As an intern, I found myself underperforming in the early stages of many of my internships. I struggled to learn things quickly and do tasks perfectly; as a result, it has become common to hold multiple evaluation meetings. Sometimes I felt ashamed, other times I felt guilty. To my surprise, these similar but distinct feelings led to totally contrasting results. Researchers have extensively studied the implications of guilt and shame and their association with employee motivation and performance. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Guilt in the workplace promotes motivation and increases employee performance. This feeling elicits a strong will to avoid past mistakes while preventing disappointments for others in the future. Unlike shame, guilt eliminates the link between failure and incompetence or worthlessness. On the contrary, it facilitates greater trust as it motivates employees to perform better and achieve more ambitious goals in the future. In a study by Flynn and Schaumberg (2012), it was found that guilt-prone individuals were often more successful due to their desire to constantly improve compared to their peers who were less guilt-prone. In addition to being more successful, they are also more personable, which results in positive feedback such as receiving help, more opportunities, and better peer evaluations. From this, it is safe to deduce that performance failures can be alleviated through feelings of guilt as they increase employee motivation and performance. Management should foster an environment that incorporates guilt and moves away from shame when significantly better results are achieved. While the influence of guilt increases an individual's motivation to improve performance and productivity in the workplace, the consequence of shame has demonstrated negative results on the psychological mindset of employees. This causes workers to have a lower than average level of performance and lower productivity while working. One study describes shame as a trigger that leads individuals to blame their character rather than focusing on a particular behavior and its outcome as the primary attribution for their mistake. Such thoughts can potentially make an individual feel helpless and unqualified; thus, you can detach yourself from challenging tasks instead of taking the extra step to combat the obstacle. This degree of discomfort can lead to abandoning incorrectly performed tasks to escape the stressful situation of shame. An empirical study further supports this by exemplifying a clear correlation indicating a link between shame and decreased motivation. In two samples of Dutch salespeople, there are clear correlations between shame and a drop in sales. The researchers explained that the decline in sales comes from disengagement as a means of protecting oneself instead of correcting and repairing a mistake. Undoubtedly, there is concrete evidence that suggests a strong correlation between the feeling of shame resulting from performance and the decrease in employee motivation and productivity. Although evoking guilt in employees is much more beneficial than shame; increasing guilt without increasing shame is quite difficult. Whether an individual feels guilt or shame depends on their perceived control over the situation. This perception derives from the level of autonomy that the..