What’s your opinion of people showing emotions and crying at work?
Our reader poll today asks: What’s your opinion of people showing their emotions and crying in the workplace?
– It’s acceptable as long as it’s not affecting performance: 17.72%
– It’s OK sometimes but only in extreme circumstances: 61.13%
– It’s not OK and can seem disruptive and unprofessional: 17.97%
– It’s completely wrong — keep your feelings to yourself: 3.19%
Empathy matters. Eighty percent of you understand and accept crying and emotions related to it as a natural part of the human experience. Furthermore, that realization and your acceptance of it in the workplace (as long as it doesn’t affect performance or disrupt the organization) is laudable. Too often we seem to try to segregate emotions from business. That’s impossible to do, given that business is composed of humans who run through thousands of emotions a week. If you’re not open to understanding and empathizing with the feelings of others, you might want to reconsider your desire to lead people.
Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!
– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC
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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 190,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.
Each member of a team brings different life experiences to the table. These different personalities can lead to varying emotional responses or ability to control emotions. Our abilities as leaders are measured not by our talents at holding back our emotions and charging forward, instead, we are measured by our effectiveness at connecting with our team, inspiring action, and delivering results. Crying is like yelling or cursing or any other emotional expression at work. Understanding what the circumstances are, providing support in the moment and giving the freedom to talk about it will alleviate some of the stress that leads to the outburst to begin with.
Not an emotional person anyway – the German in me? – but have had to deal with it on my teams. In all cases, not easy, but the people turned out to be MVP on the team.