Frustration is a very common negative emotional experience at work in a client environment that can occur in a variety of circumstances, usually present when our goals are blocked, and there is some degree of uncertainty about the causes of the problem, that we think this is unfair, that we can’t control it. What happens once you feel frustrated is that you can either “drop out” or persevere, and what you do in terms of actions to take may depend on personal and environmental factors.
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Professionals tend to strongly resist breaking from their professions’ core cultural tenets and it is unclear how some may voluntarily break from deeply ingrained views. Through our study of French anesthesiologists who practice hypnosis, we aim to better understand this little-explored phenomenon. Adopting hypnosis, a technique that many anesthesiologists consider subjective, contradicted a core tenet of their profession: the need to only use techniques validated by rigorous scientific-based research. Drawing on interviews and observations, we analyze how these anesthesiologists were able to change their views and reinvent their work. We find that turning inward to oneself (focusing on their own direct experiences of clients) and turning outward to clients (relying on relations with clients) played critical roles in anesthesiologists’ ability to shift their views and adopt hypnosis. Through this process, these anesthesiologists embarked on a voluntary internal transformation, or reboot, whereby they profoundly reassessed their work, onboarded people in adjacent professions to accept their own reinvention, and countered isolation from their peers.
- Research
- Health Sector Management, Organizational Theory
