Toxic Emotions at Work: How Compassionate Managers Handle Pain and Conflict.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Bookshelf

Toxic emotions at work: how compassionate managers handle pain and conflict.

By Peter J. Frost. Harvard Business School Press, 251 pages. $27.50.

"Toxin handlers" may bring to mind images of workers in spacesuits handling toxic waste, but as Peter J. Frost defines them, they are self-appointed people in companies who have taken on the role of "pain managers," helping to assuage the feelings of suffering colleagues and enable them to refocus on their work.

The germ for this unusual book, Frost recounts in a prologue, was his own bout with cancer and the observation he heard from a Harvard Medical School lecturer about how some people assume the role of "psychic sponges" for a family or an organization to help it heal. Within that group, Frost chose to focus on company leaders -- who may be the targets of the "toxin," as well as those who take on it themselves to help cleanse it.

Part of the author's argument is that toxic situations -- anger...