Ed Batista

Crying at Work

Is it OK to cry at work?

Bret Simmons had a great post yesterday on crying in the office which prompted some further reflection.  I've had many clients, students and colleagues cry with me in my work as an executive coach, and I've cried myself, many times.  I think it's important to create a working environment and working relationships in which it's acceptable for people to acknowledge stress, frustration, grief and the wide range of other emotions that can lead to tears.  In my experience tears are almost always cathartic, and when they're expressed people feel better afterward as long as they're not stigmatized for doing so.

Bret's post critiques a video from Howdini on "How to deal with crying in the office" that Bret and I both take issue with.  An author interviewed in the video states that "work is about facts, not feelings."  That's a dangerously naive view of how we operate, even (especially) in the workplace, and the suggestion that we can (and should) simply repress any negative emotions we feel at work strikes me as outdated and unhelpful.

That said, the video features two women and seems to be aimed at women, with a reference to running mascara, and I think it's important to acknowledge that women can pay a greater price than men for crying at work, particularly in certain organizations and industries where crying is stigmatized, and especially in fields where women are underrepresented.

In my role as a coach, I typically encourage people to acknowledge and express their emotions more freely in ways that will support their goals.  I firmly believe that the ability to do so allows us to be more effective, more influential and healthier to boot.  And I'd like to support the development of a business world in which people can cry as freely as they do in my coaching practice or in my classes with graduate students.

But I also know that my clients and students need to succeed in the world as it exists today, and that includes organizations and industries where people who express emotion, particularly tears, pay a price.  So with any individual client or student, I believe that it's essential to understand the context in which they work and whether they will pay a price for expressing their emotions.  That doesn't mean they shouldn't cry, of course, but it does allow us to fully assess the implications of doing so, to weigh the costs and benefits, and to strike the right balance between (at one extreme) passive acceptance of an environment in which emotional expressions are taboo and (at the other extreme) a quixotic effort to resist a culture that's not going to change.

I'm reminded that in December 2006, the tears of former President George H. W. Bush made news.  Bush was addressing legislators and state workers at the final leadership forum convened by his son Jeb, who was soon to leave office after two terms as governor of Florida.  It was the sort of routine political function that would ordinarily be ignored by everyone except those in attendance, but Bush's tears turned it into a national story.

Bush was describing how Jeb handled his defeat in the 1994 governor's race when he broke down.   As he struggled with his emotions, he stopped speaking for a moment, and the audience burst into applause.  Jeb rushed to his father's side, as shown above, comforted him with an arm around his shoulder, and handed him a bottle of water before Bush continued.

Interviewed after the forum, Bush said, "I'm the emotional one... I don't enjoy breaking up, but when you talk about somebody you love, when you get older, you do it more."  So as a powerful figure, as someone discussing his son, and as an older person, Bush had the freedom to cry without fearing the repercussions--and hopefully his doing so made it more acceptable for those of us who lack his advantages.

On Growth and Renewal: An Update

How do we invest in our own growth and development?  What do we do to renew and revitalize ourselves?

These questions have been on my mind today.  Last April Eric Lapp sent me the photo on the left of a tree in his neighborhood that refused to die, an image that struck both of us as a powerful symbol of growth and renewal.  Eric just sent me the updated photo at right, and I'm thrilled to see it thriving--it obviously had a good growth spurt this Summer.  So what have I done over the past few months to support my own growth and renewal?

Being A Better Coach Means Getting Better Coaching

In a sense, coaches are always being coached.  Coaching is an approach to interacting with others--at its simplest, I'd say it's an awareness that I don't have "The Answer" coupled with an ability to ask thought-provoking questions--that we bring to relationships with colleagues as well as to engagements with clients.  So my discussions with the other coaches here at Stanford and with my colleagues in the larger executive coaching community often have a certain "coaching feel" to them that can be very helpful.  But despite this dynamic there's something uniquely powerful about being in a formal relationship with a coach--which is why my colleagues and I exist in the first place.

So this Summer I began working again with Mary Ann Huckabay, a coach and therapist who recently retired from the Stanford faculty.  Mary Ann not only was my prof in the GSB's "Interpersonal Dynamics" course 10 years ago (!), but she also served as my coach in my first Executive Director position after my graduation from business school.  I initially approached Mary Ann because I wanted to be better prepared to support students coping with mental illness, particularly depression, but our conversations have extended into a range of other topics related to my effectiveness as a coach, not only with students but also with my private clients.  It's been incredibly stimulating and challenging and a lot of fun, and it's certainly the best investment I've made in my own development this year.

Reading, Writing, Reflecting...and Unplugging

I spent a good amount of time in the first half of the Summer reviewing the work I've done here over the past 5 years and reflecting on the themes that emerged.  This process resulted in the creation of six Self-Coaching Guides, edited compilations of posts on the topics of Change, Communication, Happiness, Leadership, Learning and Motivation.  I didn't select these topics in advance--they seemed to grow naturally out of my writing--and further reflection led me to see them as elements in a larger framework that I'm calling an Operator's Manual for understanding and addressing our professional challenges.

It felt great to have gained this perspective on my work.  I understood myself and my approach to coaching more deeply, I felt better prepared to assist my clients and next year's students, and I had a conceptual framework to support continued thinking along these lines.  And then I really needed to take a break, which at first was easier said than done.  I worried about whether I should be more "productive" over the Summer, and I wondered whether I'd be able to get my momentum back in the Fall.  But eventually I realized that I needed to listen to the deeper voice advising me to slow down for a bit, and to let go of the anxieties that were keeping me from doing it.

So in the second half of the Summer, I did a little professional reading--but I read a lot more John O'Hara (my current fave.)  Aside from my work with my coach, I had some very rewarding conversations with colleagues--but I spent a lot more time just hanging out with Amy, enjoying her company.  I'm looking forward to reading more deeply and writing more frequently again, but simply unplugging for a while has been very invigorating and a great investment in my long-term growth.

The Continued Pursuit of Happiness

Although I dialed back my work here a bit, I've stayed very active in a number of ways, in keeping with the happiness strategies I adopted last Winter: "Taking Care of Your Body," "Increasing Flow Experiences," "Practicing Acts of Kindness" and "Expressing Gratitude."  I've certainly been physically active, exercising 70 days in June, July and August.  (I've also eaten quite well this Summer, so all that activity hasn't translated into a slimmer profile.)  And I've maintained a keen sense of gratitude over the past few months--grateful for the most important people in my life, grateful for the wisdom of David Foster Wallace, grateful even for just a little perspective on a bad day.

I haven't been as successful at cultivating (non-athletic) flow experiences, or at performing (non-trivial) acts of kindness, so I have plenty of room for improvement.  But given that I was somewhat down and frustrated a few weeks ago, I feel that my commitment to these practices has helped me develop a more resilient, deeper happiness that allows me to bounce back more readily--and that feels like an important area of growth.

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None of this is to say that I feel a sense of complacency about myself or my development--I'm acutely aware of my shortcomings as a person, a husband, a coach, a friend.  But that awareness of my shortcomings is, in part, what's inspired my focus on growth and renewal.  And it's because I know that I can do better, in so many ways, that it's so gratifying to look back over the past few months and think, "Hey, not bad!"

Which brings me back to the questions I asked above, and I pose them to you:

How are you investing in your own growth and development?  What are you doing to renew and revitalize yourself?