CHAPTER 9

Recovering from an Emotional Outburst

by Susan David

It happens—we all get emotional at work. You might scream, or cry, or pound the table and stamp your feet. This is not ideal office behavior, of course, and there are ramifications to these outbursts, but they don’t have to be career-killers either. If you take a close look at what happened, why you acted the way you did, and take steps to remedy the situation, you can turn an outburst into an opportunity.

If you tend to suppress your emotions, you’re likely to just ignore your tantrum and move on. If you are prone to ruminating over your mistakes, you’ll overthink your outburst and beat yourself up about it.

Neither of these strategies is productive; they don’t help you solve the ...

Get HBR Guide to Emotional Intelligence (HBR Guide Series) now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.