The positive effects of negative emotions at work

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“Encouraging positive emotions amongst employees always makes businesses better. Negative emotions in the workplace are always counter-productive. Obvious, right?”

Wrong. Obviously.

Aha, I can see that you’re struggling to suppress the negative emotion that is making you want to slap me for contradicting you. Please bear with me, while I lay out some facts of business life.

First, business isn’t always a bowl of roses.

Most business work is routine, following well-established processes. For ‘routine’ and ‘well-established’, you can often substitute the words ‘dull’ or ‘boring’. When businesses tell potential recruits that every task they undertake will be creative and exciting, they’re mostly lying. Shiny, sparkly bursts of creative invention are usually followed by a long process of trial, test, embed, roll out… and after that, it’s steady as she goes until the next burst of creative invention.

Second, at work you are plunged into daily, close-quarters contact with large numbers of people you mostly didn’t choose to spend time with, all with varying personalities and traits. Some of them you will like, a few may become lifelong friends, and one (or two, if you’re unlucky or just frisky) may even become your life partner.

Other colleagues will irritate you, and there may be a few that you end up detesting. That’s just human nature.

Third, the only people who are positive all the time at work are either delusional, really quite stupid, or exercising industrial-strength self-management (in which case their families are probably on the receiving end of all the bottled-up negative emotions).

Humans are (fairly) developed sentient beings, which means they will at times experience fear, anxiety, unhappiness, dissatisfaction, envy, greed, depression, anger, jealousy, frustration and, yes, boredom. Trying to pretend you don’t ever have such feelings is just bad for your emotional stability.

Often, these negative emotions are experienced in the workplace because they are entirely appropriate responses to an unwelcome event or situation. Who, apart from headhunters and the occasional stony-hearted bean-counter, experiences positive emotions as a headcount-reduction programme is announced?

An exclusive and relentless emphasis on positive emotions at work ignores not only normal human behaviour, but also the fact that, sometimes, negative emotions can end up having positive effects.

The most obvious example is anxiety caused by a stressful situation, such as a tough target, which ends up creating the right level of urgent focus to get the job done well. Or, as we discuss in another blog, feelings of inadequacy can end up making some people better leaders, because their humility means they’re consultative and inclusive, listen to criticism and alternate opinions, and constantly work hard to improve themselves.

Many positive things in business would not happen without being prompted by negative emotions. You hate your job, so you set up your own business, which transforms your life. Dissatisfaction with your company’s product results in you inventing a better one. Anger created by a critical review leads to a determination to prove your boss wrong, and your star starts to shine.

Finally, most emotions run along a continuum, and tend to work healthily across part of the continuum, but can become counter-productive or even destructive at the extremes.

So, a manager who is anxious about a deadline may end up outperforming – but if the anxiety becomes severe, it may stop the executive from performing at all. In many businesses where displaying negative emotions like anxiety is regarded as a weakness, suppressing outward signs of such natural emotions may end up amplifying them to unhealthy levels.

But the same applies to so-called ‘positive’ emotions. For example, a feeling of confidence in a leader is usually positive – but at the extreme it can turn into blind optimism which will, unless checked, have disastrous effects on the business.

Everybody has emotions, both positive and negative. Both can produce positive effects if properly managed – and both can cause harm if suppressed or allowed to become extreme.

 

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