Mixed feelings: how to deal with emotions at work

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Written By Laura Linham

What happens if we see a colleague crying? Have you ever felt afraid at work? How often do we laugh and rage on the job? We surveyed more than 2,000 people to reveal what everyone really feels about emotions in the workplace.

At the heart of it, science tells us, we have six universal emotions. In the late 1960s, psychologist Paul Ekman suggested that these Big Six were apparent in all cultures. But which of them are we most likely to feel in our working culture?

TotalJobs surveyed 2,250 UK workers and managers and asked them to open up about their emotions in the workplace - here’s what they discovered.

Emotional triggers at work

Joy might seem like the dominant emotion in the workplace. But as ever, when feelings are involved, it’s more complicated than that.

Because in the workplace, emotions and their ‘suitability’ for sharing with our colleagues are tightly bound to our notions of professionalism, capability and status.

So what’s making us emotional at work? The survey reveals that the most common cause behind any workplace emotion isn’t actually the work - it’s who we’re working with.

UK workers said that 1 in 3 emotional events are triggered by a colleague, whereas only 2 in 10 are caused by a task. In short: it’s people, not projects.

Surprisingly, the survey discovered that men may be far more emotionally sensitive in the workplace than women.

Men were more than twice as likely as women to get emotional because their “ideas weren’t heard” or because they “were criticised”.

What’s more, men also seemed to be more emotionally invested in their projects than women. They were almost three times more likely than women to get emotional because a project went over budget, missed a deadline or got cancelled.

Meanwhile, women are feeling significantly more stressed at work than men.

What triggers our emotions if we’re a woman or a man

  • Men were 1.6x more emotional than women about being criticised

  • Men were 2.4x more emotional than women because their “ideas weren’t heard”

  • Men were 2.5x more emotional than women about “having a fall out”

  • Women were 25% more emotional than men about “stress/frustration”

This reveals things we’ll go deeper into later: men and women are socialised to display emotions differently, especially at work. And there’s an emotional cost to covering our emotions.

Keeping up appearances

How many of us are showing our true feelings at work? How much pressure is there in the UK’s working culture to hide our tears and fears behind a professional face?

It turns out that 6 in 10 people have experienced an emotion at work they felt they couldn’t express freely.

(You may notice that 2% of UK workers claim not to have experienced any of the Big Six emotions. We’re not sure what to feel about that either.)

When it comes to the less happy emotions, like sadness and anger, there’s a major gap between what we’re feeling and what we are prepared to show. Anger and disgust are the ones we’re most likely to hide from our colleagues.

Workplaces are environments of social expectations. This is one reason why people will suppress their emotions in the workplace: they fear being judged.

Once again, gender seems to play a big role here.

Anger is stereotypically seen as a more male trait. And sure enough, men do express more anger at work than women. But under the surface? Women are feeling just as angry as men.

Likewise, women and men look like they’re experiencing the same level of sadness at work. But women are putting on a brave face. Our survey tells us they’re actually feeling sadder than men – they’re just not showing it.

Clearly, men and women have different emotional responses to workplace issues. But these differences are not hard-wired in our brains.

The notions that women and more ‘nurturing’ and men are more ‘aggressive’ aren’t related to physiology. Research tells us that these ideas come from (and reinforce) social norms.

For example, women are more likely than men to report experiencing emotions associated with lack of power, such as fear, sadness, shame and guilt. Men, however, are more likely to report experiencing emotions associated with power, such as anger and pride.

In fact, emotions and power are inextricably linked. Not being heard is congruent with lacking in status. Similarly, sadness is associated with a lack of power in social settings such as the workplace.

Emotions through the ages

Everyone’s feelings evolve as they get older. So how do our emotions shift at work as we age?

Happily, joy and surprise at work are the most consistently high over our lifetimes. And we feel increasing able to express them as we grow older.

Joy in the workplace is key to keeping burnout, stress and disengagement at bay. In other words, it’s just good business practice.

Does your company spark joy? People get joy from their work when it resonates for them personally and when they believe their role is important to the organisation.

Here’s some more good news: we also get less sad, angry, disgusted and fearful as we age.

But interestingly, fear is the emotion that drops most dramatically. It falls from 77% of people aged 23-38 to just 45% of people aged 55-73.

This makes sense. In their early career, young people are in the process of creating their own professional identity.

And this often comes with a fear of doing the wrong thing – not only regarding their work but being seen to behave outside the prevailing workplace cultural or social norms.

But the fear associated with fitting in may pass as people spend more time in their work role. And as we become more experienced – gaining greater levels of capability, power and status – our fears of failure may also subside.

Put on a happy face?

Worryingly, though, we’re still not expressing our true selves 60% of the time.

So how do we deal with our emotions? A significant 1 in 3 people simply “put on a positive face”. And a quarter of us deal with these emotions outside of work.

Social conditioning may make us believe that we need to ‘put on a brave face’. But it’s draining to keep up the pretence of not being sad and can lead to increased stress.

Which may be why 7% of people admit using “coping methods such as drinking”.

Ways to cope with emotions at work

  1. Feel it: Let yourself feel the emotion for a while. Let the emotion out. Cry if you need to. Recognise what your sadness is telling you. Write it down.

  2. Get moving: Go outside if possible. Exercise has been shown to improve mood and getting inside your own head on the treadmill can help work through the messages that your sadness is sending you.

  3. Talk to someone you trust: Chatting it through often helps to organise thoughts and helps to order responses to feeling sad.

Letting it out: what our reactions tell

We’ve already seen that women and men differ more in how much emotion they express than in how much they feel. But exactly how do they let it out? Put simply, women cry and men shout (or just quit).

But of course, it’s not really that simple. These differences in our ‘emotional’ responses have much deeper psychological roots.

Anger is associated with influence, whereas sadness is associated with lack of self-confidence or power in social settings such as the workplace.

It turns out that 3 in 4 of us are enjoying a good chuckle on the job. Research suggests that laughter among colleagues can improve ongoing relationships, cement co-operation and help people transcend the mundanity of work.

Can companies help us feel better?

To ensure an emotionally healthy workplace, we need our managers to take responsibility for our emotional wellbeing as well as our workload.

Yet less than half of line managers feel equipped to handle their team’s emotions. Many don’t even think they should have to.

These revelations suggest that the rhetoric of ‘bringing your whole self to work’ is not being backed up with cultural rules or support structures that provide a safe, trusted or accepting environment for displays of certain emotions.

‘Check your emotions at the door’ is an approach to work that should be long gone. Emotional intelligence is a key capability, particularly for leaders and managers.

So what should we do with our emotions?

Our emotions are what make us human. They give us our capacity for collaboration, innovation, creativity and connection. But even our negative emotions play an important part of feeling good.

So rather than using coping strategies, we should reach for greater levels of emotional awareness. Being able to flex your approach will benefit everyone’s mental health, well-being and success in the workplace.

Sharing feelings is quite intimate and may be difficult to figure out in the workplace. But next time it happens, here’s how you can support a colleague who’s feeling emotional:

  • Acknowledge the emotion, whatever it is.

  • Avoid giving advice.

  • Your role is not to solve the problem.

  • Never downplay their emotional response.

  • Don’t tell them to “Cheer up” or “It will be alright”.

  • Maintain confidentiality.

  • Listen. Just listen.

A note on neurodiversity

Not all people ‘read’ or display emotions in a way that is thought of as typical.

While some emotions are thought of as universal, we’re becoming much more aware of how neurodiversity can bring a different perspective to the recognition and display of emotions.

Societal standards may be interpreted and enacted differently by people who are neurodivergent. Taking an inclusive view of the world around us means we may need to rethink our expectations that all people will recognise and react to socially typical or expected displays of emotions in the same way.

Just as we’re becoming more attuned to the capabilities and value of people from diverse backgrounds, we’re also appreciating that different people will think and respond emotionally differently too.