Finding a place for emotions at work
Emotions and the workplace have not traditionally been the best of friends.
I can recall a moment in my career where the two collided in a way that has had a lasting impact on me. At the end of a very long, intense internal meeting I cried. My emotions got the better of me after burning the candle at both ends, dealing with some tensions in the team and trying to get a change across the line that wasn’t well-received, I burst into Oscar-worthy tears. I was feeling overwhelmed, frustrated and embarrassed. It was a cry for help but rather than being answered it was met with ‘if you are going to make it in a leadership role you need to learn to leave your emotions at the door’. My younger self took away the lesson that it’s not ok to be vulnerable in this organisation and that I needed to ‘harden up’.
Fast forward to today and, while I would now be better equipped to deal with this scenario, I also appreciate that humans are humans, with all the feelings, quirks, commonalities and differences that make us, us. And while I don’t make a habit of crying in meetings, like it or not, wearing my heart on my sleeve is part of who I am. I now also understand the profound effect the emotional culture has on an organisation’s performance. No matter what every company and team has an emotional culture – whether they are consciously shaping it or leaving it to its own devices.
So what is this Emotional Culture, I hear you ask. Well the good folks (Barsade and O’Neill, Professors of Management) in an article for HBR suggest that when we talk about organisational culture we are typically referring to the ‘cognitive culture; the shared intellectual values, norms, artefacts and assumptions which set the tone for how employees think and behave at work’. We generally convey cognitive culture verbally and overtly and therefore I believe companies feel more in control of shaping this culture.
But this is only half of the culture equation. The other half, and in my view, the bit we are less comfortable talking about, as it can be perceived as a bit fluffy, is an organisation's emotional culture. The ‘affective values, norms, artefacts and assumptions’ that steer how people feel at work and which emotions they should try to suppress. ‘This tends to be shared and shaped through non-verbal cues such as body language and facial expression’.
The research suggests that emotional culture affects employee satisfaction, absenteeism, burnout and teamwork which we all know fundamentally affects the financial performance of an organisation.
Ultimately if we continue to ignore emotional culture or pass it off as ‘soft’ we are choosing to impact ‘hard’ business outcomes.
One of the real surprises to me when looking at the research on emotional culture (this time from the Don Gibson – Fairfeild University’s Dolan School of Business) is that we are more comfortable expressing anger than joy in our jobs and that we express anger three times more often. As leaders, I think we’ve been comfortable having conversations around how people behave at work but is it time to extend the conversation to how they feel? Shouldn’t we want our people and teams to feel joy more than anger? And as a leader of people is it not our jobs to change this? This is not to say we need to create a homogenous ‘happy’ culture where the desire is for everyone to be happy all of the time, in fact as Art Markman (HBR Article) describes a ‘little negative emotions reflects that people have goals that have not yet been achieved’ which is a good thing.
To this end, I’ve recently been running some experiments with a tool called the Emotional Culture Deck. From the sessions, I’ve run to date I’ve been struck by the power a little deck of cards can have in unlocking vulnerability, honesty and appetite for change. So much so that I am embarking on a certification journey with the man behind the Emotional Culture Deck – Jeremy Dean from Riders and Elephants. One of the perks is that at the end of this journey I will get to call myself a Pro Elephant Rider, which is easily the best thing I’ve been able to call myself to date, but ultimately this is about helping individuals, teams and organisations to consciously create their emotional culture, how do they want to feel at work and how far is this from how they feel today. This, I believe, will deliver real business outcomes. I’m looking forward to sharing some lessons along the way – stay tuned.
Do you want to learn more about The Emotional Culture Deck? There are a few ways you can you learn more about the deck:
Download a free Lo-fi PDF version of the deck at the website, click here
Download the #emotionalcultureworkshop for free here (yes for free but I can also facilitate this workshop for you and your teams if you wanted some help).