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Toxic Emotions at Work: How Compassionate Managers Handle Pain and Conflict Hardcover – January 28, 2003
According to Frost, when ignored, toxic emotions betray employees’ hopes, bruise their egos, reduce their enthusiasm for work, and diminish their sense of connectedness to their company’s community and goals. Compassionate responses to pain, on the other hand, encourage those who are suffering to effect constructive changes in their work lives. Despite their powerful role in employee performance, toxic emotions are rarely addressed by organizations. Instead, most companies respond to pain informally and unconsciously through self-selected individuals whom Frost calls “toxin handlers.” Typically a senior manager or someone with a high emotional intelligence capacity, toxin handlers soften the blow of emotional pain for others, but over the course of time, absorb much of the pain they handle to their own detriment. They are often unrecognized, unrewarded, and poorly supported by their organizations. And, while they often provide a temporary relief from the symptoms of toxic organizational pain, toxin handlers alone are unable to eradicate toxic emotions for the long-term.
Toxic Emotions at Work and What to Do About Them suggests that handling toxic emotions effectively is an important, though unrecognized set of competencies that must be understood and embraced—not only by toxin handlers, but by leaders, managers, and the organization as a whole. Through rich examples of how individuals and organizations have managed emotional pain successfully, Frost describes the key skills necessary to cope with emotional pain and to manage it effectively, and offers concrete courses of action for organizations to institutionalize compassion in the face of emotional pain.
- Print length256 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarvard Business School Pr
- Publication dateJanuary 28, 2003
- Dimensions6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-101578512573
- ISBN-13978-1578512577
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
Author uses multiple cases and examples showing the debilitating effects of organizational toxins and suggests practical ways to handle them -- Edgar H. Schein Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus and Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management HBS Endorsement
Peter Frost breaks a taboo in business schools by discussing the need for leadership to address the pain of change. -- Ronald A. Heifetz, Cofounder, The Center for Public Leadership, Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government and coauthor of Leadership on the Line. HBS Endorsement
This is a marvelous account of what really holds organizations together ---and the costs incurred in doing so. -- Karl E. Weick, Rensis Likert Distinguished University Professor of Organizational Behavior and Psychology, University of Michigan Business School. HBS Endorsement
Toxic Emotions at Work provides tested guidelines for handling the fallout of emotional toxicity with clarity, conviction and compassion -- Philip H. Mirvis, organizational psychologist and consultant and author of From the Desert and Back. HBS Enorsement
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Harvard Business School Pr; American First edition (January 28, 2003)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 256 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1578512573
- ISBN-13 : 978-1578512577
- Item Weight : 1.32 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,307,203 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,884 in Human Resources & Personnel Management (Books)
- #18,112 in Business Management (Books)
- #50,862 in Mental Health (Books)
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Through personal stories shared by people from a wide array of organizations, as well as by the author himself, we are invited as readers to get the inside view on life in such organizations. And the journey takes place through the lens of a hitherto largely invisible or hidden topic: the role of compassion and suffering in organizational life. We see how pain and conflicts are handled by people, who work like amateurs at a radioactive site, to quote one of many metaphors in this book. This is an example of living research about what really matters in organizations, putting the spot light on questions of life and death, pain and suffering, compassion and courage, hope and fear, comfort and despair, trust and betrayal.
As the book is written, so to speak, from the line of fire, with many examples of first-hand experience of the topic, it is impossible not to be captured and moved by the stories shared. The phenomenon of toxic handling and pain and suffering becomes very real. Of great value to the field of organizational theory is also the emphasis on all aspects of the human being, not just our social and communicative capacities. Physical, emotional and spiritual strengths and capacities are also discussed and brought to the reader's attention, aspects of which there has been a call in organizational research, in its tendency to treat people as "walking heads".
It is also research which I think, when read in-depth, challenges and questions many elements of contemporary, dominate business ideologies. What will happen when the task of toxic handling is both rewarded and seen in organizations, and when toxic handling is a standard question on the agendas of board meetings? And what would have to change in our cultural framework for that to happen? What will happen when the emotional aspects of organizational life are not only treated as an opportunity or problem for management, and enhancement of productivity? When they are given the space to exist in their own right, and for their own right? These are vital questions for the future in many organizations where there is a struggle for survival today.
In naming this phenomenon, and creating a legitimate language around it, there is the possibility to create new realities in organizations as well. In calling this phenomenon toxic handling, and in showing how research can be an endeavour of compassion also in its form and presentation, Peter J Frost and his colleagues create new perspectives, new frames and new questions for research.
There are, as I have said, many deeply moving stories in this book, especially the author's openness in writing about his own experience and how this led him into this research. It is research, as I said earlier with the power of touching your heart, not just speak about it. I will share one beautiful extract, which touched my heart, to give a sense of the wisdom and knowledge shared on these 250 pages. It is a quote from a dialogue with Dadi Janki, a woman from India, 80 years old, who was one of ten `wisdom keepers' at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, 1992.
"Her stated goal in life is to be of benefit to each person she meets and to turn her thoughts to help lift them into happiness. (...) When asked how she stays in such a state of joy and happiness in the face of the suffering of others, she said: `I do not identify with the pain of the other person. I do not take it on! When pressed for an explanation, she replied: `To take it on would be to double the amount of pain the world!' `How then do you help?' was the next question. `I try to wrap the other person's suffering in love, she replied." (Frost 2003: 107).
This is toxin handling in action. And to live healthier lives in healthier organizations we still need to learn. Peter Frost helps us a step on the way in naming an aspect of life we all know, but many have been afraid to speak of.
True, this book has been written to provide the decision-makers in organisations with advice on managing in a more compassionate way so that their actions defuse any unavoidable emotional anguish for their employees. Yet within its covers are descriptions of strategies which are vital to the well-being of any foot-soldiers who have to deal with-or 'handle'-the effects of insensitive decisions made by their employers.
Does work get you down? Do you work in an environment which often seems emotionally toxic because of the way you're managed? And do your colleagues come to you to pour out their grievances? To the extent that you feel even more drained than you might?
I would say this book is 'spot on': the sort of guidance that anyone who finds themselves having to support work colleagues can find beneficial. Don't be put off, if you're a UK reader, by the use of phrases like 'compassion' and 'pain', which initially will seem a sharp reminder of this book's origin across the Atlantic. The contents are sound, and pertinent, and could save your life as well as your working life.
As a busy union rep at a school in the UK, I've made the mistake of getting involved to the extent of taking on the 'pain' of my colleagues and it's exacted a toll on my health. But now I have some research-based advice and strategies which I feel confident will revive my spirits and my health-whatever my managers decide.
Top reviews from other countries
そんななかで、おそらく一番影響力のある本がこの本ではないかと思います。ちなみに本書は2003年度のAcademy of managementで賞(タイトルをはっきりと思い出せない)を受賞していたと思います(記憶が確かなら)。
Peter J. Frost 先生はネガティブなエモーションは組織においてどうしても生まれてしまうものであり、それをどう扱うかが大切であると述べています。
本書はとりわけ実務家の方々に読んでほしいです、そうすればいかに感情が大切なのか、そしてトキシック(Toxic: Frost先生によればToxic emotion)なのかが理解できると思います、そして健康的な組織を作るのに役立ててほしいと思います。