Businessmen Dont Cry
Or Do They?
Keith has been made redundant six
times in the past eighteen years! Yes,
he picked a few duff companies to
work for. Though, in his defense, some
of these were in the dot-com boom-
and-bust years! POP, they went!
Keith knows and understands the
issues individuals face when they
must start their careers over again
and often, perhaps, reinvent who they
are. Equally, they often need to learn
about a completely new sector. He has
worked with many people facing life
after redundancy, or simply looking
for a new start having reached a
crossroads. The single most important
thing he works on is uncovering what
it is they are passionate about.
Keith believes that we are all capable
of great things but we tend not to try
new directions. Unless we release our
emotions and uncover our passion, we
will find setting a new course for the
future very difficult.
Keith strongly believes everyone
should continue to learn and relate
that learning to the work environment.
Keith Grinsted MBA FRSA
Abstract: This article looks at the subject of e
motion in
the world of business and asks the question whether it
is OK for businessmen to cry. It is widely agreed that
people buy from people and emotion has a big influence
on what we do and buy, so is it right that emotions should
be hidden in business?
Keywords: business, business opportunities, career change,
career development, charity, Facebook, face to face, l earning,
LinkedIn, networking, passion, personal development,
Twitter, unemployment
Businessmen Dont CryOr Do They?
Businessmen dont cryor do they? Was the question
Iposed on social media. Here are some of the responses:
All the time.... Its good for you.
All time.
Every time you fail, you cry. You cry with happiness
when you achieve your dream.
Never cry. Never show any weaknesses.
Why not?
Some do, some dont. Like everything else, one
should not generalize too much.
The first of these comments came from a business
woman. The rest, surprisingly, were all from men. I say
surprisingly because Id half expected men to wade
in with negative comments about how men shouldnt
demonstrate any emotion as it is a show of weakness.
Instead, most were very open about showing emotions
being acceptable behavior. These were just a selection of
responses but represent the overall feeling.
One key piece of information that is always missing
when you carry out any sort of survey on social media
is the age of those responding. It is therefore difficult
to gauge whether the different outlook relates to age,
upbringing, childhood experiences, or family values.
Expert Insights 1
 Businessmen Dont CryOr Do They?
What is clear is that today we are over-
whelmed with so much more information,
noise, than ever before.
One day, for example, I was sitting
in a high-street coffee shop with all the
associated background chatter, writing
this article, while at the same time watch-
ing a rugby match on my phone and lis-
tening on my headphones. I also had my
tablet on the table within easy reach to
look stuff up.
Perhaps we have become shallow
thinkers and shallow feelers. With so much
information, our emotions are now much
closer to the surface and therefore more
likely to spill over?
We are also bombarded daily with static
and moving images in the media such as
we have never experienced before. And
never in such graphic full-color detail.
In my childhood years, not too long a fter
WWII, images of atrocities were gener-
ally seen well after the event, in black and
white, and so grainy as to be indistinct.
Men were men and boys were boys in
those days!
It was the time of the stiff upper lip. I
guess because both men and women had
experienced stuff through one or two world
wars that, hopefully, will never be seen
again.
Vietnam was the next major conflagra-
tion and the first to be covered by the me-
dia almost live and in technicolor.
Has the Tipping Point Moved?
As we are now viewing extreme events
through technology and a third persons
eyes, has that removed us, distanced us,
from the issue itself?
We have not experienced these signifi-
cant events at first hand, so has that pro-
portionately moved our emotional tipping
point?
When we now experience something im-
mediate and personal are we therefore less
able to deal with it? We generally do not
have other extreme events in our lives to
measure against.
2 Expert Insights
Our emotional pain threshold has some-
how been reduced, so it only requires
relatively small events to tip the balance.
Whereas years ago, with a higher thresh-
old (with more experiences to measure
against), it took much more to reach that
tipping point and for emotions to bubble
over.
All Work and No Play...
At the same time, our work environment
has changed rapidly. Remember a time
when a job in banking, or the public sector,
was considered as a job for life!
Even if it sometimes meant the only way
for promotion to senior levels was termed
as dead mans shoes.
The latter changed as anti-ageist legisla-
tion spread through organizations. At the
same time, we started to live longer and
retire later.
Now, we have more changes in our lives
than at any time in our recent past. We
live longer, retire later, have more jobs,
more marriages, more opportunity to expe
rience stuff wed never have dreamed of
previously.
Does this then mean we are function-
ing at a more fragile level? Unfortunately,
I think we are.
We are constantly tip-toeing through a
veritable minefield of events, each having
the power to send us off into a tailspin if we
are in the slightest caught off balance.
It has never been more important to
maintain a healthy worklife balance than
today. With such pressures on us from all
directions, we need that release valvethe
escape mechanism. We need to be able to
let off steam.
Perhaps this is where our emotions may
get the better of us. If our threshold is
lower, our capacity to cope with things is
less than it used to be. Perhaps we are more
easily caught out when our emotions sud-
denly bubble over.
That moment when the tears start to well
in your eyes, the top lip starts to quiver, the
hairs on the back of your neck start to rise.
 Businessmen Dont CryOr Do They?
Should You Hold on to Your
Emotions or Let Them Spill Out?
We are back to the question I posed on
social media at the beginning of this article.
Most responses were in the affirmative.
Yes, let your emotions show.
Too often we hold our feelings in and all
we are doing is lying to the world.
Every sales book or course says people
buy from people. Id change that to human
beings buy from human beings! In fact,
Isaw a comment the other day suggesting
we should refer to interactions as human2
human rather than B2B or B2C.
The upside is that whatever the transac-
tion, we are dealing with human beings.
Ibelieve this to be so even relating to trans-
actions on Amazon and similar sites as,
somewhere in the process, there is still a
human interaction (until robots and drones
take over!).
As sales people, we are told to put our-
selves in the customers shoes. And cus-
tomers place orders based, at least in part,
on emotion.
Why do you buy a red car rather than a
blue one?
Why do you buy a certain house over
another?
Why do you buy the blue dress rather
than the black one?
Why did you buy black shoes rather than
the tan ones?
Almost inevitably it is feelings and emo-
tions that rule. OK, yes, there are some
things we buy that are more based upon
the head rather than the heart. But even
with these Ill wager theres a degree of
emotion in there nevertheless.
So why shouldnt sales persons be allowed
to show some emotion in the deal. Do they
have to remain totally dispassionate? Or is
that of itself essentially a lie? If they have
strong feelings but then dont display them
perhaps are they not being totally honest?
When you see charity senior executives
interviewed, they almost invariably dem-
onstrate their emotion through their pas-
sion for their cause.
Expert Insights
Senior executives in the commercial sec-
tor are human too. So why shouldnt they
be allowed to express their emotions?
Many years ago, I was the general man-
ager of a small-to-medium-sized business
run by a very autocratic owner. There came
a time when he insisted I had to let go a
guy in his 60s who had worked for him for
many years. He was totally dispassionate
about this and stuck to, what he perceived
to be, very sound business reasons why this
had to be done. Despite my protestations
and appeals to his better side (though Im
not sure he had one!), there was no moving
him on his decision.
I didnt sleep for three nights before I
had to deal with the situation. All I could
think about was how devastated this guy
would be. As it turned out, when I told him
we were making him redundant he was
relieved! Hed wanted to give up work for
some while but did not want to let down
the boss hed served for so long!
I guess thats an example of how your
emotions can lead you into uncomfortable
areas. But, having said that, the guy con-
cerned was very appreciative of the sensi-
tive way I dealt with the discussions.
Times Change!
Think back perhaps twenty years ago, and
consider how different the way we do busi-
ness was in that time. Dramatically different!
Take lunch as an example. Back then it
was still a regular thing for staff to take a
lunch break. It was also a time when busi-
ness was done over lunch. It was OK to go
out and drink at lunchtime. It was even
seen as an opportunity to let off a bit of
steam midway through the day, to get a
break from the office routine. And yes, in
those days we pretty much all worked from
a fixed-location office.
There was some stability. There were
clear delineations between work and p rivate
life. Yes, we had early mobile phones but
they were mainly used for telephone con-
versations! They had not begun to rule our
lives in the way they do nowadays.
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