Associations care member’s professional lives but, do they care for member’s emotional lives too?
Work is an emotional minefield.
We receive big promotions, but also sometimes lay-offs and demotions.
We have massive wins, but sometimes other people take credit for our work.
We work with teams that excel, and we also struggle to communicate with a co-worker that just doesn’t get it.
We accept great jobs, and we pick bad organizations to work with.
We may be lucky enough to find ourselves in a high-performing culture, and then leave to find ourselves in a new, totally dysfunctional culture.
Management makes unreasonable, stupid, impossible demands, and some years we find ourselves effortlessly floating through easy job responsibilities.
Sometimes in our careers, we may find ourselves at the top of the organizational structure where influencing is easier, but most of the time, we struggle with influencing our peers.
No one recognizes how much hard work you put into that project.
People do not do what we want them to do.
Projects take twice as long as they should.
Work is not just about work. The hard part of work is grappling with all the tough emotions and putting them to use productively. If we don’t learn to channel our feelings productively, these feelings can cause us to behave badly. We see professionals who self-sabotage when they become demotivated, angry, afraid, timid, rigid, grumpy, and shouty.
What should associations be doing to care for our member’s emotional lives as well as their professional lives?
Related:
- Every professional feels alone sometimes
- Are associations attitude changing machines?
- Associations are home and family to many members