As the hardwalking staff headed home last night, we heard this report by Ashley Milne-Tyte on APM’s Marketplace.
Is it getting easier to show emotions at work?
We all spend a lot of time at work. Sometimes stuff happens
that drives us nuts, and maybe we lose our tempers or shed a tear or two. We’re human.
But traditionally, strong emotions and the workplace do not go together. Research shows women in particular are judged when they emote at the office, and it may affect their career progress.
Later, we read this Shirley Leung column in Friday’s Boston Globe.
Big girls do cry, and that’s OK
Is it OK for big girls to cry?
Last week I cringed when Jean Yang, the executive director of the Massachusetts Health Connector, made headlines for openly weeping during a board meeting. She was frustrated by a broken website that had demoralized her staff and potentially left thousands of people in insurance limbo.
I cringed for her, for her Harvard MBA, and for working women everywhere. There are so few of us at the top, that when one wails we wonder if the whole movement has been set back.
Nut graf:
Big girls have been taught never to let the boys see you cry. Even though I work with some of the nicest people around, one of my biggest fears is that they will drive me to tears. And they have.
But I am starting to wonder if it’s time to wipe away our fear of tears.
To cry or not to cry in the workplace.
That is the question.
Got any answers?
Campaign Outsider 
Depends, John, on what the tears are for.
In the case of the Health Connector head and her tears, my guess is that she actually feared, and perhaps with some justification, that her education and her degrees would not be sufficient to overcome the problems that need to be faced.
In a odd way, it is probably the catharsis that she needed to get her started on actually stripping away at the overlays to get at the root of the problem.
Too bad that it had to be public…But it is clear that even demonstrated competence is having a very hard time unraveling the mess created by Obamacare and Patrick’s decision to scrap a well-running system to buy into his buddy’s pipe dream.
And she’s not the only one crying about the Health Connector, Mudge.
You got caught in it, John?
Luckily I didn’t, Mudge. But thanks for asking.