The newest champion of bringing your whole self to work is Anne Kreamer, who recently published It’s Always Personal: Emotion in the New Workplace. She distilled the essence of her book in an article called “Taking Emotions to Work” printed this weekend in the New York Times.
The last paragraphs of the article zero in on a message we promote at Whole Wide Work, that there are productive benefits to feeling and relating your emotions on the job. From the Times article:
I like to imagine that if men and women were to express more emotion routinely and easily at work — jokes, warmth, sadness, anger, tears, joy, all of it — then as a people we might not feel so chronically anxious and overwhelmed. By denying the range of emotional expressiveness intrinsic and appropriate to the workplace, we find ourselves at a loss for how to handle this brave new boundary-less world.
Overtly acknowledging how and in what measure anger, anxiety, fear and pleasure color and shape our working lives can help us manage those emotions and use them to our benefit, both at work and at home.
What we’re striving to avoid is anxiety, usually the culprit in worker malaise, and often the product of suppressing feelings on the job. So the more you let out, the less anxious you are. And naturally, the less anxious you are, the more productive you can be.
The reviews of the book are in, and those seeking a better understanding of anger in the workplace, for example, may find some relief in these pages.
Have you decreased your anxiety in the workplace by revealing more of your feelings? Do tell–
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