Emotional range is useful. Emotional spillover is expensive.
Operators do not need to become blank. Frustration can reveal standards. Concern can reveal risk. Enthusiasm can mobilize. The line is crossed when the emotion becomes other people’s cleanup work.
Before expressing the emotion, decide its job. Is it clarifying priority, naming risk, setting a boundary, or recruiting the room to manage you? The last one is the leak.
Operator artifact: emotion filter: feeling, useful signal, risk of spillover, clean sentence, follow-up action.
Field test: Ask whether your emotion is serving the work or recruiting the room into managing you.
This is part 9 of 10 in Self-Regulation for Operators.
