Behavior

Is It Okay to Cry at Work?

As this chapter has shown, emotions are an inevitable part of people's behavior at work. At the same time, it's not en¬tirely clear that we've reached a point where people feel comfortable expressing all emotions at work. The reason might be that business culture and etiquette remain poorly suited to handling overt emotional displays. The question is, can organizations become more intelligent about emotional management? Is it ever appropriate to yell, laugh, or cry at work?

Some people are skeptical about the virtues of more emotional displays at the workplace. As the chapter notes, emotions are automatic physiological responses to the environment, and as such, they can be difficult to control appropriately. One 22-year-old customer service representative named Laura who was the subject of a case study noted that fear and anger were routinely used as methods to control employees, and employees deeply resented this use of emotions to manipulate them. In another case, the chairman of a major television network made a practice of screaming at employees whenever anything went wrong, leading to badly hurt feelings and a lack of loyalty to the organization. Like Laura, workers at this organization were hesitant to show their true reactions to these emotional outbursts for fear of being branded as "weak" or "ineffectual." It might seem like these individuals worked in heav¬ily emotional workplaces but in fact, only a narrow range of emotions was deemed acceptable. Anger appears to be more acceptable than sadness in many organizations, and anger can have serious maladaptive consequences.

Others believe organizations that recognize and work with emotions effectively are more creative, satisfying, and productive. For example, Laura noted that if she could express her hurt feelings without fear, she would be much more satisfied with her work. In other words, the problem with Laura's organization is not that emotions are displayed, but...