The need to manage your emotions as a project manager is undeniable. How you manage your emotions will determine your sustainability.

Emotional labor, first coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild, refers to the work involved in managing one's own emotions and expressions when interacting with others. This typically refers to a workplace setting. Basically, you have two options:

1. You can display something that you're not currently feeling (surface acting)

2. You can seek to changes your values and emotions to match what you're needing to show (deep acting)

In the moment, we probably need to surface act quite a bit because the situations call for certain emotional responses and we cannot change our hearts and values on the fly to match the situation. The challenge is that surface acting creates emotional dissonance in us, which can result in a variety of ill effects, such as:

• Emotional exhaustion

• Depersonalization (feeling detached from yourself)

• Reduction of a sense of personal accomplishment at work

• Feelings of distress or cognitive dissonance

• Burnout

• Physical ailments such as high blood pressure or insomnia

So what can you do to manage your emotions in healthy ways?

• Maintain relationships with safe people so you can express what you're really feeling

• Practice self-regulation techniques like deep breathing or meditation

• Find ways to set boundaries within your job, or at least between your job and your personal life

As project managers, we must manage our emotions, yet we can do it in healthy ways so that we can be healthy while also being effective.