When emotions cannot play their constructive part

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For many managers, and not just ones in HR, the prospect of dealing with people’s emotions is a pain. Not because they do not respect people’s emotions simply that handling them is messy, unpredictable and ultimately seemingly far removed from the world of analysis and the bottom line.
 

Daniel Shapiro, writing in Harvard Business Review on line[1] argues that: emotions can be both good and bad for business. They stem from five core sources he argues: appreciation (recognition of value), affiliation (emotional connection to others), autonomy (freedom to feel, think, or decide), status (standing compared with others), and role (job label and related activities).

 
By addressing those concerns proactively Shapiro claims you can steer a potentially negative conversation to a positive place and thus extract greater cooperation from your superiors, colleagues, and reports.
 

This ties in neatly with our own view of talent engagement, and how to obtain the best from people. Managing other people’s emotions and your own is essentially what emotional intelligence is all about.
 
Leaders who actively take an interest in their own development in this area invariably have more successful conversations with followers and find more targeted and ingenious ways to gain high levels of commitment from those around them.
 
Of the five core sources that Shapiro mentions perhaps one of the most challenging to deal with is the one arising from status. The latter is concerned with how you see yourself in relation to others and involves a conscious or even unconscious process of comparison.
 
When people start making comparisons—how I compare to someone else—there is invariably a good slice of ego involved and that in turn can prove damaging, rather than productive in handling emotions.[2]
 
Comparison is a necessary and normal part of living and we constantly do it in one way or another. Where it gets in the way is when comparisons start turning colleagues into competitors, or excessive comparison consume us so that we lose sight of important goals, set unrealistic ones or we just stay comfortably where we are.
 
Behind the healthy urge to compare is also the unhealthy use of ego. This is when ego turns from being a force for good and becomes damaging.

An example of how ego gets in the way through comparisons was when the CEO of a leading UK company kept setting the goal of increasing company turnover by a fixed percentage every single year. Ultimately this proved unworkable. It implied that if achieved, everybody in the entire country would end up working for the company!
 
But for a while that CEO revelled in the publicity and admiration which his goal created. He was even known as Mr 10% in recognition of his apparent ability to keep pushing this goal. Later though, he finally admitted his goal was unrealistic and in fact had turned into a unacceptable personal, let alone a company burden.
 
It is surprising how many senior directors of companies actually hate the task of dealing with people and feel so much more comfortable with avoiding this part of the job. It often explains why HR has more power than perhaps it should have, being left to pick up the pieces because leaders would rather avoid or repress emotions in their daily encounters at work.

For all their complexity and difficulty in handling emotions well, this is core to engaging talent. The most talented and creative people in particular want and expect to be seen for who they are, to be allowed to share their passions and their worries without reaping a whirlwind of disapproval.

For many managers and leaders this proves a tough challenge in managing such people to unlock their full potential.

Instead of simply issuing orders, or setting tough goals and hoping for the best, talent engagement means staying engaged with the talent. That is being willing to work through what may be highly emotional issues ranging from: “I don’t think I am good enough,” to “You don’t value my ideas”, from “You don’t understand how important this is,” to “leave me alone to get on with it and stop interfering.”

Seven signs that emotions at work do not yet play a constructive part in the enterprise are:
 1)    It is frowned on for people to express emotion, either in meetings or elsewhere while at work

 2)    There is considerable internal competition amongst colleagues, often to the detriment of the company, good teamwork and good relationships

 3)    Creativity is seen as mainly confined to a narrow set of colleagues—eg marketing, design and so on

 4)    Silo mentality is rampant and attempts to tackle it meet strong resistance

 5)    Managers and leaders hold one-to-one meetings but emotions are not allowed to surface either at all or for long

 6)    Empathy, respect and vigorous debate play little part in the current culture

 7)    Those who do express emotion are directly or indirectly “punished” through often subtle and not so subtle means.

  
[1] Why Repressing Emotions Is Bad for Business by Daniel Shapiro:
http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/web/2009/health/why-repressing-emotions-is-bad-for-business(You may need to subscribe to HBR to access this article)

[2] Egonomics by David Marcum and Steven Smith, Simon and Schuster 2009
 

Talent Engagement, How to Unlock People’s Potential, UK seminar on 25 November 2009.