Why Managing Emotions in the Workplace is Hurting, Not Helping, Your Mission
“For there is nothing hidden that will not become visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light” (Luke 8:17).
What if we have largely misunderstood the role of emotions, especially in business?
We all have those memories of being young and caregivers exclaiming, “Quit crying,” “Settle down,” or “Stop screaming,” when you’re just trying to get your darn socks on with three-year-old, not-fully-dexterous fingers.
Not only have most of us received these directives to control the expression of our emotions, but we have interpreted them to mean that emotions (especially the big ones) ought to be stopped altogether.
Now, what about this scenario:
Your two-year-old self has grabbed a toy from another child because, well, you wanted it. The other child cries because, well, they wanted it, too. And your caregiver says: “Look, you’ve hurt her feelings. Apologize.”
Your two-year-old self’s unconscious interpretation: “Oh, I guess I’m responsible for how she feels, too.”
It’s likely that you, like so many others, integrated these beliefs (and many similar ones) about emotions from a very young age.
How This Shows Up in Business
Fast-forward to adulthood, and most of us are still operating from the expectation that we are supposed to manage not only our own emotions but others’ emotions, too. We’re also steeped in a cultural narrative that repeatedly tells us that keeping emotions under control is what makes us effective, productive, and professional.
And yet, this approach does not appear to be working. According to a 2015 Deloitte external marketplace survey of 1,000 full-time American professionals, 77 percent of respondents reported experiencing burnout at their current job.
Emotions are meant to be felt (which is why we sometimes refer to them as “feelings”), and it only takes about 90 seconds for an emotion to be processed. If this process is not allowed to happen freely, both the nervous system and the body’s hormonal stress response have to work harder. If this continues over time, it leads to burnout, where the body essentially “forgets” how to effectively process even normal, everyday stress and a typical range of human emotions.
If you’ve ever felt this way, it’s not your fault. Most of us have not been taught how to relate to our emotions; most of us have been taught that they’re unproductive, weak, and unprofessional, and so we suppress them.
It’s important that we begin to take this seriously and create a culture that is not a breeding ground for burnout.
This “Managing” Approach Hurts Our Interior Life and Our Team Culture
If we want a healthy interior life and a thriving team culture, a “managing” approach when it comes to our emotions (or those of our colleagues) will fall short.
Why?
The managing approach to emotions is more about controlling than relating to our emotions in healthy ways, through which they can be channeled for good. Because managing often stifles, blocks, or stuffs down emotions, it doesn’t allow for them to be processed. So they stay stuck in the body system, catching us in cycles of being triggered, and we end up carrying even more shame around what we’re experiencing.
This cycle is exhausting, and it disconnects us from ourselves, others, and God.
When all the members of a team are operating this way internally, it overflows into interpersonal communications. The same “managing” approach prevents the team members from freely sharing their thoughts, ideas, problems, and concerns in a healthy and productive way.
At times, this can feel more “peaceful” in the moment, because it avoids conflict. But the reality is that this approach is actually killing us from the inside out.
It keeps the organization stuck and prevents desired outcomes.
It creates stress, tension, anxiety, and mistrust.
It drives a wedge between team members and leaders, creates disillusionment, and disconnects them all from the organization’s mission.
Business leadership alienates employees by pushing too hard without listening, or valuing people less for who they are and more for what they produce or how many hours they can give.
Burnout, turnover, and employee dissatisfaction skyrocket.
Coaches don’t have the energy to hold a safe space for their clients.
Wellness professionals are feeling anything but well, as they’re trapped in exhausting cycles of hustle, depletion, and burnout themselves.
Incongruence between external mission and internal culture worsens.
Growth, innovation, creativity, and ultimately, the humanity of everyone involved are stifled.
Some leaders have the awareness to recognize these things are happening. The team senses them, but they often feel powerless to change the situation. To get to the root, it takes the leader’s full awareness, humility, and receptivity to honest communication, conflict resolution, deeper connection, and change.
If Leaders Want to Put People First, Why Is This So Hard?
Most leaders would say they at least want to listen, take care of people, build relationships, and value the human beings on their team. Most leaders say they want their team members to thrive in their work and lives. Most leaders want to nurture a healthy organizational culture.
But often they don’t know how, or they aren’t supported enough to heal their own wounds and make the world around them better.
The deck is stacked against them. They are under so much pressure and stress themselves that cultivating the inner life falls to the wayside. Slowing down enough to focus on the people on their team (and how they’re actually feeling) seems like a luxury they can’t afford. Or, they feel fearful because emotions and conflict are messy and they don’t feel equipped to navigate them. The pull to get more done is too overwhelming (especially when they’re already feeling behind and spread thin, or not hitting the numbers they were hoping for).
This combination of pressures leads to a top-down, power-driven approach–one that is based in control–that closes the leader off to nurturing open, healthy communication that allows for the fullness of ideas, insights, gifts, voices, and humanity to come forth from the team.
When leaders are constantly pushing for more, better, and faster results, there is no room to initiate a hard conversation, slow down, take a hard look, and ask these hard questions.
And these are essential ingredients for a truly thriving organizational culture. So without holding space for them, including the very real emotions present in all of these human experiences, the tensions remain unresolved.
So, How Can We Do This Differently?
What we want to do instead of “managing” or suppressing is to slow down and allow space for processing–in all the emotions, ideas, insights, questions, concerns, problems, and honest input. Even the negative ones.
We want to get to the point where we’re able to hold this space for members of the team, but it always begins within, in the way we relate to our own humanity and emotions.
Here’s a three-step approach to process (rather than manage) emotions:
Name the emotion.
a) Practice saying things like, “I am feeling really anxious right now and that’s okay.” Naming (and accepting) an uncomfortable emotion stops the shame cycle that rises and falls along with those emotions.
b) Try to fight the urge to intellectualize the emotion, to make sense of it, to blame someone else for it, or to jump straight to “fixing” it.
Sense it.
a) Take time to assess whether there is any place in your body that you’re feeling the emotion.
b) Pay special attention to sensations like chest tightness, headaches, stomach pain, trouble breathing, or heart rate increases.
Feel it.
a) Now it’s time to let yourself feel the emotion and “ride the wave.” Set a timer on your phone for 90 seconds (it takes only 90 seconds to allow the chemical process of an emotion to move through your body).
b) Move your body, or let it do what it feels like doing: cry, stretch, shake, jump up and down, squeeze your hands into fists, yell, run around.
You can practice this personally, first–inviting in more awareness, curiosity, compassion, and connection. Then when you are ready, begin to practice it externally by holding more space for the full range of emotions and experiences of those you’re serving and leading.
The aim here is to bring more humanity back into the workplace and to working relationships–to begin healing the depleted, disconnected, disillusioned culture.
It takes work, and it’s not easy. But by doing this, we can begin to address the root causes of burnout and open wide the doors for our missions and our teams to grow and thrive.
Anna Saucier is an Emotional Health and Mindset Coach trained through Metanoia Catholic, a Certified Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT/tapping) Practitioner, and Sustainable Business Consultant. She's trained in trauma-informed coaching practices and nervous system regulation, and works with passionate change-agents who want to use their gifts for good and be a force for holistic health and healing by leading themselves first -- through compassionate inner growth and ethical and trauma-aware business and leadership. She is an adventurer and minimalist and lives semi-nomadically with her husband and two fiercely independent children.
Megan Gephart is a Catholic wife and mother of 3 boys, Mindset Coach trained through Metanoia Catholic, certified Pre- and Postnatal fitness coach, and a recently transitioned Army veteran passionate about holistic women’s wellness and leading institutional and cultural change. She loves supporting clients in strategic planning, operations and marketing and is currently pursuing a Director of Operations certification. Megan is the host of a top 2% globally-ranked Podcast called Armed to the Heart.
Anna and Megan recently co-founded Apostolic Fruit, which provides Christ-centered, integrative Coaching and Consulting for leaders, teams, and organizations who desire to grow and scale their impact through regenerative, sustainable human-first approaches. Connect with them: Instagram • Facebook •YouTube