99. JUST JESSICA - Psychology of crying at work – how to limit damage to your career + what managers should do when a team member cries

Hello Brights Minds, I’ve been thinking a lot about displays of emotions at work because of the increasing number of women I’ve been coaching over the last 12 months who’ve described being taken by surprise by their tears and worrying about the implications. It tuns out there’s some pretty complex psychology at play when it comes to how crying at work can potentially affect our reputation.

I’m Jessica Chivers, a psychologist and executive coach. For the last 20 years I’ve been coaching leaders, senior professionals and high potential individual contributors during career transitions and challenging times. The work always involves an element of increasing their understanding of themselves and I’ll often bring in evidenced-based insights from the world of psychology and related disciplines to help with that ('psychoeducation').

In this episode I cover:

• My new comeback coaching research published by the British Psychological Society.
• Why we cry (including some gender differences). [05:41]
• What’s been happening for the women I’ve been coaching who have been crying at work. [08:19]
• What co-workers are likely to be thinking when they see a colleague cry (where I explain ‘cognitive scripts’ and ‘attribution theory’) [11:06]
• What the research tells us is the best thing to do to mitigate any negative downsides of crying at work. [18:30]
• What managers need to do when they see a team member cry (where I explain some nasty gender biases) [22:11]
• What repeated crying at work might be telling you. [25:37]

REFERENCES

• Becker, W., Conroy, S., Djurdjevic, E. & Gross, M. (2018). Crying is in the eyes of the beholder: an attribution theory framework of crying at work. Emotion Review, 10(2), 125-137. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073917706766
• Elsbach, K.D. and Bechky, B.A (2018). How observers assess women who cry in professional work contexts. Academy of Management Discoveries, 4(2), 127-154. 
• Gelstein, S. et al (2011) Human tears contain a chemosignal. Science, 331, 226-230 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1198331
• Malle, B. F. (2006). The actor-observer asymmetry in attribution: A (surprising) meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 895-919. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.6.895
• Tiedens, L.Z. (2001). Anger and advancement versus sadness and subjugation: The effect of negative emotion expressions on social status conferral. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(1): 86-94.

MORE FOR YOU

• DM Jessica on instagram @comebackcommuk
• Get Caremail (free, every other Sunday at 7am)
• Read Mothers Work! How to Get a Grip on Guilt and Make a Smooth Return to Work by Jessica Chivers.
• Watch five coachees talk about working with us
• Connect us to your HR team - bring the Comeback Community™ employee experience to your workplace