Hey, business. Sometimes you make me feel frustrated. Sometimes disrespected and ridiculed. Being self-employed, sometimes I can feel helpless. Overwhelmed. Disillusioned. I can also feel curious, excited, valued, inspired and in awe. Also, I care. Constantly. I feel and care for others’ feelings and want them to be embraced as part of the experience. After all, I am a whole person. Yet, dear business, for years now it has been proper business protocol to suppress these emotions. Businesses frown upon use of emotional language or displays of emotion in the workplace. It’s just not proper. People have had “meetings” with their manager about their emotional behaviour. And those meetings are often boiled down to a single message: “You must not display emotion. Just do your job”. It’s not everybody, but it can be easily found in the corporate world especially where again and again, people do not feel they can behave authentically. I’ve had a number of conversations with a person who talks about how it all finally bursts out as anger at certain times. In the workplace. You can imagine the responses from others.

Sure, there’s merit in not being distracted by the feels, but are we teaching ourselves to become emotion-less robots? Even more so, are we intellectually rationalising the need to suppress such emotions, thereby justifying that they be pushed even further away? Are we at risk of, ultimately, feeling nothing? We seem to have lost the ability to discuss how things affect us at work. The emotions get pushed down and we tell ourselves we’ll sort the issue out. Not sure what I’m talking about? How many emotions can you list off the top of your head that are appropriate in the workplace? How many can be effectively responded to without the need for reprimand? There’s every chance you might not reach more than about ten or so.

Relationship theory suggests that there are 2 significant types of trust required for two parties to be able to work well together: reliance-based trust and disclosure-based trust. Reliance based trust is the trust you have that the other party will do what they say they will do and provide you the assistance/support that is expected. Disclosure based trust is the trust that you can share your thoughts, emotions, ideas and identity without fear of negative repercussions from the other party. The two types go hand in hand and contribute to a psychologically safe workplace where people can share of themselves and receive the necessary acknowledgement and support that would be required. The would feel cared for at work. Any HR person knows that feeling cared for greatly improves retention of talent.

Let’s also acknowledge how emotions lead to great achievement. Time after time, we see examples of how, after a certain experience in their life, a person connects with how it felt and holds to that, ultimately reaching some far-fledged goal. For example how, after the passing of a great family friend, a 15 year old developed a revolutionary test for pancreatic cancer. Not to mention the people who have spent years following their passion as they conduct research for their own Masters degree or PhD thesis (even if I am speaking from experience now). And what about the Arts? Emotion is a significant contributor to achievement. We can’t deny that.

So, if emotions can have such a positive impact on business outcomes such as human resources and innovation, why are we suppressing them? It seems as though emotion should be welcomed in the workplace in all its formats and the energy of those emotions used to lift people and the organisation as a whole.

But how?

How can an organisation, and the people within, help with opening up emotional conversations and help create a culture of emotional and psychological safety? Here are a few ideas to help get that moving.

1. Reintroduce emotional vocabulary at work.

As mentioned before, many of us are losing the vocabulary to help share exactly how we’re feeling. There are many tools out there which really help with building that vocabulary. Have a look at the image below which I stumbled across just a couple of days ago in a blog which inspired what you’re reading right now.

The beauty of this wheel is that it helps identify, in the centre, the broad category of emotion that a person may be feeling and, as you move out, more and more specific types of those emotions. The wheel is a great help in allowing people to explain explicitly what they are feeling.

2. Find out the emotions felt in the organisation.

We’re all guilty of feeling things and not disclosing to an organisation. We think the thoughts, we feel the feelings and we package them away. But wouldn’t it be great if the organisation knew how they were making people feel by way of some kind of anonymous pulse survey that uses very clear emotional language? How frustrated are employees? Are they feeling valued? Does anyone feel overwhelmed, indifferent, embarrassed, numb? If a sense of the emotional profile of employees can be gained, then organisations can start to understand what, from a psychological perspective, they are doing right and what they need to change.

3. Explore the causes of the emotions and respond accordingly.

Ok, so now you’re developing a sense for the emotions in the organisation. What’s causing them? Maybe this can be built into the survey if it’s going out to the entire company. Or, if it’s more a one-on-one situation, some simple questions may help:

• Ok, so you’re feeling _______. How strong is that emotion when you feel it?

• What is happening around you that is making you feel that way?

• How is that affecting you?

You can then take that away and process it with intent to contribute to organisational growth. If it’s positive, look at ways to replicate that experience across the entire team. If it’s negative, find ways to remove the cause of the negative emotion through new processes, policies and procedures.

4. Take action.

It’s great that you’re asking people about how they’re feeling at work. This has been done for some time. Where so many organisations fall down is in the follow through. What are you doing with the results? How are you making it visible to everyone that you’re interested in their psychological safety? Are you developing and broadcasting new policies, procedures and initiatives? Are you implementing training programs that help bring those policies and procedures to life? Maybe the organisation needs access to someone that people can talk to confidentially.

Most importantly: are you letting people know how you are taking action in response to their disclosed emotions? This is what is going to build that reliance and disclosure trust that was mentioned before. This is what is going to make people believe that the organisation cares about the whole person. This is what has the potential to change the culture of your organisation from robots in a building to people working and achieving together. Happily.

:)

For additional support in inviting emotion back into the workplace, contact Inward Outward Coaching.