It’s Always Personal *****
Clear rules for the new world simply don’t exist, writes Anne Kreamer in an important contribution to our thinking about the fast-evolving workplace. It’s Always Personal: Emotion in the New Workplace engages with the key question: Can business organizations, whose value overwhelmingly derives from “human capital,” learn to tolerate the reality of human nature?
Self-evidently, the typical corporation remains intolerant of the human beings on whom its existence depends.That is, any company will demonstrate much more engagement with certain aspects of human nature than with others. Some cultures thrive on creativity and self-expression, others on docility, anxiety, and fear. What’s rare is the organization that recognizes, accepts, engages with, and unleashes the whole human being — as-is, without selecting among traits. In real life, of course, the behaviors valued will vary by business unit or department. Ultimately, the key variable is the taste and temperament — the emotional makeup — of the individual boss.
Generally, though. businesses prize rationality, analysis, and clear thinking; emotional expression, not so much. Meanwhile, according to a survey Kreamer conducted, the emotion most commonly experienced at work is frustration, cited by 73% of respondents. Maybe if we ignore the problem it will go away?
Kreamer, who wisely limits her focus to the experience and expression of emotion at work, convincingly argues that the root problem is an evolutionary lag. For example, the emotion of fear in human beings triggers the release of hormones such as adrenaline from the amygdala, which produces behaviors useful to apes fleeing predators but counterproductive for executives trying to keep their cool in business meetings. Let’s face it: We are apes in business suits. It will be a long time before the reality of human nature catches up with the expectations of business organizations — or vice versa. It may never happen.
Bursting into tears – which Kreamer tells us women are far more likely to do at work than men – is a prime example of emotional response that business cultures may not be prepared to tolerate.
Tears become a major topic in this book, as do matters of gender. Kreamer is firmly in the camp of those who believe women are not identical to men. This idea may enrage people like my muse Wilcox. But I suspect that many working women will relate to Kreamer when she writes, The “work” of acting like a manager often felt more challenging to me than the work itself… I forced myself to act like a guy. My own observation is that the typical American workplace remains overwhelmingly male-dominated – culturally, politically, and behaviorally – despite female populations increasingly likely to constitute majorities.
Rather than adapting to women, and improving because of their contributions, companies induce women to act more like men. If that’s not a tragedy, it’s certainly stupid.
The most powerful idea in this concise, very readable book may be the observation that working compels pretense. The pervasive reluctance to face reality – whether about the evolutionary lag or the distinctions of gender – reliably manufactures dysfunction in organizations. If you can’t acknowledge what so obviously is, you’re obliged to pretend. My own hypothesis is that mysterious conspiracies of denial arise naturally in most business organizations. No one solicits members. Nothing ever is said explicitly. Instead, people accept unstated norms of behavior, and new arrivals conform. No crying, please – we’re rational. The economic cost of this play-acting remains uncalculated, but I’ll bet it’s hundreds of billions of dollars annually in the United States alone.
Kreamer buries what may be her most important point in a subordinate clause: the rationality of business organizations is “fake.” I couldn’t agree more.
So what to do? Kreamer organizes her book as a compelling argument backed by neuroscience, statistical evidence, and personal anecdote, but at its heart, its mission is self-help. She provides an Emotional Management Toolkit that strikes this reader as entirely credible, and doubtless useful to readers seeking practical help. There’s also an online survey called the WEEP test at Kreamer’s website to help readers categorize themselves. (Krundt, you’ll be glad to know, is a Believer/Solver, optimistic if not quite CEO material.)
I was touched by Kreamer’s quotation from Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message: Our age of anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s jobs with yesterday’s tools. The most outdated tool may be our selves. For better and for worse, we are merely human. Perhaps today’s jobs need to be re-conceived in light of the tools at hand.
Writes Kreamer: I’m suggesting that we learn to tolerate a far greater range of emotions at work, for both men and women…. Working involves a human reciprocity.
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