Dealing with the negative emotions of employees isn't easy, but knowing what to do or say can make a huge difference to their well-being, the quality of your relationships with them, and team performance. The trouble is, many leaders fail to respond at all because they think discussing emotions at work is unprofessional or worry they don't have the right to intervene in personal matters. That's a mistake. Research shows that teams whose leaders acknowledge members' emotions perform significantly better than teams whose leaders don't. In this article the authors offer a road map for providing employees emotional support. The right response depends heavily on context, in particular, whether someone (1) is working on a time‑sensitive goal and (2) seems to be coping. Sometimes you have to intervene quickly; sometimes you should simply validate the employee's feelings; sometimes you should validate and then offer advice; and sometimes you should give the person space and time. You need to assess each situation carefully and avoid the tendency to always jump in with solutions, bearing in mind that employees may not expect you to fix things; they may just need to be heard.

Within a workplace, emotional landscapes the collective composition of employee sentiments directly influence how people make sense of situations. Managing these landscapes can help in the pursuit of organizational strategic objectives. Current advice recommends strategies such as encouraging general suppression of emotions or giving generic pep talks. Instead, leaders need to respond to employees' emotional states with more nuance.