“One ought to hold on to one's heart;
for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
While we climbed Mount Baker on the leadership summit last week, I could feel the team’s emotions shift. Strung out 30′ apart and suffering as you walk up a glacier can be demoralizing. I wondered how I could apply emotional intelligence to improve performance and morale.
I know using emotions effectively can help a leader motivate their team and reduce friction between members. So, I pulled my rope team up next to Jude’s team so that each team could at least talk to the person on the other rope next to them. As you can imagine the grim mood lifted, laughter began to emerge, and THE TEAMS COLLECTIVELY DOUBLED OUR SPEED!
In psychology, emotions involve a subjective experience that leads to a physiological and behavioral response. Fancy words to say that emotions change our physical ability and how we behave.
The Science of Emotions
Emotions come from subjective experiences. This means that when you get angry, happy, or sad, you in some way chose to react that way. Your personality, socialization, and culture have much to do with how you react. When someone sees a snake, one person might jump away in dread while another moves forward with excitement. If a loved one passes away, one person might grieve while another celebrates a life well lived.
However a person ends up reacting, emotions then drive a physiological response. We get adrenaline to fuel a flight or fight response, oxytocin to create trust and bond with a loved one, or dopamine to fuel happiness. We engage or shrink away. Our bodies change.
Emotions also drive behavioral response. We make universally recognizable faces. We yell and stomp, jump and clap, sigh and laugh. We also waste time when we are angry, drag our heels when we are sad, and move faster when we are excited.
All of this means that emotions can either drive us along like a log bumping down a raging river, or when recognized and managed become a major source of fuel – that’s where emotional intelligence comes in.
Emotional Intelligence
Early research on emotions (in the Western tradition) regarded them as a hinderance to intellectual progress, a nuisance to be mitigated. It was not until Salovey and Mayer wrote a classic article in 1990 that researchers began to think about emotions in a more positive light. Goleman popularized the idea that EQ is more important than IQ in his 1995 book Emotional Intelligence. This is debatable by the way, but it does seem clear that developing emotional awareness and social emotional skills is critical for success in modern leadership.
Intentional Emotions and Self Awareness
Viktor Frankl said there is a space in between stimulus and response in which we can choose how we proceed. Often something happens and I find myself angry or sad without ever noticing that space. The most critical way to build emotional intelligence is to build self awareness. This means noticing what is going on somatically, yes… in the body.
Many of us have trouble articulating that we are angry even though our jaw is clenched and we feel hot all over. We have unfortunately trained ourselves to tune out these cues to our emotional state as weak or unintellectual – ahem perhaps Western men more than others.
The second part of awareness is literacy. I always recommend Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown as a fantastic way to begin learning emotional vocabulary. It’s one thing to feel anger and be able to say you’re angry. It’s much better to have the fidelity to say you are frustrated, furious, spiteful, defensive, or self-righteous. All of these emotions likely have different roots and require a nuanced approach to work through or harness.
Pro-tip: Use something like the emotion wheel below to get more granularity on your emotions and your team’s emotions.
Fuel or Friction?
How emotions cause friction or become fuel.
1. Lack of personal emotion awareness.
Particularly for a leader, emotions are contagious. We have mirror neurons in our brains to help us adopt other people’s emotions. If you are not aware of your emotions, you will infect your team with a bad mood, snap when you wish you had not, and make bad choices you might not have otherwise. Negative emotions seriously degrade your team’s performance and distract them from the mission.
Solution: Read Atlas of the Heart. Use a journal and the emotion wheel to tap into how you feel first thing in the morning. Keep track of this for a few weeks and watch for trends.
2. Lack of communication about emotions.
When teams don’t have structured process around talking about emotions, we tend to become ashamed that we are angry, sad, or resentful. We try to hide how we feel. These emotions fester unaddressed and then come out as passive aggressive behavior and counter productive work behaviors.
Solution: Build a short time and space into your week for team members to share their emotional state. This might be as simple as a thumbs up or thumbs down at the Monday morning meeting or a shared look at the emotion wheel with a 5 minute discussion of why people feel the way they feel. Someone’s anxiety might clue you into a major strategic error if you tune in.
3. Failure to prioritize emotional care.
In a business environment (and in our relationships) emotions seem like leadership development – the first thing to be cancelled when budgets and timelines get tight. We assume shoving emotions down and focusing on the work will help more than taking the time to address them. You have to flip this. Trying to work harder without addressing people’s emotions first is like mashing the gas with the E-brake on. Emotions are a leader’s job. Managers can take care of the rest.
Solution: Create a habit of asking yourself how emotions are going personally and for your team on a daily basis. Start using phrases like “you must feel” and “I am feeling…” When things get busy, default to checking on your team’s emotional needs before jumping into to do lists.
4. Lack of a Snickers Bar.
This seems silly, but Snickers advertisement campaign draws on a deep human truth. When we are hungry and tired, we lose our ability to regulate our emotions. The simplest way to increase your social emotional skills is to get more rest, stay physically fit, and eat nutritious food!
Solution: Spend time and energy ensuring your team is well rested. It’s so easy to make everything a priority, but as a leader you need to encourage space in people’s days, meaningful lunch breaks, and real time to stay physically fit. In the long run, you’ll retain talent and have an energized team instead of a group of burned out people. This classic HBR article is one of my favorite resources on managing energy more effectively!
