The Importance of Emotions in the Workplace

Hey Kris, hey Leanne, how are you doing? I'm good, how are you? Good to see you, you too. We're here today to talk about emotions in the workplace. Would you get us started? Yes, emotions in the workplace, so let's start with talking about what the problem is; you know, most people think that emotions don't belong.

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In the workplace, but that's an old thought because we are all human beings, and human beings are emotional beings, so we naturally have emotions, and we naturally bring them into the workplace because we're spending so much time there, so being human beings that we are it is important that we understand this aspect of what we bring into the

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workplace in terms of having courageous conversations that we can talk about, this is so true; I want to let everybody know exactly what we're talking about here in terms of emotions we're talking about the typical range of emotions that someone might feel in the workplace we're not talking about levels of emotions that might need professional

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help or people who might need professional help with that and then also when we're talking about feelings and emotions, we're using those terms interchangeably here; if you hear us use them both just to be simple, they mean the same thing for purposes of today and then also we want to try to help people form a new mindset maybe around emotions and think of them as data and what that will do

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it'll help you learn more about yourself and help you to read others better and give you a lot more information in a conversation. I mean, after all, we know that emotional intelligence is a key factor in success for leaders and everyone's life work and relationships, right? So since we know emotional intelligence is that important, then clearly, emotions have a

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place in the workplace in the workplace, yes, so emotional intelligence is super important to have that as a basis for operating inside your organization, so it's about yourself awareness of yourself awareness of other people, but I also wanted to offer a caution which was not to make assumptions about the emotions and feelings of others

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People, one way to do this is to interact with them from a place of humble inquiry; I like that I've never heard that term. Can you say more about that because it sounds like something that might take a lot of courage? Yes, well, the humble inquiry comes from a theorist named Edgar Shine; he's done a lot of research and is humble.

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Inquiry is the practice of a conversation in which you are doing as a really sincere inquiry, really asking questions that you don't know the answer to and also doing that with the intention of deepening the relationship and building trust with another person, so it's a very specific intention behind a humble inquiry type of conversation so what you're saying is you might be

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Sensing someone's feeling something but don't just assume what that means and have an open conversation with them about what that means exactly so okay, it is about asking questions  that you really truly do want to know the answer to and that you probably don't know the answer to already right this is, and this is these are not your standard questions these are things

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You have to listen to another person deeply before you can ask the question and I have to reiterate about the courage thing because I think in order to do that well what you're talking about you have to be able to put your own defensiveness and your own inner dialogue to the side while you're having this kind of conversation right

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Yes, so one of the things that sometimes happens is people jump into offering advice. I mean, has it ever happened to you when someone just starts offering advice, and they haven't? They don't know; they haven't asked you any questions, so they don't know. Has that ever happened to you? Yes, it's a common problem yeah, and it's frustrating because the person that is having either

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Some emotion or having some problem to get advice before the person understands the situation really can diminish a relationship, and sometimes people lose trust in the process of these kinds of advice-giving types of conversation, so if you're trying to build trust, you're trying to resolve a problem it does take a little bit of time and patience to go into it's kind of a coaching more of a

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Coaching approach to having a conversation with someone but offering advice too soon; sometimes we'll break things down, so we're starting as much as possible from a place of humble inquiry and coaching where we're asking questions to build a relationship that sounds so great Kris and on giving advice like we can have a whole series on that which we

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Will we add that to the list but  so yeah so, tying back what you said to emotions, I want to say people do avoid these kinds of conversations about emotions because they're scary, everyone's uncomfortable, but I want to bring it back to remember uh emotions as data because what that will do again

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it will help empower you uh and others and your understanding of others so that you can have more productive conversations instead of reactive conversations, right? So Kris, to shift gears just a little bit, can you start us off on a discussion of how this is showing up in organizations, this is a great question because it does show up differently

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Based on the level of the organization so, when I think about organizations, I think of organizations within usually three levels which would be the individual level, the team level, and the leadership level things do show up differently, but of course, it's all connected and all important with individuals so if they're if there is a person with strong emotions of course

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They are they have feelings that would be potentially disruptive to their work and destructive to their commitment; they may be struggling; it might be a personal issue. It could be a combination of different things that show up in terms of what where these emotions are coming from, and we know that with covid definitely our lives are much more integrated so

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You know, it used to be that you left home, you would go to work, you'd work, and then you go back home, and you have this sort of transition period between the two places; we don't have that anymore, especially for people that are working from home all the time, so  there are a lot of emotions coming up from various places, and from an individual's perspective it's helpful

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If they can try to understand, then I'll say, the values behind some of the emotions that they have, so understanding our values becomes important because if someone crosses a boundary against one of our personal values, that can be very triggering, and can trigger some emotions that maybe we're not even sure why it happened so really spending some time to understand ourselves is

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time well spent; great description about that; now, how would you say it shows up on the team level, and so a team is a group of human beings group of individuals that are interdependent with each other, which means they have tasks that that they're sharing and giving back and forth and maybe they're following a workflow or a process

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So they have some level of interdependence with each other, and when you have teams that are functioning well, those transitions flow smoothly right work the workflow moves along, decisions get made, things are communicated, but when people are not working well together for whatever reason then things start to break down and the productivity of the team itself will

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begin to diminish, and they could experience complete apathy where nothing is getting done, or they could experience real intense and unhealthy competition where several people on the team might dominate and other people have completely withdrawn, so we see all kinds of behaviors that come into the work of a team and the sort of the mission of the team so

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We can see a lot of a lot of things like that if they're if they're honoring each other's emotions, if they can handle this part of their team, I'll say their team guidelines people can express themselves, then they're better off if no one can talk about their feelings within the team environment then people will either withdraw, or they'll become extra competitive

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Well, that was a great description of what happens in teams; there's so much going on there with emotions at different levels, and that's a great segue into me talking about leaders or supervisors and how I see that showing up with the people I work with and so one way it shows up, and I'm sure a lot of people can relate is that one of your team members is

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verbally aggressive  potentially verbally abusive at times to other team members it shows up as sarcasm or snipping or even just you know yelling uh at times, and then maybe it has been allowed to go on other team members don't want to work with that person they avoid that person

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As much as possible, it comes down to a fear on the part of the leader to want to address that directly. Maybe they've been doing something to address it, but maybe it hasn't been as perhaps it hasn't been as direct and powerful as it needs to be, and I think that leaders are sometimes afraid to confront that kind of behavior right up front because they are afraid

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Either it'll make it worse, or that person will react that way toward them or continue to act that way toward them as a supervisor or to other team members, or they're afraid of losing that person that that person might leave or quit, and there's a belief that they have to have that person and so it is allowed to go on poisoning the

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Team so there's all this emotion showing up on the part of a person with poor behavior in the workplace, and no one is dealing with it effectively, right? Right, so yeah, and so that's why you know it takes, like the topics that we cover, it takes courage to be willing to address that it's

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Uncomfortable it's affecting everyone; someone has to do something, and unfortunately, as I said, it's allowed to go on too long sometimes yeah, and conflict avoidance  really doesn't work inside of organizations conversations have to happen, and either they happen early when it's a little easier versus happening much later on in a

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Given the situation, it's really important for leaders to have these conversations, which could start as a coaching conversation but address emotional emotions. That's one thing with emotions affecting the behavior of the individual end of the team; then they absolutely have to intervene.

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Somehow and help their people back on track, so it's part of the leadership obligation; yeah, well said, Kris, and it is so hard to do; it's not an easy thing, so  so on that note, Kris, you want to wrap us up, so to wrap up there are two points that I think we want to convey to everybody

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The first one is about emotional intelligence and the connection to dealing with emotions in the workplace very important, and then the second part is a compliment to it, which is really about the conversational skills around courageous conversations; yeah, exactly Kris, and so on emotional intelligence one of the best things you can do a great next step is to expand

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Your self-awareness of your own emotions and what you're feeling and expand your emotions vocabulary, so I encourage everyone to do a quick google search. You'll be amazed at what you find using emotions vocabulary. There are so many words to describe the different emotions we have. it's not just happy, sad, and angry, so this would be a great next step for everyone to encourage

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That and then on the point of conversation skills, one great next step for everyone, no matter what your level is to continue to practice and deepen your ability to practice empathetic listening active listening, and there are great resources for that, too you can google search, or I highly recommend LinkedIn learning for that so many great uh tutorials there that you can access if you have the

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Above free version. Thank you so much. Those are great tips, so everybody, please make sure that you click on the subscribe button and follow us on courageous conversations for leaders and organizations. Bye for now.