Emotional Tyranny - Emotional Relationships As Sites For Emotional Abuse For Four Reasons

Emotional Relationships As Sites For Emotional Abuse For Four Reasons

1. Power differences abound in workplace relationships. That is, “Certain relationships are tinged with fear because interactions (with leaders) can be risky and success or failure is linked with economic risk and career consequences”.
2. Workplace encounters are public and are often witnessed by others in the organization, including peers and customers. Specifically, second-order emotional reactions are abound in workplace; the reaction to an emotional interaction that often becomes workplace "buzz." For instance when an employee's idea is dismissed and even ridiculed by a supervisor in front of their peers, the "news" of this event then "ripples across relational connections that are activated and reactivated through the buzz of daily interaction, similar to how we conceive of "talk at the water cooler" or "office gossip."
3. Emotion is enmeshed in work roles. That is, part of our jobs and managing the relationships at work involves emotion. We often considered the “hot” or dramatic displays of emotions, but we need to also consider the more subtle performances typical of work relationships.
4. Emotion fails to be bounded by the workplace. We bring emotions to work from home and take those home from work. Sometimes, emotions repressed at work come out in other places. As Waldron states, “Emotional tyranny in the workplace indirectly controls our private conversations and personal relationships”.