There was a great article in the April 4th edition of Time Magazine titled “Go Ahead – Cry at Work.” The article was adapted from the book, It’s Always Personal, by Anne Kraemer. The sub-title of the article reads, “Corporate Culture has long ignored the fact that we can’t check our feelings at the office door. Why it’s high time to get rational about emotions in the workplace.”

The article caught my attention for two reasons:

  1. Our upcoming entrepreneur workshop for couples explores this dynamic because the boundaries between work and home can be especially blurry for entrepreneurs that work from home. It is kind of hard to check your emotions at the office door or leave them at home when both are potentially in the same place.
  2. The work I have been doing with individuals on developing their Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and how that drives their effectiveness as leaders.

What I particularly like about this article is that there is real data and scientific evidence to back up the main point of the article that is emotions matter and need to be understood and appreciated rather than feared or shamed in the workplace. The article speaks to the fact that the old school belief that life can be compartmentalized between emotions at home and rational thought at work is a farce. Emotional Intelligence is no longer an oxymoron, either / or, black and white construct.

Daniel Goleman and others put the term on the map in the 1990s and it became a management buzzword. There are now many business case studies that speak to how developing EQ in leaders and organizations can drive better results and competitive advantage. Yet many people have tried to boil EQ down to a 21st century cliché of “What I hear you saying is …..”. The fact is that EQ is much more than simply listening and having empathy for people. This is exactly what I’m working with individuals and teams to help them understand, appreciate and most importantly apply at work for better results.

Despite plenty of evidence and scientific data that would suggest we should focus on building EQ, people at work don’t really want to dig into the learning and the emoting. The article chalks this up to “we’re still largely clueless about how to display and react to more commonplace emotions such as anger, fear and anxiety, so we handicap ourselves by trying to check our human side at the office door.”

In our experience, where there is a lack of knowledge there tends to be resistance to it learning it. That has certainly been the case with our EQ work. The reactions to our offering have been very telling, “we don’t want to go there”, “they can work on that stuff on their own time with a therapist”, “we don’t want a bunch of softies in our organization.” I could go on with the sound bites of resistance we have heard, but the good news is that the evidence against this kind of thinking is mounting as this article helps to reinforce.

The article also references a study that explored gender differences and how they impact the consideration of emotions in the workplace. I found the following data points to be really interesting.

  • 48% of Men and 41% of Women said it is ok to cry at work
  • 43% of Women and 32% of Men considered people who cry at work unstable
  • 41% of Women and 9% of Men cried at work
  • 42% of young Men (age 18-44) and 23% of young Women felt anger is an effective management tool
  • 69% of all respondents felt that the person seems more human when they get emotional at work
  • 88% of all respondents (93% Women and 83% Men) felt that being sensitive to others’ emotions at work is an asset

The article and the data presented in it provide a real shot in the arm for me as I have always felt the “heart of the matter” at work is critical to address. Strip away all the politics, positioning and analytical analysis that is wrapped up in corporate acronyms, fast paced deadlines, the continual pressure to deliver and more technology that changes how we connect, you have human beings that are relational and driven by their emotions. To not acknowledge that now scientifically proven fact is blasphemous, to resist learning about it because it is subtle and complex is cowardly. So I ask you – do you want to be corporate old or new school? Hopefully your answer is the later, if it is, then my next question is – what are you going to do about?