Hannah Seligson says she’s not prone to crying. But one day, just four months into her first job, she was called into the big boss’s office and told that her immediate supervisor was not happy with her work. Seligson, now 24, lost it.
She was running on four hours of sleep and immersed in creating an elaborate PowerPoint presentation. So instead of a flicker of a choke-up that might have gone unnoticed, she flipped into full water-sprinkler mode. It came to a point where “I was dry-heaving. I couldn’t control myself,” she says. “I was just floored. I had been working so hard.” Five months later she had another bad day - she got fired. But this time she says she shed no tears. “I was just angry I hadn’t quit first.”
Yes, emotional outbursts at work are generally considered taboo. Just listen to what Martha Stewart said on the TV show “The Apprentice” to a young woman who insisted she was so embarrassed that she wanted to cry. “Cry and you’re out of here,” Martha told her. “Women in business don’t cry, my dear.”
Yet some workplace experts report a rise in such emotional displays. Anita Madison, Vice President of training and consulting at Chicago-based ComPsych, an employee assistance program, says she’s seen a spike this year in the number of managers calling for help in dealing with displays of all kinds of emotions, not just crying, but shouting, too. Heavy workloads and various stressors can “break down emotional walls,” she says.
And other factors may be at play. Viewers of reality television shows are seeing play-by-play dramas unfold with the expressions of  “every single thought and every single emotion,” says Janice Grackin, assistant psychology professor at Stony Brook University. And that may be a green light to impressionable workplace newbies that it’s OK to behave the same way. Although it’s hard to tell if the shows are reflecting reality or bringing it about, Grackin does say that in recent decades, each generation seems to be more comfortable expressing emotions than the one preceding it.
Troublesome emotion
Why do people find workplace tears so troublesome? For starters, tears can make you come across as weak, needy or manipulative. And outbursts can lead to office dramas that divert co-workers’ focus away from the job at hand.
While crying is certainly not a preferred coping mechanism in the workplace, it doesn't appear to carry the same taboo for young adults that it did for their parents’ generation, unless, of course, the tears are used for manipulation or to get attention.
Seligson says she’s learned that developing workplace coping skills is a “rite of passage.” She’s been told that when it comes to crying, “that’s what the last stall in the bathroom is for.”
In the aftermath of that first job as an analyst with a consulting company, she decided to interview young women, mostly in their 20s, as well as established professionals such as Bobbi Brown and Soledad O’Brien for a soon-to-be-released book “New Girl on the Job: Advice From the Trenches”. The women she interviewed told her that emotional moments, such as crying in response to that first negative feedback, are seldom career deal-breakers. One magazine editor even told her that “I think too much is made of crying” - and that what really counts is what you say about the issue at hand and how you behave afterward.
Pat Lupino, a former marketing executive and now a professor at Nassau Community College, says that, based on her experience, most workplace outbursts are rooted in “primal anger, frustration, rage, humiliation, exhaustion or fear.” She hears from students and former students about all kinds of workplace situations, crying among them. Two recently shared their experiences in e-mails.
One young woman said that while crying may be less taboo these days and “a few tears among friends don’t hurt,” she also feels that her emotions may have led her to miss out on a promotion.
She says she had been “very emotional because I had a baby a few months earlier and my hormones had a lot to do with it.”Another e-mail told of a manager who had frequent crying jags, even crying over the phone, when she was disappointed, for instance, when she was overlooked for a promotion. “Perhaps she thought this was an acceptable way to get what you want,” wrote the former student.
Under certain powerful circumstances, the display of strong emotion - whether by men or women - can be seen as acceptable, says Stephanie Shields, professor of psychology and women’s studies at Penn State University. That’s especially true since the world saw images of grief-stricken first responders on 9/11. It’s what one of her graduate students calls the “darn good reason effect,” and research shows that men who tear up are seen in a more positive light than women.
Be sensible
Certainly emotional responses to a disaster or family tragedy are understandable, but people should “not use tears to push their point, create a sense of entitlement, intimidate others or because they want something,” she says.
Source: Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service