What About Crying at Work??

6 Tips for Handling Tears in the Workplace

Jennifer came to coaching to address her one “big thing” – crying at work! Whenever she had to have a difficult conversation with her boss, when she was given tough feedback, or when conflict arose with her peers, the tears started to flow, and she hated it! For a while she resolved herself to being “overly emotional” and accepted that she would cry, and others would just have to deal with it. However, she had recently been told that her crying would impact her being considered for a position that she desperately wanted. Now was the time to figure this out!

Mario’s goal for coaching was to learn how to handle strong emotions that came at him, and crying was on that list. When one of his team members started to cry, he froze up and took steps to end the dialogue as quickly as possible. As a result, his employees were not getting the feedback they needed to hear, and he was finding himself taking over projects and correcting team member’s mistakes. Something had to change.

It’s one thing to cry when we feel sad, but it’s another to cry when we are trying to stand up for ourselves, our opinions, or our teams. If you are not satisfied with the outcomes you are getting and you believe your tears are getting in the way, try these steps:

1.       Take some time to reflect on the underlying cause of the tears. Are you afraid, intimidated, insecure, anxious, etc.? What is the emotion causing the tears and how can you overcome that emotion?

2.       Is your stress level consistently high? This can cause the brain to be on constant fight/flight/freeze mode which prevents emotions from being stable.

3.       Establish a habit of deep breathing, positive mantras and perspective taking.

A crying employee can trigger all kinds of emotions in us, from guilt and embarrassment to annoyance and anger. Think about how you might implement the following:

4.       Acknowledge the tears and show empathy. “I see that this is hard for you to talk about/hard for you to hear”

5.       Offer tissues, water, etc. (which help to deflect the brain from emotional thinking to rational thinking), sit back and have patience.

6.       Keep the conversation going. Ask questions. Reflect what you are hearing.  Provide a safe environment for communication. Don’t end the dialogue until both sides come to a mutual understanding and have clear next steps.

Strong emotions have their place at work, but if they’re preventing you from achieving your goals, take some time to practice the steps above. And hey, haven’t we all seen professional baseball players cry on TV?? I know I have!