Discovering the meaning of joy

An important lesson from a recent coaching session.

When I say the word joy to you – what do you think of? What brings you joy? If you had to describe in detail a recent moment when you experienced joy – what was that moment?

Recently I ran a 1:1 session utilising the emotional culture deck as a tool to help someone (we’ll call him Billy) better understand himself and in turn uncover some actions he could take to make work a more fulfilling place to be. Having worked closely with Billy for some time, I would have said I knew him reasonably well. The outcome of the session and the insight into what made Billy tick, therefore, came as a bit of a surprise for me, which I guess is a lesson in itself; when we use behaviour as a way to understand someone, we make assumptions which are often incorrect or at best, only part of the story. When we take time to explore the underlying emotions, how people feel, or want to feel, we better understand the motivation behind the behaviour and therefore better understand the person.

Back to Billy…using the emotional culture deck we sorted the things he wanted to feel and prioritised this to the top five things Billy needed to feel at work in order to be successful. Joy was number one. I love the word joy and secretly get very excited when I see it emerging at the top 5 things someone needs to feel in order to be successful. I think because one of the stats that has left a lasting impression on me is that we are three times more likely to express anger than joy in a work context (Gibson; Fairfeild University’s Dolan School of Business).

But here’s the (now head-slappingly obvious) thing. The way a person defines Joy and how they spark joy or any emotion for that matter will most likely be slightly different from the next person. It is in these subtle differences where the insight for both parties lies, I think. For me joy comes from time with friends and family, belly laughs, chasing my kids on the beach, noise and chaos, solving a really important problem with engaged people.

For Billy joy came from taking time to read and learn, from the space to do deep thinking, from researching possible solutions from solitude and quiet. His joy was no more or less ‘joyous’ than my joy but just derived from very different sources. The lesson for me here was while it’s important to help people create a language to talk about their emotions, more importantly, it’s the conversations around the labels where we really learn about each other.  

“Words are just words until we add the context.”

We then moved onto the things he didn’t want to feel (but knew he would from time to time in order to be successful). Top two? Anxious and overwhelmed. The light bulb moment here, however, was that while the outward behaviour when Billy was feeling these two emotions was exactly the same (he would withdraw, isolate himself, overthink things) what he needed in terms of support was completely different. When feeling overwhelmed he needed space and time to work through the complexity on his own. But when he felt anxious, he wanted to talk it out, bounce ideas around, be supported to a resolution. For him, the root of feeling overwhelmed was generally about the volume of work whereas feelings of anxiety came from doubt and confidence. Outwardly, no one would notice the difference.

By going through this process to better understand how he wanted to feel and not feel in order to be successful, it was obvious he needed to be much more overt with how he was feeling in order to get the support he needed; ‘hey I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed right now do you mind if I think this through and come back to you later’ or 'hey I’m a bit anxious about this workshop we have, can I just talk this idea through with you you…’ This further reinforces that when it comes to emotion it’s not just about naming it, in order to tame it that becomes important but adding in the context so you can talk to people about what you need or don’t need in certain situations.

So if you’re still worried talking about our emotions is a bit soft let Billy be the example. In this case, there were hard ‘metrics’ impacted, the creativity of solutions, teamwork, collaboration, and ultimately the joy derived from work. Why wouldn’t you talk about this? I’ll leave the final word to Billy…

"The process is structured and quick yet the insights are deep and extremely practical."