Leave Your Emotional Baggage at the Office Door

Bringing your emotional baggage into the work place is inappropriate for all the reasons you may imagine. Yet directors, managers and workers do it all the time.

The question is, how do you handle it? How do you look at your manager and think, “No one is going to tell me what to do!” What if a client, peer or prospect gets you on a Bad Day?

How do you take the personal out of the workplace?

It requires discernment and distinction. If you are having communication problems at work, look at how you view your manager, boss or co-worker. Does he or she represent a parent, mate or partner? Are your frustrations about what is and is not working in your life manifested on the job?

Learn to leave it at the door. Decide that what you do in the workplace is your contribution – to yourself, your peers and the community. This is your opportunity to commit to what you are best at doing and get paid for it.

Examine your values. Values are how you live your life, about what is important to you. Choose values that help make you what you truly are. Your personal values and professional values can be the same.

Warning! Many businesses like to say they are like a family. Be cautious if you are enticed by this. Employees, managers and producers may manifest characteristics found in your personal family.

Why is this important?
What can happen is, you may take on the role that you do in your own family. If you are passive at home and come to work as a manager, what does that look like? Confusing at best.

When a passive person has to function in a different role on the job, they may revert and act like the aggressive parent. Potential can best be realized under a thoughtful and caring leader. Attempt to facilitate, to make it easy for everyone to achieve his or her best.

As a producer, worker or executive, you have to know what your values are; what the values of your company are, as well as the values of the people you manage. The basic rules of respect and acceptance apply. The Golden Rule is: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, not: “Do it to them before they do it to you”.

People who bring emotional baggage into the workplace can be temperamental, grasping and neglectful. Even more frustrating is that they act out all their pent-up, misplaced emotions on the job without consideration for others. Co-workers react to this, work efforts and results go by the wayside, and profit and productivity go down.

Leave your unexpressed feelings at the door. Take a break if you become frustrated. Know that you are at work to provide results.

Heal yourself first, determine your values, and then you will be a better worker, manager or producer.