Bring Your Emotions to Work
“Leave your emotions at the office door” is a saying perpetuated in companies to this day. At Care Sherpa, a remote/virtual organization - we don’t have an office door, nor do we ask our team members to keep their emotions separate from their work.
Weekly Care Sherpa team meetings kick off with statements of gratitude from team members. Individuals are asked to avoid the superficial (thankful for coffee) and provide some insight into their work and personal lives that week – an emotional check-in. Being fully remote, this practice provides the team with the opportunity to share and connect in a way that demonstrates understanding, affection, caring and compassion for each other. Dr. Robert A. Emmons, a psychologist and professor at University of California Davis who’s written several books on gratitude, says “In the face of crises and during troubling times, people rely on positive feelings to cope, and they seem to turn to gratitude more than any other positive emotion.”
Sigal Barsade, PhD, the late professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, was a pioneer in what organizational psychologists call the affective revolution: the study of how emotions, not just behavior and decision making, shape a workplace culture, and in turn how they affect an organization’s performance. Her research showed that “emotions belong at work; moods often spread from one person to another; it only takes one friend to avoid loneliness; and teams perform better when they show care, affection, and yes, even love.”
Care Sherpa is a small, start-up organization (currently 25 team members) providing highly personalized consumer follow-up and patient support services to healthcare organizations and physician practices. We recruit and hire for a “service heart” mentality. Working closely with practices and patients, emotions are a logical byproduct of the interactions we have. Patients want real and authentic conversations. But what about the emotions these conversations evoke in our team? Feelings are expressions of individuals’ needs. By identifying and meeting those needs people unlock positive feelings but ignoring them has the opposite effect.
The thought of emotions at work brings visions of behaviors such as outbursts, crying, gossip, eye rolling, venting and more, which are unproductive and can bring harm to others. In contrast, understanding what co-workers are experiencing at work and in their personal lives can allow each of us to take responsibility for how we express those emotions and how those expressions impact those around us.
Care Sherpa CEO, Jessica Walker brings a company philosophy influenced by her early career work at the Gallup organization where Dan Clifton, psychologist and founder, posed the question - what will happen when we think about what is right with people rather than fixating on what is wrong with them? Walker relates, “we are redefining what it means to be in the Care Sherpa workplace as your full, authentic self. I believe this will serve us as a company and with each other.”