When my clients talk about their emotions in the workplace, particularly negative ones, they typically do so in a tone of heroic dismissal. They often say things like “I try not to let things go negative.” It’s also frequent for them to say that they try to leave their personal feelings “at the door.” When I hear these things, I feel sad. I appreciate that they are trying not to let their emotions distract them, or to act out on their emotions in destructive ways, but I’m concerned that they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Whatever positive value this strategy of stoicism achieves, it simultaneously shuts down all of the ways that emotions can provide important value in the workplace. In this essay, I describe some of the important sources of value that emotions bring to the workplace. When they are acknowledged and handled appropriately, emotions can lead to a more engaged workforce and better customer service.
A Caveat
In what follows, I do not want to downplay the fact that there are times when it is important to inhibit certain kinds of emotional expression that could be destructive. Acknowledging and expressing emotions does not mean yelling at your staff members, or throwing furniture. There might be times when it’s ok to cry during a meeting, but not if there are customers within earshot. Learning how to be aware of emotions and express them appropriately in a professional context takes practice and experience, and I will be exploring this topic more in future essays.
Emotions Exist Whether We Acknowledge Them or Not
The idea of leaving emotions at the door is based on the fabulous conceit that it is possible to do so. It just is not. Whether you acknowledge your emotions or not, they are there. Emotions that are ignored tend to get stronger, and it takes more and more energy to suppress them over time. The emotion itself is a distraction, and so is the effort needed to hold the emotion back. In these circumstances, less and less bandwidth is available to do actual work. If the emotions concern a boss, colleague, or direct report, all of the work connected with that relationship will be done under the distressing, distorting influence of the unacknowledged emotion. So this is the first reason to acknowledge emotions: they exist, and suppressing them imposes too great a cost.
Inspirational Leadership Engages the Emotions
Great leaders spark enthusiasm in their people. They inspire loyalty. They inspire a commitment to a vision that can make people capable of overcoming great obstacles and making great sacrifices. This level of commitment is not the result of a coldly rational calculus, where each party make a transactional decision that helps their bottom line. Far from it. While inspirational leadership does have a cognitive component, it is at its heart a social and emotional connection. When emotions like this are engaged in a way that inspires this kind of passion, commitment, and loyalty, people go above and beyond. To bring out the best in people, leaders must engage emotionally. If emotions are left at the door, so is a great deal of human potential.
In Strong Teams, People Have Positive Emotions Towards One Another
A similar dynamic operates in healthy relationships between team members. Team members that know and trust each other well often describe themselves as a family. They may mean a variety of different things by this, but at bottom they are saying that they love each other the way members of a healthy family love each other. Love may be a forbidden word in the workplace, but I believe that is exactly what people are saying when they say “We’re like a family.” This loving connection between team members, when it is translated into action, has very pragmatic and concrete benefits for the team. In these kinds of teams, people will cooperate with each other. They will ask each other for help when they need it, and they will find people ready to provide the help they need. They will also be able to withstand the turbulence of the conflict and painful emotions that goes along with any group pursuit where important questions are at stake. As Max says in the film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, “It’s hard to be a family.” But it’s worth it. Without emotions, the bonds that form the basis of strong, resilient teams could never be formed, and the many benefits that teams like this create for their organizations could never be realized.
Emotions Encode Important Information
Properly understood, emotions are a treasure trove of information that can be used to help any organization succeed. I’ll talk first about how emotions can be mined for information about customers, and then go on to talk about their use in managing relationships with colleagues.
Customers
According to the Center for Nonviolent Communication, the emotions we experience are tied to needs that we have. We experience positive emotions when our needs are met and we experience negative emotions when they are frustrated. So, for instance, I might feel elated to find my favorite flavor of ice cream at my local ice cream shop, because I have a need for pleasure that is being satisfied. On the other hand, if there is a long line, I might feel irritated, because my need for independence is not being met --if I want the ice cream, I have no choice but to stand here for a while and slowly creep up the line.
I’ve intentionally used a very basic and concrete experience as a customer as my example of how feelings and needs are related, so that it is clear that I am not talking about something that is abstract, fuzzy, or soft. Every organization is oriented towards fulfilling the needs of its customers; if they fail to do so they will not survive. It is important to pay attention to the emotions of your customers, because they provide critical information about the ways in which their needs are being satisfied or frustrated.
Even if a need that customers are trying to satisfy by going to a store is very concrete, they also bring with them a lot of social and emotional needs. As an example, at the convenient store chain Cumberland Farms, they have trained all of their associates to greet customers when they come in the store. All of us have a basic need for respect as a person that we carry with us wherever we go. Most convenient stores don’t bother to respond to that need, but Cumberland Farms does. Through a simple ritual that costs nothing but the training involved in giving their associates this good habit, they lets their customers know that they are seen and recognized as people. This satisfies a basic human need, creates a positive emotional reaction, and keeps people coming back. Creating positive emotions is a good business strategy; ignoring the emotional component of the customer service experience is bad for business.
Colleagues
Feelings and needs are also important in business relationships. This should be clear from what we’ve discussed above in the section about the social and emotional bonds between team members in strong teams. As we develop our ability to articulate our emotions and the needs that are connected to them, we are better able to use our words to make important adjustments to those relationships. For instance, let’s take the example of someone who is feeling resentment towards their boss. They are able to trace their resentment back to a need for appreciation that is not being met. They realize this is because in giving feedback, their boss tends to focus on the negative and doesn’t acknowledge their positive contributions. In their next meeting with their boss, the person asks their boss whether they could be sure to balance constructive feedback with appreciation, which opens the door for a behavior change that can result in a better relationship and will ultimately serve everyone well. It’s rare for professional relationships to reach this level of candor and transparency, but it can happen, and it’s all for the good.
Over time, we may even use some of this emotional information to guide our career choices in terms of what kind of people we want to associate ourselves with among vendors, associates, and clients. We might begin to value our emotional responses to a prospective boss in a job interview. We might “trust our gut more” if we feel nervous and unsettled about creating a partnership with someone, even if everything checks out from the standpoint of hard nosed profitability analysis. Our emotions are quickly processing and responding to a whole host of subtle cues that we would never be able to reach through deductive reasoning. Over time, we can learn to listen to them and understand what they are saying to us.
There are many ways these dynamics can play out. The important thing is to begin sparking some curiosity about the emotions we either experience ourselves or see in others, and to begin to wonder what valuable information could be encoded in them. One thing for sure, if we pretend to leave our emotions at the door, we will never learn anything from them.
Conclusion
The stoic strategy for dealing with emotions did not arise in a vacuum. As a culture, we are ill equipped to handle uncomfortable emotions. Our educational system emphasizes rationality and intellectualism. Only recently has social and emotional learning emerged as a focus for pedagogy. It’s no wonder so many of us have adopted the stoic strategy of studiously ignoring and shutting out our emotions.
This stoic strategy comes at great cost, however. It leaves negative emotions to fester and become more and more distracting. It makes it impossible to realize the positive value of emotions in inspirational leadership and strong bonds between team members. It leaves organizations blind to important information about their customers’ experience, makes it harder to adjust relationships between colleagues, and makes us more likely to make poor choices in who we associate with. On the other hand, when we can properly accept our emotions and learn from them, leaders can inspire, team members can support each other, collaboration can be enhanced, and customers can be better served. Emotions can be a valuable asset to organizations -- why leave them at the door?