Emotion on the Job

How Fear Short Circuits Critical Thinking in the Workplace

May 15, 2009 Paul Larson

So much of what happens between people in the workplace can be emotionally driven.

People seem reasonable now but may seem irrational in the next moment. The fact is that the emotional mind is far quicker than the rational mind. It reacts to the present as though it were the past. Childhood threats can still instill fear in adults even though they are no longer threats.

Emotion on the Job

Individual feelings, fears, passions, and longings are quintessential guides and everyone needs to connect with them both as individuals and in groups. The fact that human beings are emotional creatures is often ignored at great peril. Managers should never underestimate the magnitude of these forces that can reinforce complacency, resist change, and help maintain the status quo. These forces are not subject to the arguments of logic but rather are propelled by the energy of emotion.

A sense of self awareness and an ability to weather the emotional storms that life provides rather than being slaves to those emotions has been praised as a virtue since the very beginnings of civilization. To be able to exercise care and thought in leading a life tempered with balance and wisdom instead of emotion or unbridled passion is a worthy goal.

Every feeling has value and significance so a life without passion where strong feelings are always suppressed is not the goal though. When there is too much control there is dullness and remoteness. When there is too much expression people get out of control. There is raging anger, immobilizing depression, anxiety, and agitation.

Critical Thinking in the Workplace

Seen from an intellectual viewpoint, many actions people take seem irrational yet when they are seen from the heart these actions can be viewed as the only choice that individual is capable of making based on their own experiences.

Emotions have a central role in participation in team and workgroup activities. They affect the spirit of that group. They direct people in areas that are too important to be left to the intellect alone. Everyone has implanted within themselves a set of predetermined emotional reactions that served primitive people well as they were evolving in the wild. They are a permanent and intimate pert of a person’s genetic makeup today.

They are part of a person’s nature and as such they feel very natural. They just pop up without someone even being aware most of the time. They are a powerful force when it comes to shaping decisions and actions. Here emotional feeling counts as much if not more than thought. History has shown that passion will overcome reason time and time again.

The Emotional Mind at Work

So people are ruled by emotion. Like deer frozen in their tracks in fear while a wolf pack drifts by downwind, fear compels people to stop, look around, and be careful of any approaching danger. The more heightened that sensation, the less they move.

Notice how people seem to have more available energy when they are feeling happy. They take on more risks. When a tragedy occurs and they feel a great sadness there seems to be a drop in that energy and the accompanying enthusiasm for life’s activities. Saddened people have a lowered metabolism and as such they stay at home by themselves both literally and spiritually and that is the lesson for managers.

They are not out in the world taking risks anymore until they have recovered from their grief. This has become a part of the makeup that helped protect people from danger when they were affected by deep loss. Sadness protected them in a way by sapping the energy necessary to go out where it might be dangerous.

Humans survived thus far because of quick tempers and other emotional responses to the dangers their ancestors were faced with. Those who had to stop and think were not quick enough to survive. That was all in the past though. Managing emotions today is something like a full time job and it has productivity implications for managers as well.

Life teaches that people still have little control over when they will get swept up in emotion or even what that emotion will be. They can, however, have some control on just how long they allow that emotion to stay.

The copyright of the article Emotion on the Job in Business Management is owned by Paul Larson. Permission to republish Emotion on the Job in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Fear in the Workplace Saps Energy

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