We envy our peer’s promotion. We are overcome with relief after a successful project launch or presentation. We rage when we are ignored in a meeting. Though many of us wish it wasn’t so, our emotions don’t turn off when we enter our workplace. During our 40+ hours in the workplace each week, employees and leaders are filled with spontaneous feelings and at times their origins are complicated.
The good news is that recent literature places a big emphasis on creating “speak up cultures” in our workplace. More and more companies are adopting ideas like Radical Candor and Crucial Conversations. That means these spontaneous emotions (“WHY DID THE NEW GUY GET THE BETTER PARKING SPOT?!”) are now more likely to make their way to the desk of leaders.
What these really practical approaches don’t account for is the balance that’s required between emotions and productivity. You certainly can’t have everyone upset all the time because then nothing gets done. And of course you don’t want to create an environment where people aren’t able to express their feelings and process them. So how does a leader create conditions that promote productivity while permitting us to feel our inevitable emotions?
It Starts with You
In order to offer a safe place for people to be vulnerable, you must be comfortable with your own emotions and be able to regulate your own feelings first. This means not ignoring them or burying them, but instead recognizing and acknowledging them. Why? Because emotions are data and “denial of our emotions isn’t the only danger we face when we rely too heavily on our left brain.” Listening to your own emotions – reflecting, journaling, meditating, emotional first aid, talking to a psychotherapist – can provide data on what makes you tick. These are all practical ways to help you get clear on your own tapes and triggers that may set you off into an emotional tailspin. Once you have a plan for how to recognize and keep your own emotions in check, then you can focus your attention on creating the environment where your team can express their feelings and frustrations so that performance doesn’t tank.
Create a Safe Space
Because we know our emotions aren’t left outside the office’s front door, it’s important for people to know where to go and when to express their feelings and frustrations. Employees often fear expressing their emotions because of how they might be perceived. In my experience, they fear they’ll get fired if they disclose too much, so they hold back. Reduce the threat for your team members by inviting, encouraging, and even rewarding folks for speaking up and sharing how they feel.
Remain Curious and Open
If an employee or team member comes to you to express their feelings, refrain from trying to “help” or “solve” their problem (unless it’s a legitimate issue or risk to the business). Managers are conditioned to be in “help mode,” especially when times are busy and work needs to get done. They often try to solve problems to keep things moving forward. First, recognize that. Then, don’t do it. Instead be an ear, listen, ask questions, and remain open. Most times when people are upset, they just want to be heard and let off steam, so let them.
Ensure that Relationships are Strong
If relationships are strained or non-existent between you and your direct reports (or even your peers) it’s likely they won’t view you as a safe place to express themselves. To bridge those relationships, engage more often and ask questions. Asking helps to build relationships. As relationships begin to form, trust grows between you and your team and this starts to create the Psychological Safety needed for people to speak up and share their feelings without worrying that someone will undermine them or use what they heard against them.
Consider the Organization Impediments
The organization has different ways it pushes on vulnerability and may even prevent people from expressing themselves. Is the organization virtual? With globalization and virtual teams popping up everywhere, many researchers are looking at how to create conditions for teams in the digital age. Is your company scaling and growing at a fast rate, and hiring a lot of new people? Are there institutional stories that get shared at the water cooler – “she’s always so moody!” or “he complains about how busy he is all the time” – that tell a story of what happens to people who do express emotions? Norms and conditions in your organization must be present for employees to feel safe, share their emotions, and speak up.
Are You Causing the Emotions
Probably the hardest thing to consider — especially if you’re intentionally trying everything to ensure your team has what they need to do their jobs and feel like they belong — is to consider that maybe you contribute to the emotions. Are your demands on results and performance realistic? Does everything need to be the highest quality and done the fastest all the time? The harder question to consider is if it’s not about performance, is it about personality? Is your management style causing bad feelings and frustrations? Does your team avoid talking to you because you are always too busy? Pause to ask yourself these questions. Better still ask someone who comes to you with their feelings. That shows great humility and will make it easier for people to come to you in the future.
As much as we may try and push them down or ignore them, feelings aren’t going anywhere. So as leaders, we must not only create space for feelings and emotions at work, but also learn to harness them. By creating space for employees, you’ll invite a diverse sets of thoughts and ideas and likely make better business decisions. And as we have come to see in the last few years, no longer are reason and facts good enough, but emotions are needed to balance and provide insight for the whole picture. I invite you to think about how you can create conditions in your role, team, and company for people to express their emotions. Who knows? Maybe as a result we’ll get less mad about the parking spots we missed out on and gain more feelings of pride, excitement, and hope for our company’s future.