Go Ahead and Get All Emotional at Work

In his latest online column for Time magazine, Drucker Institute Executive Director Rick Wartzman writes about “just how high people’s passions can run at the office.”

Wartzman springs off a story in this week’s Wall Street Journal, which recounted how in 1965 Warren Buffett acquired control of Berkshire Hathaway, then a Massachusetts textile company, which he ultimately used as the base to build his wildly successful conglomerate.

Buffett, Wartzman explains, thought he had struck a deal to sell some stock back to the textile maker, only to find that Berkshire Hathaway’s president had dropped the offer price at the last minute. That angered Buffett, who then amassed a majority stake in the company and moved to replace its top executives.

“In an ideal world, resentment and rage would never seep into our professional lives,” Wartzman writes. “But things rarely, if ever, unfold so neatly. Our colleagues can drive us mad at times. The boss can infuriate us. A bad day at work can leave us feeling anxious and despondent.”

In the end, as Peter Drucker acknowledged, there is no escaping it: Work is “embedded in man’s life, in his emotions, in his existence in society and community, and in his relationship to himself.”