The Emotion Game at Work: Why Your Feelings Matter More Than You Think

Some bloke at my gym the other day was ranting about how emotions have no place in business. "Leave your feelings at the door," he said, sweating profusely while bench-pressing what looked like barely his body weight. I almost choked on my protein shake. Twenty-two years in corporate training and consulting, and I can tell you with absolute certainty - that's the biggest load of rubbish I've ever heard.

Here's the truth nobody wants to admit: emotions are everywhere in the workplace. They're in every meeting, every email, every coffee machine conversation. Pretending they don't exist is like pretending gravity doesn't work - you can ignore it all you want, but eventually you're going to fall flat on your face.

The Real Cost of Emotional Ignorance

Last month I was working with a tech startup in Melbourne's CBD. Brilliant team, cutting-edge product, but they had a problem. Their star developer kept having meltdowns during sprint reviews. The CEO's solution? "Just tell him to toughen up."

Spoiler alert: that didn't work.

What actually worked was acknowledging that this developer was experiencing classic overwhelm symptoms. Instead of dismissing his emotions, we implemented some basic emotional awareness strategies. Within three weeks, not only had the meltdowns stopped, but the team's overall productivity increased by 23%. That's not fuzzy feel-good stuff - that's hard business results.

I've seen similar scenarios play out hundreds of times across different industries. The companies that Excel (and yes, I still use Excel for everything despite my kids constantly telling me about Notion) are the ones that understand emotional intelligence isn't just a nice-to-have - it's a competitive advantage.

Why We're All Emotional Wrecks (And That's OK)

Let's get one thing straight - having emotions at work doesn't make you weak. It makes you human. The problem isn't that we have feelings; it's that we've been conditioned to think professional success means suppressing them.

Think about it. You spend roughly 40 hours a week at work. That's more time than you spend awake with your family. Of course you're going to have emotional responses to what happens there. Your brain doesn't have an on/off switch for feelings just because you walk through the office door.

But here's where it gets interesting. The most successful people I know - and I'm talking CEOs, entrepreneurs, thought leaders - they're not the ones who've mastered suppressing their emotions. They're the ones who've learned to recognise, understand, and manage them effectively.

Take someone like Atlassian's Mike Cannon-Brookes. I've had the privilege of attending a few events where he's spoken, and the guy is refreshingly open about his emotional journey as a leader. He talks about anxiety, about doubt, about the pressure of making decisions that affect thousands of employees. That vulnerability isn't weakness - it's what makes him relatable and, ultimately, more effective as a leader.

The Four Emotional Traps That Kill Careers

Over the years, I've identified four main ways people completely stuff up their emotional management at work:

The Volcano Approach: These people bottle everything up until they explode. Usually happens in the worst possible moment - during a client meeting, in front of the board, or at the company Christmas party. I once watched a marketing director have a complete meltdown because someone ate her yoghurt from the office fridge. Turns out she'd been dealing with unrealistic deadlines and a micromanaging boss for months. The yoghurt was just the final straw.

The Robot Strategy: On the opposite end, you've got people who think showing any emotion is career suicide. They become these weird, artificial versions of themselves. Clients can sense it, colleagues find them hard to connect with, and ironically, they often miss out on promotions because they're seen as "lacking leadership presence."

The Drama Queen/King Method: Every minor setback becomes a catastrophe. Every piece of feedback is a personal attack. These people turn their workplace into their personal soap opera. Fun fact: nobody wants to work with someone who treats a budget revision like the end of the world.

The Passive-Aggressive Path: Instead of dealing with emotions directly, they channel them into snide comments, deliberate delays, and subtle sabotage. This is perhaps the most toxic approach because it creates a poisonous atmosphere for everyone.

Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so. I've been guilty of at least three of these at various points in my career. The robot phase was particularly embarrassing - I spent six months trying to emulate this emotionless executive I admired, only to realise later that his team couldn't stand him.

The Australian Way: Why Our Culture Makes It Harder

Let's be honest about something - Australian workplace culture doesn't exactly encourage emotional awareness. We've got this whole "she'll be right" mentality that can be brilliant for resilience but terrible for emotional intelligence.

I remember working with a mining company in Perth where the cultural expectation was that you just "got on with it" no matter what. Mental health wasn't discussed, stress was seen as weakness, and asking for help was career suicide. The turnover rate was astronomical, and they couldn't figure out why their best people kept leaving for competitors.

The breakthrough came when we reframed emotional awareness as a safety issue. Just like you wouldn't operate heavy machinery while impaired, you shouldn't make important business decisions when you're emotionally compromised. Suddenly, paying attention to emotions wasn't about being "soft" - it was about being professional and responsible.

The Science Bit (Don't Worry, I'll Keep It Brief)

Here's something that might surprise you: your emotional state directly impacts your cognitive performance. When you're stressed, anxious, or angry, your prefrontal cortex - the part of your brain responsible for decision-making, problem-solving, and creative thinking - basically goes offline.

This isn't touchy-feely psychology. This is hardcore neuroscience.

A study from Harvard Business School found that teams with higher emotional intelligence outperform their peers by 20% in terms of business results. Another piece of research showed that emotionally intelligent salespeople outsell their colleagues by an average of 50%.

But here's the kicker - and this is where most people get it wrong - emotional intelligence isn't about being nice all the time or avoiding conflict. It's about understanding what you're feeling, why you're feeling it, and choosing your response rather than just reacting.

Practical Strategies That Actually Work

Alright, enough theory. Let's talk about what you can actually do tomorrow to start managing your emotions more effectively at work.

The Pause Technique: Before you respond to anything that triggers an emotional reaction - an email, a comment in a meeting, feedback from your boss - take a pause. Count to five. Take a deep breath. Ask yourself: "What am I feeling right now, and why?" This simple step prevents about 80% of workplace emotional disasters.

The Reframe Game: When something goes wrong (and it will), practice reframing the situation. Instead of "This client is an absolute nightmare," try "This client has high standards and clear expectations." Instead of "My boss is trying to make my life difficult," consider "My boss is under pressure and needs more frequent updates to feel confident in my work."

This isn't about being fake or positive. It's about looking for alternative explanations that don't automatically cast you as the victim.

The Energy Audit: Start paying attention to what drains your emotional energy and what fills it up. Maybe it's certain types of meetings, specific people, or particular tasks. Once you know your patterns, you can start making strategic choices about how to structure your day and career.

For me, I discovered that back-to-back video calls turn me into an emotional zombie. Now I block out 15-minute buffers between virtual meetings, and it's made a massive difference to my ability to stay emotionally regulated throughout the day.

The Reality Check Network: Build relationships with a few trusted colleagues who can give you honest feedback about your emotional state. Sometimes we can't see our own patterns. Having someone who can say, "Hey, you seem really stressed lately. What's going on?" can be invaluable.

When Everything Goes Wrong (Because It Will)

Let me tell you about the worst day of my consulting career. I was delivering a leadership workshop to a room full of senior executives when my phone started buzzing incessantly. I ignored it initially, but the buzzing continued. During the break, I discovered that my biggest client had just cancelled their contract, my father was in hospital, and my mortgage payment had bounced due to a banking error.

My immediate instinct was to power through the rest of the workshop, pretending everything was fine. Classic Australian stoicism, right? But about halfway through the afternoon session, I realised I was completely emotionally checked out. My delivery was flat, I wasn't connecting with the participants, and I could see them checking their phones and losing interest.

So I did something that terrified me at the time but turned out to be one of the best professional decisions I've ever made. I stopped mid-sentence and said, "I need to share something with you. I've just received some challenging personal news, and I'm struggling to be fully present right now. Can we take a 10-minute break, and then I'd like to use this as a real-time example of how leaders can manage difficult emotions while still delivering for their team?"

The energy in the room completely shifted. Instead of a boring corporate training session, we had a genuine conversation about the reality of leadership under pressure. Several executives shared their own stories of difficult days and how they'd handled them. The feedback forms from that session were the best I've ever received.

The lesson? Acknowledging your emotional state doesn't make you vulnerable - it makes you human. And humans connect with humans, not with corporate robots.

The Gender Factor Nobody Talks About

Here's something uncomfortable we need to address: emotional expression is judged differently depending on your gender. Women are often labelled as "too emotional" for showing the same level of passion that would be praised as "dynamic leadership" in men. Men, on the other hand, are sometimes penalised for showing vulnerability or asking for emotional support.

This is complete garbage, but it's the reality we're working with. The solution isn't to conform to these ridiculous stereotypes, but to be strategic about how and when you express emotions at work.

I've coached female executives who've learned to reframe their emotional language. Instead of saying "I'm frustrated," they might say "I'm seeing some strategic risks here that concern me." Same emotion, different framing. It shouldn't have to be this way, but until workplace cultures evolve, sometimes you need to play the game while working to change it.

Building Emotional Resilience for the Long Haul

Managing emotions at work isn't a one-time fix. It's an ongoing practice, like going to the gym or maintaining your professional skills. Here are some strategies for building long-term emotional resilience:

Regular Emotional Check-ins: Schedule weekly 15-minute sessions with yourself to assess your emotional state. What's working? What's challenging? What patterns are you noticing? I do this every Friday afternoon, and it's been game-changing for spotting potential issues before they become crises.

Develop Your Emotional Vocabulary: Most people operate with a pretty limited emotional vocabulary - happy, sad, angry, stressed. The more precisely you can identify what you're feeling, the better you can address it. Are you frustrated, overwhelmed, disappointed, or resentful? Each emotion suggests different solutions.

Create Boundaries That Actually Work: This doesn't mean being difficult or uncooperative. It means being clear about your limits and communicating them professionally. If you're someone who gets emotionally drained by constant interruptions, block out focused work time. If you need processing time before giving feedback, ask for it.

Invest in Relationships: Strong workplace relationships are your emotional insurance policy. When you've built trust and goodwill with colleagues, they're more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt when you're having an off day. Plus, managing difficult conversations becomes much easier when there's existing respect and connection.

The Technology Trap

Before I wrap up, I have to mention something that's making workplace emotional management infinitely more complex: technology. Email tone gets misinterpreted. Slack messages seem passive-aggressive when they're not meant to be. Video calls create a weird emotional distance that makes it harder to read and respond to emotional cues.

My rule? When in doubt, pick up the phone or walk over to someone's desk. Yes, even in our digital age, face-to-face or voice-to-voice communication is still the gold standard for navigating emotionally charged situations.

I learned this lesson the hard way when a entire project nearly fell apart because of a misunderstood email exchange. What seemed like straightforward project feedback was interpreted as harsh criticism, leading to hurt feelings and defensive responses. A five-minute phone call cleared everything up instantly.

The Bottom Line

Look, managing emotions at work isn't about becoming some zen master who never gets rattled. It's about recognising that emotions are data - they're telling you something important about your situation, your relationships, and your needs.

The most successful professionals I know aren't the ones who've eliminated emotions from their work life. They're the ones who've learned to use their emotional intelligence as a strategic tool. They know when to push through discomfort and when to address underlying issues. They can read the emotional temperature of a room and adjust their approach accordingly. They build genuine connections with colleagues because they're not afraid to be authentically human.

In a world where artificial intelligence is handling more and more of our routine tasks, our uniquely human abilities - including emotional intelligence - become more valuable, not less. The robots can crunch numbers and analyse data, but they can't build trust, inspire teams, or navigate the complex emotional landscape of organisational change.

So stop treating your emotions like an inconvenient side effect of being human. Start treating them like the powerful business tool they actually are.

Related Resources: Check out our thoughts on workplace communication and explore more insights at Focus Group.

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After 22 years in corporate consulting and training, I've seen every workplace emotional disaster you can imagine - and learned from most of them the hard way. If you're struggling with emotional challenges at work, remember that seeking help isn't weakness, it's wisdom.