Alright, perhaps that lead off question is too much of a softball for this forum, but the fact remains that in the workplace certain prejudices persist about emotions and provocative behavior that stirs up emotions.

These include:

• soft skills are less important than the hard skills of management and leadership;
• emotions don't belong in the workplace;
• when someone "gets emotional", they've lost it and need to get help or be removed from the work place; and my favorite:
• people don't change.
  

Some of the most provocative and upsetting behavior in the workplace are those actions that cause harm to people or the organization. The two that I have seen upset and disrupt the workplace the most are workplace violence and fraud. 

The common ground seems to be that when the crime has cold calculated planning (as there always is with fraud and sometimes with violence) the survivors are left to wonder: why? How could they do that? Are they monsters? What is wrong with them? Guess what, there is.

Recently, a study came out showing brain changes in psychopaths. The difference lies in the area of their brain that responds to others emotions. It does not mean they do not feel emotions, nor that they do not perceive others emotions. It appears they do not feel others pain. You can read an overview from the Chicago Tribune here.

Elsewhere in this blog I have written about workplace violence. This study possibly fits this area of research.  The study and implications also fit fraud.

In part of my work with affect I have been exploring what is happening with fraud in the c-suite. This research on psychopath brains is very compelling. It is also subject to misinterpretation. It is possible that many people have this deficit and yet are not psychopaths. It is also possible that given the plasticity of the brain this area could grow or shrink depending on what life brings it.

Here is what I suspect with fraud: a person is insensitive to the harm caused. But they are not psychopaths, likely something less serious. A colleague calls it "subclinical". This allows them to obey the law in other areas of their lives. It also means that with adequate supervision (courage and discipline) those who are breaking the rules and not quite committing crimes will be caught. And also will not end up with the brain changes highlighted in this study.

My fear is this study, and others like it will lead to screening MRIs and many normal people will not be allowed key roles at work because of changes in a brain image.

Business often creates tough choices:

• Do I plan for the long term or the short term?
• Does an organization put resources towards marketing or towards R&D?
• Do we take care of our customers or our shareholders?

Harry Kraemer, in his course on leadership at the Kellogg school of management frames questions like this multiple times over the 10 weeks he teaches. He does not hesitate to ask the same kind of questions when he teaches CEOs and senior executives, either. The answer is the same for every question And, as his class knows, the answer is easy to remember, but hard to do: "yes"

And as Harry would say, "that's why they call it "work"!

Harry will then go on and explore each question in depth, but the fact that the answer is the same is important here as I am often asked a similar question:

"Ok doc, you told me we have these hard wired emotions or affects. You tell me to use the affects as data. But I have thoughts, too, aren't they data? Where do I find the solution, in the affect or the thought!!??"

Intriguingly recently on Tomkins' Talk (a closed forum for Institute Members) this idea came up and a wise member shared the words of Tomkins himself:

" . . . Cognitions coassembled with affects become hot and urgent. Affects coassembled with cognitions become informed and smarter. The major distinction between the two halves is that between amplification by the motivational system and transformation by the cognitive system. But the amplified information of the motivational system can be and must be transformed by the cognitive system, and the transformed information of the cognitive system can be and must be amplified by the motivational system. Amplification without transformation would be blind; transformation without amplification would be weak. (Tomkins 1992: AIC IV, p 7) "

This is somewhat dense, but his answer is the same as Harry Kraemer: "yes". 

We must use both. Exploring further, Tomkins is actually saying "always yes". When you act like the Spock character of Star Trek without emotion, you are "weak". Because if you just have your thoughts you are not at full power in your actions. Similarly, if you are only using emotion than you are not fully informed of what is going on in the world.

This is intriguing related to some current thinking about "hot decisions" (neuroscience research that has intrigued people at work). These are decisions where the affect weighs in quickly and lines up well with the cognition. It is also intriguing as it relates to the proverbial "analysis paralysis" that always haunts organizations leaving them in the dust of their competitors when they are in business for a profit. One can also see "cognitive dissonance" explained by this dance.

A solid decision using both can happen to any of us on our own, but it is most exciting when it occurs with tough problems and with a team. Hearing exciting (affect laden) solutions to a tough (cerebral) problem comes when we hear a new perspective. It can also happen when someone is tough enough to tell us our cherished solution is wrong. Jonah Lehrer explored how this happens in an intriguing overview called: Group Think, The Brainstorming Myth in the New Yorker earlier this year. You can read it here.

If you think brainstorming offers the best outcomes when the group commits to never criticizing and saying whatever comes to mind, you would be wrong. If that stirs up your interest (your emotion or amplification) read the article. It is fun in many ways.

Over the last six months several clients have suffered serious and significant personal losses, and with each of them, it's been my impression we share a solid friendship. Thus we shared the work and we shared the loss.

When speaking on the phone or in the times they have been unable to come into work, they've communicated their hurt - their wounds. At times the voice catches, at other times, they want to talk about the lost loved one. Other times it is clear they would rather do anything but talk about the loss. Listening to them work and cope I've experienced an inspiration. They have inspired me because of how noble they have been.

In affect theory, the theory of the core emotions of all human beings, distress-anguish is the one most closely tied to sadness. As with all of these hard-wired emotions, distress functions to motivate us to seek help. But it is also particularly powerful in illustrating another function of affect: it motivates others.

When we are with someone experiencing distress or anguish, as my client/friends have been, a person can feel the strong motivation to help. Children are enchanting in their attentiveness to others hurt. Watch a child, kindergarten or younger, around someone who has been hurt and you will see the power of distress - the tractor beam of our hard-wired compassion to help someone else who needs comforting.

As we grow older we harden to that pull. Sometimes in adaptive ways, and other times in maladaptive ways. Some individuals can learn to feign or exaggerate distress to get help. Others can tire easily of helping or because of their envy, be jealous of another's attention when they are hurt and learn to turn away. These dynamics and more can cause us to grow a thicker wall to the pull of distress. And the workplace reinforces that wall.

Work does not serve to promote nurturing and healing. That is a role better served by support networks like the family. Distress and anguish can undermine task completion and focus which can interfere with many objectives.
Some work environments can heighten the pain of grief. Few thing are worse than feeling distressed and being alone. Working remotely, or with out direct supervision or contact can make this process of mourning quite painful. The Atlantic highlighted this loneliness in an article about Facebook:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/is-facebook-making-us-lonely/8930/

As it relates to the workplace's flawed tendency to manufacture false positive attitudes, this article produced this intriguing insight:

You can read more here.

But the workplace can also help when we're hurting. In many ways in fact, as I have seen this year. Work allows us to focus our attention and energy. Grief naturally places a restlessness and unease, that mundane tasks at work can help with. Work has co-workers and these coworkers will come to one anothers' aid. I've seen it in every case and especially in healthy workplaces. Work also provides a sense of identity, grounding and a sense of intrinsic value that can help with the feelings of being lost and untethered that is a natural outcome of grief.

It hurts so much and is so disruptive because the person lost was so important.

Recently, a physician described her challenges dealing with emotion in her work as a doctor. You can read what she wrote here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/28/opinion/doctors-have-feelings-too.html?scp=1&sq=doctors%20have%20feelings%20too&st=cse

In it she described the challenges of dealing with the omnipresent threat of death and deteriorating health and in her most challenging case a situation in which she recognized herself in her patient. The challenge of telling her patient bad news, and the fear and distress with knowing the responsibility as a professional to do so was unbearable.

From the article:

What is surprising and frustrating is generally the practice of medicine does not have a model for emotions. And with the intrusion of electronic records and the threat of lawsuits, many other "people" enter into personal and painful conversations such as this with one. Often in unnecessary and unhelpful ways.

In the Tomkins' Institute conference this fall in Washington DC we will be hearing from a psychoanalyst and an expert on the neuroscience of the brain. Their work highlights the importance of being able to use not only the emotions in our lives (the hard wired affects referred to often in this blog) but also the thinking, naming logical sides of problem solving skills.

This "back and forth" combination of heat (emotion) and direction (analysis) helps us navigate what those of us in the health care world find as a daily challenge: doing what's right for our patients. Too much emotion and we weep and appear out of control and untrustworthy. As in the example above it can confuse our patients. Worse it shifts the focus of the work together: making our patients focus on our needs. Too much of a neutral computer and our patients wonder if we really care at all.

This exploration for a balance is known in Affect theory as the "empathic wall". At times it must be thick as when in training fellow students and I assisted on a young woman who had a broken neck in an auto accident. At others times it must be very thin, as when working on a crayon drawing with a young boy who had lost his father while I was in training for child psychiatry.

Unfortunately, the bias against objectively understanding emotion runs thick and heavy in medicine. The relative curiosity about them is poor. We as physicians are not nearly as effective as using affect and all the current understanding of it as we are imaging studies (x-rays, MRIs, etc) or blood tests. Yet it is right there under our noses. And there is no added cost in using it.

How does this relate to work?

Not only do physicians need this understanding, but attorneys, architects, financial advisors and accountants do as well. For the same reasons. It is there in every human encounter, the empathic wall must be maintained and leveraged, and the opportunity to learn and provide better services for clients remains right there in front of us.

Literally under our noses.

Unfortunately, there has been another incident of violence at work this past week. This was not a topic I had thought needed attention, but it may be on the minds of readers of this column as it crosses over affect, work as well as clinics. It was in Pittsburgh, and you can read more here.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-shooting-pittsburghbre8280hy-20120309,0,1006098.story

The sad challenge for those of us who work with the severely mentally ill (SMI) is this can promote stigma about mental illness. So it is worth remembering:

• In general, it is much more likely for someone with SMI to be a victim than a perpetrator.
  
• Anything that undermines judgment and magnifies shame and a sense of having no other option can increase the risk.
• Substance abuse, severe illness like schizophrenia, a manic phase in bipolar illness, and extreme paranoia can distort judgment.
• In addition to the above risk factors, which are very rare to lead to violence in a clinical setting, it is well known that a disregard for others (an extreme dispassion or aloofness) combined with a disregard for rules or authority or anti-social disorder combined with a past history of violence puts workers at risk in a clinic.

Recently, in an article highlighting new insights about habits and the interaction between human beings, their brains, their environments and their habits, David Brooks wrote: 

The important habitual neural networks are not formed by mere routine, nor can they be reversed by clever triggers. They are burned in by emotion and fortified by strong yearnings, like the yearnings for admiration and righteousness.

You can read his entire article here

For those of us who study Affect (our biologically based source of emotion) there could be nothing more delightful to read (thank you to Joe Izzo for sharing this quote on Tomkins Talk) .  . . without a doubt, this will change aspects of the workplace including but not limited to:

• understanding the challenges of performance management
• tracking human behavior that puts organizations at risk
• making organizational "values" and culture truly tap into the full capacity of what human beings can bring to their work and their workplaces
  

Here's hoping . . .

Many of us who are curious about affect are in the helping field. We know, also from studying affect, that when another feels distress, we feel it too. Our brains light up in resonance or "affective contagion" to use a stale/academic term.

So, most of us know what we feel and what the feelings mean as we work with those who are suffering. This is especially true when the person who hurts is under our care. We hurt, too.

And we want the hurt to stop.

That is the power of the affect. Distress forces us to seek help when we may be too embarrassed. And when we are with another who is distressed, we feel the powerful pull to help them. All hard-wired - in our DNA - our shared humanity and biology.

For clinicians, by the time we are done with our training, we have become pretty skilled at recognizing the real from the unnatural or manipulative distress. But we probably also learned some of that in our teenage or grade school years as we matured beyond being "crybabies" or whiners and found a role and a network where we could experience and manage distress; in others and in ourselves.

Facebook and other social media (twitter) changes this. The net of social contacts has changed. The opportunity to be electronically connected is huge.

How do we know when there is an ask for help?

The dilemma for those who support adolescents is touched upon here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/us/facebook-posts-can-offer-clues-of-depression.html?_r=1&sq=facebook%20suicide&st=cse&adxnnl=1&scp=10&adxnnlx=1330624804-n4jHPWgd/ks+1pSEJYPKIw

There are some suggestions, some techniques, some clinical advice here, but the problem remains large and challenging.

As the youth who have embraced facebook enter the workforce, and as the workplace invents parallel networks (linkedin, etc.) this is only going to get more complex.

Can you feel the distress?

Recently, an interesting editorial in the NYTimes commented on counter points to the "Tiger Mother" and "Raising Bebe" viewpoints of recent non-American Parenting Books (both are best sellers). The article is wide ranging and worth reading.

Deep in the article they highlighted a playground dynamic that has bugged me for a decade. Absent minded parents telling their child "good job" over and over. (You can read the article here :
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/opinion/sunday/building-self-control-the-american-way.html?scp=19&sq=%22good+job%22&st=nyt)

This is likely spilling into the workplace. Paying attention to someone's performance is critical to whether or not an organization will get something done. Time clocks, and other electronic systems can help track people at work, but they do not give you a sense of quality or progress of work. That assessment requires a competent supervisor. Those being supervised appreciate that attention as making progress in your work is essential to being satisfied as a human. Michael Basch noted this from as early as 18 months of age and is why he highlights mastery as a very important fundamental need.

But the pull of wanting to say "good job" at work is not going to go away. I've seen it as a trap for new managers as well as workers in conflict avoidant cultures: "I don't want to not be liked, so I only give compliments and avoid criticism. I am responsive, productive and smart enough."

To not want to hurt feelings and to be sympathetic and supportive is to be human. To be in that frame of mind is to be humanist.

This is not a bad spot to be. But it is not sufficient. An organization needs more. An organization needs what Tomkins would call the "normative" perspective. This means that there are standards, there are right and wrong answers and there is adequate and inadequate work outputs by people.

Just saying "good job" is not enough. Managers must be willing to risk not being liked. As Harry Kraemer of Northwestern's School of Management notes: the more you try to be liked, the less you are respected. But, the more you work to be respected (through effort and addressing problems, including interpersonal problems), the more you will be respected and liked.

I think you need to be able to do both. 

Bill Gates has written about the unnecessary shame of ranking teachers. You can read his thoughts here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/opinion/for-teachers-shame-is-no-solution.html?_r=1&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print


Essentially his point is the process is too simple (only tieing to test scores) and too public (posting in the newspaper). He's right, but as an institute that studies emotions and has deep scholars in the field of shame, this idea is worth unpacking.

First, as a psychiatrist, I am coming out of the field of medicine, there is a further concern to the tactics Mr Gates is highlighting. If reward is tied to performance, and the challenge of the work is not taken into account, teachers may flee the field. It has happened in medicine where high risk patients or surgeries are actively avoided because physicians don't want to harm their averages. This is sad, but true, and it drives young and motivated (and compassionate!) doctors away from the patients who need them most. It makes a lot of sense to NOT do this to teachers.

Second, as mentioned in other blogs, one role from my perspective as an organizational psychiatrist is to highlight the neutral role of shame. It is a learning emotion or affect. What is important to remember therefore, is it is not shameful to talk about shame. Teachers play a role in the problem, as do parents, society, and other factors. But the profession of teaching puts itself out there and therefore must bear some ownership for the failures of students, as physicians must when the profession of medicine fails.


Denying the adaptive role of the biological experience of shame leads to inflated and distorted self-esteem. Specifically,  students who are always told they should feel positive about themselves miss the opportunities to see themselves realistically and end up being headaches for organizations like Microsoft. (Parents and teachers collude on this as well as the child moves through the school system.)

If Bill Gates is like many other CEOs, he is not afraid to call out poor performance within Microsoft if ignoring it would harm the performance of his organization. I 'm sure he wouldn't hesitate because of self-esteem issues.

It is not shameful to talk about the experience of shame. It is a normal natural experience. In fact, it may be harmful to rescue someone from the feeling when they are not finished learning from the experience. Shame, as a hard-wired emotion every human experiences, is not bad. It is unpleasant to experience, but it is not something that should cut off discussion. It can be seen like thirst or hunger, shame is a response to the environment and as such human beings need to respond to the environment and learn from it or change. Or both.

Including teachers.

The common experience of a draining meeting is readily contrasted to one in which you feel enthused or pumped up. William C Byham wrote a best-selling book highlighting the experience we all know well. (You can read more about him here.)

What affect theory offers is a method for understanding and naming the zapp and the sap feelings. Zapp is very much the interest-excitement and enjoyment-joy workgroups and individuals feel when engaged and productive. Sapp is the distress, fear, anger and other negative affects that also can be a contagion in the group and wear the group down.

Clearly a top-heavy scolding leader who gets easily angered at a group can sapp a group.

Ironically and unfortunately this can also lead to rewards from organizations. This happens as a leader who manages with anger and intimidation can be very effective forcing compliance and stifling disagreements. The group then feels safe as it flees to do whatever pleases him (or her).

Of course the downside is the misery of the group. But the supervisor suffers as well as he does not ever see the full creative ability of the group. In the long run, there can be even greater consequences as the wrong lessons of leadership are reinforced. In the short term a leader may be drained himself as he is forced to manage the excessive dependence he creates on him.

Most managers at some point in their careers, are forced to self-reflect and as they become more self aware they recognize the consequences as well the price they pay. Others, unfortunately, never get the feedback. They may even get promoted and start all over again.

Perhaps most challenging of all is the zapp vs sapp feelings provoked in performance feedback.

Now is the season of performance reviews.

How do you feel with yours? What do you think?