Is there room for emotion in the work place?

I’ve had an experience this week where despite my best efforts, I feel like I made a mistake by doing what I felt was the right approach, rather than what was demanded.

My heart feels heavy, and I’m genuinely upset about it.

Whether what I did was the right approach or not is entirely subjective. But I don’t feel like I can talk to anyone in the project chain about the emotional response I had.

I talked to someone in my team about it which was helpful, but is how I feel relevant and important to the project team? Or are feelings outside of the remit of professionalism?

A standard approach would be to ‘learn from the experience in order to do better next time’ — and I certainly will, but that’s very pragmatic, and doesn’t speak to the feelings in the moment.

We ask our people a great deal of ‘passion’ or ‘excitement’ which are positive emotions, but rejection, fear, hurt, anxiety, upset, anger — I’m not sure they’re welcomed.