will prevent lagging indicators like burnout and churn. Marina quotes Brene Brown’s book Dare to Lead:
“Leaders must either invest a reasonable amount of time attending to fears and feelings, or squander an unreasonable amount of time trying to manage ineffective and unproductive behaviour.”
Marina’s company sway offers an Organisational Health Index which goes beyond employee satisfaction surveys. It uses employees' voices to measure leading indicators of organisational health and weaves those into the shaping of strategy and continuous improvement of what is and isn’t working systemically.
Handling your own emotions
Of course, people in every part of the organisational hierarchy can become emotional and leaders are no exception. Marina has some advice:
“Though I’m not advocating hiding emotions as a leader, it’s important to recognise that your team will pick-up on your feelings even if you think you’re constraining them. If leaders are openly excited and positive those around them will respond to this. Similarly, if a leader is stressed and anxious, cortisol levels will spike in those around them, leading to stress, lack of clear thinking and diminished creativity.”
The best solution? To be open and accountable. Accept that those around you may have noticed that you’re stressed as you’ve been a little quiet and withdrawn or short-tempered (whatever indicator is bubbling up). Explain that it’s not personal to those around you, but it’s something that you’re working through and hoping to find a solution for.
This is called accountability and ownership. This approach is much better than being explosive, moody or volatile, but it also doesn’t diminish or brush-over the emotion, or route cause.
Final thoughts
Marina and I have attempted to cover a lot in this article, including a brief look at 1990’s research on emotions in the workplace along with more recent studies, distinguishing between short-lived emotional reactions and signs of deeper systemic issues and tips for leaders on handling their own emotions.
Shifting workplace attitudes have brought a growing acceptance of emotional expression at work and it’s important that leaders recognise, validate and constructively manage emotions to foster healthier, higher-performing teams.
Partner with InX
Don’t hesitate to contact Natalie or the wider InX team if you need to hire emotionally aware executive talent or deliver transformation to accelerate your business. Get in touch today.