TIPS TO RESPOND NEGATIVE EMOTIONS AT WORK

08 Dec 2022

If you are reading this article, there is a big probability that you are still a university student and haven’t started a job. If you have graduated and have been working for at least one month, you can agree that working is different from university. In the world of work, you need to do your job and deal with deadlines, company goals, unfriendly coworkers or even your short-tempered manager. There are so many problems at work that can trigger your emotion and make you anxious, angry or depressed. 

Not knowing how to respond to negative emotions can turn your working habit into crises. Negative emotions can lead your working form to worse, as it may decrease your productivity, and spark a fight with your team, until having the urge to sabotage your coworker’s work and mislead them. Not only as an employee but as a manager, not knowing how to control your emotions may cause employees to disintegrate and create barriers, increasing their stress level, affecting your business aspects and driving out your clients. Therefore, you need to know how to respond to negative emotions at work.

The first thing you should know, there are some things that cannot be changed. Negative emotion does exist and there will still be negative emotions around you even though you have tried to push those things away from your mind. The best way to acknowledge your emotions is by acceptance, you can start by sorting the stuff you can or cannot control. Focusing on things you can control can improve your emotional management, therefore you can try to work and accept those emotional feelings. Expressing your emotion can make you feel better, but don’t hold your emotions and just try to let them go and fade away.

The next thing you can do after accepting the facts is by observing your surroundings. We all at least encountered negative situations once, at work there can be tens to hundreds of them. There will be some situations such as awkward meetings, fighting scenes during lunch, or sarcasm. To respond to those negative emotions, you can try to remove yourself mentally during the situation by observing the situation. By seeing it from a different perspective, you may notice that the situation is not as bad as it looks. Note that don’t always remove yourself mentally and staying present during a certain moment may bring some benefits as well.

The last thing as a suggestion, try to find the positive side from the negative emotions. It is an essential strategy to be done when you are dealing with an unpleasant situation at work. You can do reappraisal when you face negative situations such as after the manager gave a critical response to your assignments or tasks. Try to see if there is a valuable lesson or a useful suggestion after getting critical comments from your boss. If you think you can control the situation, you can just take action and try to dispel the tension in the room.

Whenever you are especially at work, you need to control your emotions so that you can have a good response to negative emotions. So, are you able to handle your emotions and start to be a good positive person rather than a short-tempered negative person? No matter the situation, never let your emotions overpower your intelligence. -Jean Houston

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Daniel Joshua