Ryan Tubridy gets emotional

Ryan Tubridy asked ‘is it ever right to show emotion in the workplace” on last Wednesday’s show. While I was glad to see this issue discussed on national radio I was really disheartened that the show didn’t appear to take the opportunity to challenge the most basic of myths about emotion i.e. women cry and men get angry; emotion has to be ‘controlled’; emotion is ‘personal’; emotional behaviour has to be taken out of the work environment. Hopes for a more sophisticated discussion that might have included reference to work as an emotional and emotion generating environment; the difference between feelings and emotions in the workplace; emotion as systemic intelligence about what is going on in the workplace and the fact that there’s no such thing as an emotion free environment (well maybe in the case of extreme bureaucracies) and the ‘rules’ about emotion were quickly dashed. The increasing body of research into this area wasn’t referenced even in passing.
Yes, if only we could get those pesky emotional people out of the workplace then all would be well eh?