It’s normal to experience emotions at work: frustration, anger, fear, excitement. But how leaders handle these feelings can go a long way toward building — or destroying — a strong workplace climate and motivating — or discouraging — employees. It’s essential that leaders develop the ability to regulate their emotions, but perhaps not in the way you might think.
Handling Negative Emotions in a Way that’s Good for Your Team
Instead of repressing or expressing, try reappraising.
June 11, 2019
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Summary.
It’s normal to experience emotions at work: frustration, anger, fear, excitement. And how leaders handle those feelings can go a long way toward building a strong workplace climate and motivating employees. It’s essential that leaders develop the ability to regulate their emotions, but perhaps not in the way you might think. When you’re upset at work you might be inclined to suppress your feelings to spare your team or to fully express those emotions. But neither approach is ideal. Instead, reappraisal, or the reassessing an emotional situation, may be the most effective strategy. For example, a coach who is upset that his team is down at half time could remind himself that “the game is only over when it’s over”; that this is just one game in the season. Reappraisal helps him calm down. As a consequence, he might perceive that the players were already disappointed and that, instead of more dejection, they need encouragement. One study found that leaders who used reappraisal rather than suppression when delivering bad news were better able to help their followers manage their anger responses. Next time you find yourself feeling strong, negative emotions at work, try to think of the problem as a challenge, not the threat, and encourage your team to do the same.