Exhilaration? Betrayal? Might just be another day at work.
On average, we have about 4,000 weeks to spend on this planet. Most of those will be “work weeks.”
We spend a lot of our lives with the people we work with. When it comes to the emotional roller-coaster of the human experience, the reality is that much of that ride will be taken with our coworkers. At some point while we’re at work, we are likely to experience exhilarating triumph, deep fear, true humiliation, heartfelt connection, infuriating injustice, bursts of creativity, shame, inspiration, and betrayal. And that’s just at work - there’s a whole other set of emotional experiences we’ll be bringing TO work. We go to work whether we’re head-over-heels in love, our relationships are falling apart, or our loved ones are suffering. Sadly, most of us will go to work even when we’re experiencing profound loss (most people in the U.S. will return to work within 1-3 days of experiencing the death of a loved one – that number only goes up to 4 days for death of a spouse).
Unfortunately, we’re conditioned to believe that managers and leaders are supposed to control the emotions of their teams and that when people are something other than happy/motivated/focused/etc. – then it’s the leader’s job to fix that in some way – or at least know what to do. And if that’s the case, how could we not be afraid of encountering other people’s heavy emotions. How do I fix that? That’s probably why it can be so easy to label our most human emotions as “unprofessional.”
I’m so grateful that one of my first bosses showed me what it means to lead with your heart unapologetically on your sleeve. Eric Redwine was my boss when I was getting divorced. During our weekly meeting he stopped me to say that something seemed different about me, and he showed such earnest care when I shared the truth with him. We probably talked about it for five minutes and went back to having a work conversation. But as we wrapped up and I was about to walk away, he stopped me and put his arm on my shoulder and told me that he loved me. It was the first time that I had ever heard those words from another man. 5 minutes of not doing the work. And I’m still feeling the impact, 15 years later.
Our own experience - and the research - tells us that we do have the capacity to experience deeply hard things and still put one foot in front of the other; that sharing hard emotions at work is not a binary choice between being paralyzed with despair or pretending there’s nothing wrong. When we listen to our hearts and allow our humanity at work, and we give ourselves permission to NOT have to control or fix each other’s emotions, then we can spend a few more of those 4,000 weeks on earth as connected and caring humans. Even when those are work weeks.
