Resentment Is One of the Most Expensive Emotions in Any Workplace
By Victor Seet, ICF (PCC, ACTC). The world's only coach to hold both the Gallup Gold and Platinum Certified CliftonStrengths Coach awards and Newfield Certified ontological coach. Based in Singapore.
A few years ago, I sat across a senior manager who told me, almost in passing, that he had been "a bit frustrated" with his director for nearly two years. He said it the way you might mention a sore knee. Manageable. Liveable. Background noise.
But as we kept talking, something else came out. He shared that he had stopped offering ideas in meetings. He had quietly turned down two projects he would have once jumped at. He told his wife he was thinking of leaving the organization. To him, none of these actions were connected. They were just things that had happened.
By the end of our conversation, he saw things differently. What he had been calling "frustration" for two years was actually resentment. And the moment he had a different word for it, the whole picture revealed itself with greater clarity.
Nothing in his work situation had changed in that hour. But something in him had.
Frustration and resentment are not the same thing
Most of us were taught one big word for difficult feelings at work - “frustrated”.
We use it for many things. Traffic on the way to a client meeting. A teammate who keeps missing deadlines. A boss who keeps interrupting whenever someone presents an idea.
But frustration and resentment are actually two very different things, and they ask for very different responses.
Frustration is fresh. It is the small jolt of energy when something gets in your way. You feel it, you say something or you adjust, and it passes. Frustration moves.
Resentment does not move. Resentment is what frustration becomes when it is swallowed too many times. It is anger that was never given permission to speak. And once it settles in, it stops looking like an emotion. It starts looking like your personality. Your cynicism. Your "this is just how I am at work now."
The leader I was speaking with had been treating resentment as if it were frustration for two years. No wonder nothing had shifted.
Why this matters more at work than we think
Resentment is expensive in the workplace because of how quietly it shows up.
It rarely arrives as an outburst. It arrives as the team member who has stopped putting their hand up. The senior who has stopped mentoring. The high performer whose effort has gone from 110 percent to a precise 70. The colleague who agrees in the meeting and then quietly does the opposite.
Most managers read these as performance issues. Or attitude problems. Or signs that someone has become "less engaged."
But underneath, very often, is something simpler. A contribution that was never seen. A boundary that was never shared. A need that never found language. A small moment of being passed over that was never repaired.
The problem is not that people are quietly resentful at work. The problem is that most workplaces have only one distinction for what is happening — disengagement — and so the actual signal gets missed.
What resentment is really pointing to
In the ontological tradition I work in, every emotion is treated as information. Resentment is no exception.
When you sit with resentment honestly, it usually points to one of three things.
Sometimes it points to a request that was never made. You wanted something from your boss, your colleague, your spouse — and instead of asking, you waited. Hoped they would notice. They did not. Now you are upset with them for not reading your mind.
Sometimes it points to a boundary that was never declared. You said yes when you meant no. You took on the extra project, the extra weekend, the extra emotional labour. And then you resented the person who asked, even though you were the one who said yes.
Sometimes it points to a moment of harm that was never repaired. Something happened — a comment, a decision, a being-passed-over — and no one ever came back to acknowledge it. So you carry it. And it keeps colouring everything that comes after.
None of these are fixable from the outside. But all of them become workable the moment you can name which one you are dealing with.
Three practices to work with resentment
These are practices I use with my own clients, and that I have come back to in my own life more than once.
Write the letter you will never send. Sit down and write the full, unedited version of what you wish you could say. No one needs to read it. The point is not to deliver it. The point is to give the resentment somewhere to go that is not your body and not your behaviour at work.
Name it precisely. Try saying out loud, "I resent _____ because I needed _____ and it was not there." Specificity does something that vague reflection cannot. The moment you name what was actually missing, you have something you can act on.
Bring it to a witness. A coach, a trusted friend, a peer. Resentment loses its grip when it is heard. Not advised on. Not solved. Just heard. This is part of why so many people start to feel different in coaching long before anything in their situation has changed.
The distinction that changes everything
Once you can tell frustration from resentment in yourself, you start to notice it in others too. The colleague who has gone quiet. The team member who used to push back and no longer does. The friend who keeps making the same complaint about the same person, year after year.
These are not character flaws. They are signals. The world has not changed. Your distinctions grew.
And once that happens, you can never quite go back to not seeing.
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Written by Victor Seet
Activator • Communication • Strategic • Self-Assurance • Command
As a Gallup and Newfield Certified Leadership Coach in Singapore, Victor is passionate about helping people be better observer of themselves to achieve the results they want, especially in the area of well-being and performance. Victor intentionally integrates the strengths-based and ontological approach into his leadership coaching and workshops.
