When someone reacts with emotion, especially at work, people often get weird. Not the emotional people, it’s all the people around them who get weird. They start tiptoeing around the issue so as to prevent provoking something other than a plain vanilla reaction. Or perhaps they become manipulative and devious. After all, if someone has an emotional reaction, they are beyond logic, right? So that leaves only three choices: trick the emotional person into agreement, hope they don’t notice when you slip something past them, or drop the issue entirely along with any hope of progress on whatever front is involved. This set of options is pitiful, pointless, and painful, though not uncommon. Fear of emotion in the workplace drives bizarre and counter-productive behaviors. 

But consider the role of emotion in our lives and our work. Logic makes us think; emotion makes us act. Emotion is involved in all of our decisions and actions. Life is loaded with risks. Decisions always involve uncertainty and risk. It is the emotion – the belief that the benefits of one course outweigh the risks of another – that prompts our choice of action or inaction. This is true whether our decisions are tiny or monumental. You don’t get out of bed in the morning, take a trip to an unknown destination, attend a meeting, change the direction of your business, or spend a wad of money unless you believe the benefits outweigh the risks. All the logical arguments in the world may help to convince you of the benefits and may reduce your fear of the risks, but ultimately, since none of us has a crystal ball, it is the emotion – the intuition, the belief, the hope, the desire, the excitement – that makes us move. It is emotion that allows us to act in the face of risk. And there is always risk. We can think logically until the cows come home, but we won’t act until we care enough to do so.

We often try to be logical and thorough in making important decisions and this is a good thing. We need to collect information and enumerate the benefits and risks of our options to inform important decisions. If we then make the decision before developing an ironclad case or make a selection counter to the evidence at hand, we may feel illogical and foolish. But we would be kidding ourselves if we denied that we do this. We “go with our intuition,” act against advice, and rationalize our actions frequently, and this is not always bad. When my daughter was looking at colleges, she did three overnight visits to help her decide. This was an onerous decision process for her, not a lark. When I picked her up after the first two visits, she was tired and serious. After the third, she was all smiles and anecdotes. I knew right then where she wanted to go to school but she spent almost two more months ignoring her emotional decision and trying to build the case and assure herself that she was making “the right” decision. She found plenty of evidence to support the selection of those other two schools and, thank goodness, she did not let the apparent logic of those factors outweigh the unidentified characteristics of the school that made her smile. Yes, logic has its important place, but emotion rules.

When options and ideas garner positive emotions, we are glad and move on. We don’t often try to explain the reasons. If you fall in love with a beautiful painting, as I have with those found at KitNight.com, you may try to determine why one painting attracts your attention more than another, but it doesn’t really matter. You love the painting whether you can explain or not.

But when options and ideas create negative emotions like fear in one or more individuals, we can’t just smile and move on. And if we can’t understand or imagine why someone is reacting with fear, it is easy to dismiss the concern, and to some extent the person, as irrational. The situation occurs quite frequently. Perhaps a change in procedures, big or small, has been suggested. Or maybe you are in a meeting discussing options for resolving a project issue and suddenly the discussion ceases to be simply logical. This is when one of the three alternatives mentioned in the first paragraph kicks in, the group dynamic falls apart, and the outcome is compromised.

But most fear is not irrational. The fear stems from a lack of understanding, a lack of experience, or similarities to a negative experience. With unknowns and bad vibes looming, the risks of the situation start to completely overshadow any benefits. The fearful tend to dig in their heals. They have trouble seeing benefits at all and begin to distrust those who push them too hard. They aren’t going to suddenly lose their fear if you try to trick them, manipulate them, or slip something past them. Furthermore, the fear can feed on itself. Selling benefits in this situation is simply futile. If you hope to resume progress, you have to reduce the fear. And as with most problems, you can’t reduce a symptom without identifying and addressing the cause. You have to get to the underlying cause of the fear.

It can be difficult to find the cause of fear but the process starts with acknowledging the existence of the fear with respect. The fear is valid. Behaviors triggered by the fear may be quite nonsensical in the long run, but the fear itself is valid. However, if you see the fearful as a flawed individual, an annoyance, or in any way a less important participant than those who agree with you, you are unlikely to be able to help identify the root of the fear.

Behind every fear are scary or painful possibilities. To reduce fear, we need to transform these dark, looming, and vague possibilities into specific, concrete scenarios that can be examined with logic and illuminated with new information. Once you identify specific scenarios that are cause for concern, it becomes possible to walk through them logically step by step. During this process, you can correct misconceptions, provide missing information, and discuss the likelihood and seriousness of specific occurrences. Furthermore, this is a great source for identifying potential problems that need to be prevented in order to ensure the success of your plans. In many cases, this is a quick, painless, and enlightening process for all involved. In some cases, it leads to a more drawn out process of collecting information, building more trusting relationships, test-driving plans, and monitoring actions, options, and results. But in all cases, specificity and logic help replace general fears with manageable risks. Nothing you do can protect you from something as nebulous as fear, but if you know you fear snakes, you can take actions to avoid or protect yourself from snakes. When someone reacts with fear, you will be able to move forward again as soon as you identify specifically what is feared, whether it is snake-bites, a new boss, or the inability to control how, when, and where you eat lunch.

People who shy away from emotions don’t give the fearful the opportunity or a safe environment in which to pinpoint and reduce the fear. The resulting painful quagmires are quite unnecessary. Acknowledge, respect, diagnose, and resolve. The fear is legitimate and deserves respect whether you can understand it or not. Find the cause of the fear by delving into specific scenarios and specific risks. Once the risks become manageable, the fear dwindles, the benefits have a shot at outweighing the risks, and positive emotions take over. Don’t fear the fear or the emotions. Emotions rule.