If you want to change what people do, you need to change what they think. If you want to change their thinking, you have to change how they feel…and underlying feelings is emotions. – Dr. Alan Watkins
As a leader – of a corporation, a department, a team, 
a start-up – you carry a lot of responsibility. Many leaders feel that, to be effective, they have to be tough and unemotional, steely-eyed, and constantly performing, over long periods of time (50-, 60-, 70-hour weeks with few or no vacations), at peak levels. Sound familiar?
Many leaders try to, or want to, forget that they are human, vulnerable, and that they have emotions and feelings which will be informing their decisions, their choices, their actions.
And why not? Why would you want to do deal with emotions in a business environment? Aren’t they just inconvenient at best, divisive and time-wasting at worst?
Why Deal with Emotions?
Because emotions drive us. They drive our thinking, and our actions, whether we are conscious of them or not. In fact, even more so when we are not conscious of them. I have seen this for a long time, in my own life and in the lives of my clients.
Emotions have important information for us, if we are willing to listen to them. But in the busy, high-pressure world of senior levels of business, many don’t know how to, or are simply unwilling to, take the time to decipher that information. We neglect this area of who we are as human beings at the risk of our emotional, psychic, and physical health, the last being the one most of us notice first, in terms of burnout or chronic illness.
And because decisions at senior levels impact so many others around us, we therefore imperil others as well.
I recently listened to a talk given by a international expert on leadership and performance, Dr. Alan Watkins, in which he shares an a bit of his expertise around emotions. I have shared his talk with you in this month’s Resource Corner — the relevant information is in the first 15 minutes or so.
Many people in business – many people full stop – are not aware of this link between emotions and performance. They too often carry deeply buried emotions: grief, low self-esteem, the fear of being a fraud, anger, anxiety about the future and whether they are good enough to do what they are being paid – usually handsomely – to do. Of course, once they enter the office they keep these feelings buried as deeply as possible, in order to be professional, keep “performing”.
But do they?
Signs that Emotions are Impacting Your Work
How often have you erupted at someone more strongly than you meant to? Or found yourself brought up short by what was an apparently innocuous comment made by someone around you? Or received feedback from your peers that threw you because it was so at odds with your perception of yourself? These are signs that emotions – and the burying of them – are at work.
And this is a universal phenomenon. I was speaking with a colleague in Australia last week, who has recently joined a board. She commented that this board is “driven by frustration, ego, competitiveness, a determination to get things done by demanding they be done, without understanding what it takes to influence someone else. These men [she is the first woman on this board] are internally-driven, unable to be objective and observe others. They do not have the capacity to bring a thoughtful sophisticated approach, and don’t recognize how one achieves an outcome by understanding what matters to the other players, not just what matters to themselves.”
Sound familiar? Have you seen this around you?
It has been said that ultimately we have two choices, love or fear. Which emotion do you think is at work in the example above?
I grant you, it is not easy work. Engaging with feelings and emotions can be draining.
I saw this first-hand when I did a bit of personal work with an ex-boyfriend who at the time was a senior manager at General Electric. We were clearing up a difficulty between us from our college days, there was a lot of ground to cover, and it was an emotional conversation. After a couple of hours of discussion, he looked at me, clearly overwhelmed, and said “I’m exhausted”! This, from a man who trained as a Navy pilot, well-used to physical exertion and working under pressure. Seeing his reaction, it hit me how much work exploring emotions can be.
And, if you think exploring them is difficult, imagine how much more work it is suppressing them? Just because you are unaware of them, does not mean they are not impacting you. In this case, what you don’t know can hurt you.
The Value of Understanding Your Emotions
So here, in my mind, is one of the best reasons to explore this territory – be it with a therapist, a corporate psychologist, or a coach, .
Research professor Brené Brown says: “As a business owner myself, everything we want more of at work: trust, engagement, accountability, adaptability to change, innovation, creativity – every single one of those is born of vulnerability… What I mean by vulnerability…is uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure [bolding mine]. How can you be a good leader who is not willing to walk into uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure? The difference between …an armored leader and…a vulnerable, present leader is the ability to say ‘yes, this is scary, we don’t know how this is going to turn out, but I have confidence, we are going to take this on, and if we fail, we will clean it up and move forward'”. If you are unable or unwilling to mine for and understand your own emotional landscape, you will be unable to recognize the level of emotional exposure – or not – you are able to engage with.
Brené goes on to say: “But here’s the problem with vulnerability at work…Yes you can be vulnerable at work, but not too vulnerable. When people say too vulnerable, what they mean is there are boundary issues. Vulnerability minus boundaries is not vulnerability at all [but rather] disclosure or oversharing… [It’s about] where we share, with whom we share, and why we’re sharing. It’s not appropriate to share that we are in over our head with a roomful of venture capitalists looking to invest. However, there is a problem if we are not sharing that [information] with someone. [So] how do you balance being vulnerable with maintaining boundaries? We share with people who’ve earned the right to hear our story.” I am not advocating spilling your guts indiscriminately – I completely agree with Brené on this. However, I also know that burying feelings emotions, trying to act as if they are not there, not only doesn’t work, it can be harmful to us and to people around us. Sooner or later they will come back to haunt you; trust me on this one! So having a thinking partner to help navigate this terrain is invaluable.
Who’s Your Thinking Partner?
One of the reasons I became a coach was because business has a huge impact on the world we live in, and I observed that many of the business people I worked with and watched around me did not have a clue about their own emotions, and how those emotions – and the decisions they impact – affect both other people and the world around them. Today I help my clients develop the self-awareness to recognize, explore, and understand their emotions and reactions. I help them see how their unique combination of experience and expertise enables them to bring something important into the world, and that what they may have considered to be a weakness may in fact be their greatest strength. I do this because I believe it is important for the world around us. If you or someone you know is struggling to come to terms with emotions – or behaviors – that you don’t understand, or are trying to put your experience into a perspective that works for you, I’m happy to have a chat about how I might be of help.
Hi Deborah. Good to see you and to read your illuminating article.Emotions hit us all. I’m increasingly working with the topic of energy and emotions certainly enhance or drain energy. It would be a real pleasure to have a call or a Skype chat and catch up with you. It is a long time since Bob Rosenfeld introduced us His work on Mosaic too is essentially around emotions.Best regards
Deryn