In your organization, are there ways to share negative viewpoints or emotions, and is it helpful to do so? On this show Carrie Rogers-Whitehead—author, library consultant, and Founder of Digital Responsibility, talks about The Glass Half Empty: the Positives of Negative Emotions. She shares how not allowing for negative emotions can hold back our teams and what we can do about it.

Transcript

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This is Adriane Herrick Juarez. You’re listening to Library Leadership Podcast where we talk about libraries and leadership, and speak with guests who share their ideas, innovations, and strategic insights in the profession. 

In your organization, are there ways to share negative viewpoints or emotions, and is it helpful to do so? On this show Carrie Rogers Whitehead—author, library consultant and founder of Digital Respons-Ability, talks about The Glass Half Empty: the Positives of Negative Emotions. She shares how not allowing for negative emotions can hold back our teams and what we can do about it.    

         Enjoy the show!

Carrie, welcome to the show.    

Carrie Rogers-Whitehead:

I love being here. Great to talk to you again. It’s been a bit, Adriane.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #1:  It has been a bit. And it’s such a pleasure to have you on my podcast. We’ve known each other for a long time and it is really a delight to talk to you today. We are discussing looking at The Glass Half Empty: the Positives of Negative Emotions. As we jump in on this, will you please share how a negative mindset can be an advantage in the workplace?  01:31 

Carrie Rogers-Whitehead:

I can’t speak for all librarians, but maybe you’re feeling a little tired—maybe a little malaise. Librarians have been through a lot the last few years and you’re in a customer service, public facing profession. Also, most librarians are women, so you’re getting a lot of these messages to smile, the customer always is right—at the same time that you might be dealing with burnout, compassion fatigue and all of these things. 

I want to talk a little bit about the positives of the negatives because sometimes—maybe you’re sitting at home, you’re masking, you’re feeling it, and you’re not able to express things because of how we as a society dictate our norms around this. There’s some positives and some negatives that I want to share with you. 

One of them I’m going to start off with, we were just discussing this—is anger. Especially women, are perceived in different ways when they’re angry. You’re nagging—we give names to that. It’s not perceived the same way. I don’t know about you, but I was often raised in a way that’s like, Be quiet, be the peacemaker, be nice, smile—all this. These messages get in. When you are sometimes dealing with—maybe an angry board meeting, some upset patrons, or something like that. It’s very difficult to balance these messages that we have in our head and these negative feelings towards the negative feelings when there are actually some positives in it. 

One thing I like about anger is that it’s an approach emotion. When you’re mad, you don’t go into a corner and eat ice cream and cry—you do something about it. Maybe you write your legislature, maybe you stand up for yourself. So much we are just retreat, retreat, retreat, but that does weigh on you over time.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #1:  It does. And this is so timely. I feel like the message you’re giving us today is going to resonate with many people. Most of us can identify ourselves or others in these mindsets. Are there specific personality characteristics for some that tie into what you’re talking about?  03:36 

Carrie Rogers-Whitehead:

Yeah. A lot of what I talk about in terms of negative emotions are, first of all, when you push it and repress it and how that affects your physical body and your emotional health, but also how it works with teams, librarians or collaborators. We work on teams. We work on projects, we work with our colleagues. Recognizing that some of these “negative” traits have positives in them. 

I’ll give an example of anxiety. There’s a lot of that out in the world today, but one thing that’s very positive about anxiety—is they are detailed people. I remember being in some situations—planning events and having someone on the team that would be like, Have you thought about this? What about a waiver? Do we need a form? What about the exits? How are we signing them up? How are we tracking? All these details that my, Yea, this is fun, kind of optimism, which is glossing over. I really approve of having an anxious person on every team. 

Now you have to rein that in, right? There can be ruminating. Sometimes you can get stuck. But a confident leader, an assertive leader, who’s also empathetic and compassionate, can recognize the power of that person—the “Debbie Downer”, the naysayer, the we already did this. There’s wisdom in that. Sometimes we barrel ahead with our optimism and positivity, we miss those things that actually could sometimes cause problems down the road.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #2:  There is wisdom in that. What does research tell us about workplaces that have room for people’s traits and emotions on teams?  05:11 


Carrie Rogers-Whitehead:

There can be a space for them. One book I like is Rage Becomes Her. It talks about the gendered components of anger. In that book, it talks about how probably only ten percent of anger leads to violence. So, we have these assumptions and these fears around it. Recognizing that it’s probably not—now, that’s not to say that it can’t cause problems in a workplace, but if you have someone who is angry about a competitor, like it’s a business piece, or is angry about a policy or a change, they are often the ones to spearhead some of these efforts. 

Now there are some personality traits that you might struggle to find some positives with. We’re talking about things like sociopathy or narcissism. That being said, sometimes a person who has those narcissistic traits can be very charismatic, very persuasive. They can be someone that gets people to follow behind them. 

Some of this is contextual, I would say. If you are in a place for collaboration, you, maybe, need someone with a little bit of anger to push you to get those deadlines—but maybe not narcissism, right? They’re going to take over the project and make it themselves. But if you’re in an emergency situation, someone who has like, We’re going to do this no matter what. This kind of Machiavellian trait can be valuable in a military, law enforcement, and dangerous situation. Some of this is very contextual, I would say. But if everyone is on a team and everyone’s like, This is the greatest thing ever, nothing’s going to go wrong. Probably something’s going to go wrong with the project that you have.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #3:  How can we reframe emotions that make this “glass half empty” approach work.  06:50 

Carrie Rogers-Whitehead:

There’s a quote by Voltaire—came out a long time ago, 300 years ago, that calls optimism a cruel philosophy hiding under a reassuring name. That word cruel is pretty strong, but sometimes when you think about change—that happens. Sometimes change is very, very difficult and you’re going to get hurt feelings and there’s going to be people jostled and bumped—recognizing that the cruelty of this philosophy of optimism comes in its complacency. 

If I think everything’s fine I’m not going to push. I’m going to just be okay with the status quo. That means sometimes that can be cruel to others around you. Your blindness to other people, or just glossing over what other people say—Don’t be a Debbie Downer, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get over it. That can be very cruel and we don’t push for change. 

If I feel like, Oh yeah, well, let’s talk about a big, big giant problem—climate change. If I feel like a deus ex machina is going to solve everything and we’re all going to be fine, then why would I recycle more? Why would I push more? Why would I speak up and try to make those changes in my life and in society? So, it can be that cruel philosophy. 

What I’m saying is that complacency, status quo, lack of change can come from too much positivity sometimes. [laughter] When you are that positive, you can—and maybe inadvertently dismiss other people. And I have done that as that optimist. I might gloss over someone’s concern or not really address it, and that might cause some problems down the road too. So cruel is a strong word, but that quote stuck with me—it’s a cruel philosophy under a reassuring name. Recognizing that some hopeful pessimism, some defensive pessimism helps us better forecast, helps us see other people around us, and helps us plan for those very big problems and issues we all have in our lives.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #4:  So it sounds like negative traits can be positive, and positive ones can be blind spots or even be cruel. So, how do we manage this?  08:53 

Carrie Rogers-Whitehead:

If you are trying to please everyone, sometimes you please nobody. Sometimes in my life I have made decisions—I’m real worried about someone and I invest a lot of time and energy into an individual. But by investing all that time into the individual, while empathetic, it pulled me away from other things that I should have focused on. 

This is actually something that’s happened in my personal life. My husband’s like, You spend all the time there and we could use you over here. So, sometimes that desire, that compassion, that positivity can distract you. You only have so many hours in the day. It’s not like those people or those things aren’t important, but sometimes we need to prioritize our time and our energy better. That positivity, that optimism—I can change, I can fix, I can help, I can do this, means other people aren’t being helped either. 

Think of the long line at the reference desk. You spend so much time with one person on the phone, that there’s a long line of people that aren’t being helped. So, we sometimes have to make these tough choices. Sometimes that anxiety, that negative trait, that directness, that cruelty of optimism—it manifests.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #5:  Sure. So based on that, what opportunities arise to capitalize on negative emotions for our teams?  10:09 

Carrie Rogers-Whitehead:

We need some strong leadership for this. Like I was saying earlier with anxiety, it’s great to point out issues and problems and forecasts, but you can go too long and too far and nothing gets done. Maybe you’ve been in one of those meetings—nothing got decided because it was all focusing on the problems and not the optimism. So, a strong leader is needed. I’d like to recommend maybe just having an agenda with minutes on each item to kind of rein it in. You’re also going to have to have a leader that’s going to interrupt, that’s maybe going to bristle some feathers, that is going to speak up and be a little more assertive. 

Also, if you don’t have a strong leader in these situations, some of these negative traits on teams will be very, very negative. They can’t be used as a positive because they have to be utilized in certain ways. This also can be such as putting someone on the team that has these traits in certain positions. So, you got your narcissist, put them up in front— they’ll deliver a great speech and rally the troops, but maybe you don’t want them on some of the logistics part of it. 

So, understanding your team members’ strengths and looking at them as strengths. Not saying, Oh my gosh, I got to work with this person. We say, Okay, well what can this person bring to the table? Then giving them the opportunity, and not making those assumptions and those biases, and recognizing also we all are this way sometimes. We’re all anxious, sad, angry. We can be narcissists, too. We’re all complicated mixes, and we sometimes take turns on these different traits and In different contexts, so that can help us maybe be a little more patient. And then, not only be patient but smart and utilizing it. These are resources that are underutilized.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #6:  So, utilizing this in an appropriate way—as a means to an end,  absolutely. That is helpful, Carrie. Thank you. Is there anything else you’d like to share?  11:57 

Carrie Rogers-Whitehead:

I just also love to mention to librarians this is a hard time, and sometimes it’s hard not to take things personally, but if you recognize in yourself that we all have these emotions and feelings, maybe it can make your day a little bit better when it’s directed at you. Some of this is very contextual. Just because someone is like this in a library—might be different at home, it might be different at their workplace. They might be different at school. We all have these traits. We’re all kind of struggling to put this together. But, if we can reframe some things, we can come together and have some of those—we can even create less conflict by inviting some of the conflict in. Let’s not shy away from it, right? Just get angry a little bit. Let’s approach. Let’s push. We got changes. We got things to do. 

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #7:  We do have things to do. Do you have any favorite leadership books or resources and why?  12:50 


Carrie Rogers-Whitehead:

I mentioned The Rage Becomes Her. There’s a book I like around this topic called The Upside of Your Dark Side. I also love Barbara Ehrenreich. You might know her from Nickel and Dimed. She writes about poverty. She writes about positive thinking from an economic lens, which is really interesting, and how this mentality is like, Just figure it out, do it all yourself. There’s some systemic issues, and maybe there’s some reason that people can’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I highly recommend Bright-Sided, by Barbara Ehrenreich, too.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #8: Thank you. Carrie, you’re also an author. Would you be willing to share a couple of your titles with us?  13:24 

Carrie Rogers-Whitehead:

Thank you. I’ve written some books for librarians. One of them is Serving Teens and Adults on the Autism Spectrum. I continue to work with those on the spectrum who are neurodivergent. I also have a book on Advocating Digital Citizenship, I wrote with a couple of school librarians. I’m a big proponent of using the technology responsibly and ethically and continue to work with libraries in that area.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

Question #9: Great. Those are super valuable. Carrie, in closing, what do libraries mean to you personally?  13:51 

Carrie Rogers-Whitehead:

I feel like we have, and I think about this a lot in terms of the internet, because I work on internet safety and those issues, things are just very split—a lot of walled gardens, a lot of spaces that we wall off. I know when the internet first came out—and it still can be this way, there’s this hope that it would bring us together, but sometimes we’ve been pulled together in our smaller little spaces. I feel like librarians are one of the few places, online or offline that everyone can be together in one space. That is so valuable, especially with the collaboration and this work that we all need to do.

Adriane Herrick Juarez:

In doing that—bringing different voices to the table, raises our awareness about the way things are working and how we can collaborate for better results in libraries. Not shying away from negative traits and emotions and using them as a means to an end can help us do that. I appreciate you having this conversation with me, especially at this time when libraries are being pressured in ways that are not always positive. Thank you for being here to talk about looking at the glass half empty—the positives of negative emotions. It’s very helpful.

Carrie Rogers-Whitehead:

Thank you.

You’ve been listening to Library Leadership podcast. This is Adriane Herrick Juarez. For more episodes, tune into Library Leadership Podcast.com, where you can now subscribe to get episodes delivered right into your email inbox. Our producer is Nathan Sinclair Vineyard. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time. 

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