Is it good to be passionate and emotional in the workplace? Many may say passion is ok, but emotion may be an issue. But how to separate them?
Looking at one’s own personal pro and con – I am sure my passion and emotion gets the best of me. I have to be more level headed. I have to separate friends and business.
Watching a bunch of DVDs last night, one was called “taken” – its a great movie, I would definitely recommend watching it.
The basis of the movie is a retired secret agent is extra-paranoid about his daughter going on a trip to Europe. Everyone thinks he’s over-reacting, but actually she gets kidnapped SAME DAY she arrives in France. 
anyway, so he goes to France and talks to some of his old colleagues there. They help him, to a point, but actually they are in on the crime (indirectly)….. so he has to make things personal, attacking their wives and using that to get information.
Then when he finds the area his daughter is held captive, he asks for her back. The “bad guys” say its not possible, until he shoots up the place. the mob-boss begs for his life to the father, saying – you have to understand, “it was not personal, it was business”….
The father doesn’t think so, and executes him coldly on the elevator floor.
If that a mix of personal and business?
Sure, its a movie. And extreme…..But there are other cases, weekends seeing staff, do you talk about work? Do you forget work and just be friends? Seeing your friends you are buying from, or selling to, at a party – how not to talk about business?
Especially with the explosion of social media in today’s internet environment. We see the facebook profiles of our friends. they are talking business. at the same time they are talking a bout getting drunk at a house party.
Then, when you have a dispute in business- do you delete them from your “social friends” profile? So strange.
I just keep going on, but would like some ideas here. Also, today is the first day I integrated my blog into my facebook account – hope to get some more activity / readers.
Comments
This is actually something that I deal with a lot, being not only a female, but a female in construction…on top of being a passionate person in general. I am passionate about what I do in life – whether it’s about work, relationships, vacations, opinions, feelings…but I am also a very logical person due to my engineering background.
A lot of the time, I am under pressure and dealing with very difficult personalities – so it is difficult to stay calm and composed through it all. I make a conscious effort to be sure that everything I say and do is based on logic, but for the most part it has passion behind it, only because I care about my work. If I disagree with something someone says (and it is not a personal attack), I find the logic in it and state my piece to try to come to a resolution. I have had my share of personal attacks (being called names and what not, being called emotional), and what I find is that the men sometimes can be more emotional than the women. They tend not to enjoy losing an argument to, or even just dealing with a good fight from a young female. It’s hard not to let your emotions get to you when you’re being personally attacked that way, but I guess you just have to try to be logical no matter what the case.
I think it’s a good thing to mix passion and emotions in the workplace, as long as you’re logical about it. If you truly care about what you are doing, you will be passionate. I’d much rather be that way then a lifeless robot. Although, there are times where you can let the passion get the best of you (in my case it’s happened, whether I show it or not, it really exhausts me), so you have to try not to let that happen. The fire of it helps you to get things done. I notice there are so many people without a sense of urgency, no passion, they seem to float around. They tend to let things slide creating more work for the person with high standards that want to keep promises that were made and to keep the good image of the company that was created.
As far as your personal life is concerned – like the situation in the movie you mentioned, he used his skills and knowledge to get his daughter back. I don’t think he had a choice. It’s more than work at that point, and he logically had to do what it took to get her back. You have to deal with each situation separately – I have had a couple of incidences with coworkers commenting on something I put on facebook that they didn’t like (it had to do with work). Once I caught wind of this, I decided not to allow them to see my wall. It is my personal business and I don’t want my personal business to affect our working relationship. I also don’t need them knowing every single thing I’m doing on the weekends, so I block them form most of that too. Those are things that I personally choose to keep separately. People judge, and people make assumptions that might affect you at work. No need for that.
Someone once said to me, “It’s just a job”. My response to that was, “No it’s not. It is 40+ hours a week of my life. I want to spend those hours carefully, knowing that I made a difference…that I gave it my all. I don’t want to sit through those 40 hours like a robot or a monkey my whole life.”
wow, great reply Holly!
I remember when I was in engineering school, the mechanical engineering women majors always kinda complained about this similar situation when on work sites. Men are pretty “rough” in the construction zone, and its dominated mostly by them , even still right?
But knowing you personally, I can see you barking back at those rough and tough construction men. Probably shocks them ….and to lose an argument to a girl, on the job site…must be pretty embarrassing to them……
But yea, PASSION makes people, people. And 40+ hours a week is enough to be a human being, and not a robot.
Cheers holly MAC! keep those guys in their place and show them you’re tough