Let out your tears....at work
Transcriber: Yahya Mansour
Reviewer: Ghada Khalil
Have you ever felt uncomfortable
showing your emotions at work?
Have you ever had to hold back tears?
In business, the locations and rooms,
where products and services are created,
are called workplaces.
The name itself identifies
what we expect to happen there.
Work.
But there’s a problem with that,
emotional humans driven by
their emotional brains
will be present in those spaces.
The workplace is not designed
to be the sometimes anxious place,
or even the joyous place.
So there’s a mismatch
between design and user characteristics,
which is never good.
How does this mismatch show up
in some subtle and not so subtle ways?
It looks a lot like the grief process.
Grief and emotions more generally
are not symptoms of flawed individuals.
It’s human.
Compared to other species
that can walk minutes after Earth.
Human newborns can do almost nothing
except emote.
They cry.
Emotions are basic biology,
complex patterns born
out of neurotransmitters signaling
between the hundred billion neurons
and glia present in each person,
which cannot be checked
at the door before arriving at work.
Because we have tended to define
workplaces through mechanistic terms
like productivity,
we leave individuals
to experience anxieties,
disappointments and frustrations
in isolation.
Philosophers call that suffering.
The brain is the only organ in one body
that can affect the same organ
in another body.
The status of my liver does nothing
to the status of your liver.
But if one brain is injured
or traumatized,
or emitting harmful behaviors,
that can leave a residual impact
on other brains.
Mirror neurons respond
to the experiences of others.
The scientific term for this
is emotional contagion.
We all know the pattern
of grief responses:
denial, anger, bargaining,
despair and acceptance.
We can observe a given workplace
and see where it is in that process.
The denial phase leader
or denial phase company
makes no mention of emotion
and expects all individuals
will be operating within the exact manner,
consistent with some
factory specifications.
The anger phase leader
recognizes that humans
are sometimes emotional,
and thus has issued a warning
that such behaviors will not be tolerated.
The bargaining phase rewards
for less emotionality,
but this is a difficult exchange
because humans do not give up
their basic need for trust and tribe
in exchange for trinkets or travel.
The despair phase leader feels overwhelmed
by the emotions of the teams they manage,
and may find themselves in despair.
The acceptance phase organization
has recognized that emotions exist,
and may have policies
for those dealing with anxieties,
accommodations for those
feeling in other ways,
but this still isn’t enough.
There’s a sixth phase
after the other responses,
where we begin to celebrate emotions
in our professional enviroments.
Some of the most progressive organizations
in the world
achieve their excellence
by asking different questions;
they focus on emotion.
Rather than how can we ensure
100% compliance,
they ask how will people feel about this?
Rather than whom should we promote
based on past operational metrics,
they ask whom should we promote
based on the ability to inspire?
And compassionately care
for the teams they manage.
It’s a different mindset.
But all this begins by first acknowledging
that humans feel burdened,
and sometimes worried,
and sometimes just need laughter.
We all, at varying moments,
are sustained by the emotional boosts
that come from things,
like gratitude, imagination,
praise, feeling included,
and the many other ways
that we are reminded
that we matter to others.
Including emotions in our workplace design
is not the responsibility of others.
It actually begins with each of us;
self-reflection on where we are
in that grief process,
and having empathy
for where others might be.
Once we do so, we give permission
to others to do so also.
And once all of us can acknowledge
that emotions exist
and begin to celebrate that,
we’ve created a new design.
Imagine a future,
where you would feel comfortable crying
in front of your manager,
and even better,
just being human.
Thank you.
(Applause)