Humans are emotional beings; it’s natural that our feelings show up at work. Whether in positive or negative situations, being completely emotionless is impossible. And as much as we may try to curb them in our professional lives, emotions are present and impactful.
Erin Flaherty, executive director of Executive Education at the Daniels College of Business, has concerns about the stigma surrounding emotions and business.
“When we say, ‘managing emotions,’ it can seem negative—that you need to be fake or suppress your emotions,” she said. “However impactful leaders are authentic and comfortable with vulnerability. The key is recognizing, experiencing and managing your emotions in constructive ways.”
To do this, Flaherty said, leaders should cultivate high emotional intelligence and create tactics for forming an appropriate response.
“There are ways to take a beat, and understand what emotional response is in line with what the situation calls for,” she said.
Flaherty has some practical tips for emotional mastery at work, ensuring that leaders are showing up in an authentic way.
The Influence of Emotions
Research from the past 20 years has offered tremendous insight into the influence of emotions on leadership, decision-making, team dynamics and employees’ worldview. Some of these discoveries are intuitive (e.g., positive emotions in one person tend to lead to more positive emotions in a team), while others are counterintuitive (e.g., the expression of anger can empower colleagues).
At the core of all these discoveries is the focus put on personal development and emotional intelligence. To create positive, emotional change in an organization, a leader first must look inward, Flaherty said.
“Leadership starts with self. You must know yourself really well, know your emotional responses and the impact they’re going to have indirectly on people,” she said. “In all of our leadership programs, we focus on equipping leaders with the knowledge, tools and skills to better understand themselves. That includes understanding how the brain works in stressful situations, tools to regulate negative thoughts and emotions, and how to manage focus and energy to prevent burn-out. If you can’t show up for yourself, how are you going to show up for your team and organization?”
Emotions in Decision-Making
Decision-making research lays out two types of key emotions: integral and incidental.
Integral Emotions
Integral emotions are those associated with a decision, like excitement or nervousness around changing jobs. In these situations, research has found that emotions play an important role in decision making. So, listening to the positive or negative emotions you have around changing jobs may help you make the decision that’s right for you.
Incidental Emotions
Conversely, incidental emotions are those associated with an unrelated event that influences present decisions. For example, you might feel more energized on a sunny day than a cloudy one. Or, if a family member is sick, you might be more pessimistic about a project you’re working on. Emotional overtones can influence us, regardless of whether they’re associated with our current situation.
How you show up at work might not have anything to do with work itself, and that’s natural. But there are ways to ensure it doesn’t have negative impacts for those around you.
Emotions, Decision-Making and Leadership
Emotions at work can creep in, affecting decision-making for better or worse. Flaherty said the key for leaders is to slow down, reframe the situation, and understand how and why they reacted the way they did.
“In [emotional] situations, it’s important to better understand your emotions, even when it’s a reaction that you maybe aren’t proud of. You can use that as an opportunity to say, ‘Wait, let me break that down. What caused that? And how do I make sure that as a leader I’m a force for good,’” she said.
This will create a domino effect for your team, as modeled behavior will set the standard for how to manage emotions in the workplace.
“Your team sees that introspective behavior and sees how it will directly impact them when there is a challenging situation which, in today’s world, is always going to happen,” Flaherty added.
Even if you’ve already reacted to that emotion, it’s not too late to go back and inspect it. You can acknowledge how emotion played a role in your decision-making at the time.
Tips for Emotional Mastery
As a leader, you’re tasked with not only being responsible for your own emotions but also those of your team. Flaherty strongly recommends leaders learn about the emotional makeup of their team early in their tenure.
“I think all leaders should try to talk to as many people within their organization as possible to not only know themselves, but then also know those around them,” she said.
3 Tips for Emotional Mastery
- Wait 10 minutes
When you feel an intense emotion, research suggests that a 10-minute waiting period before deciding or acting gives you time to re-center yourself. Simply set a timer on your phone or take a walk, and allow your emotions to roll through and dissipate. - Reframe the situation
In academic research, this process is called reappraisal. It means that instead of trying to stop thinking about it, stop thinking about it negatively. For example, if you just got fired from your job, you can reframe it as an opportunity to upgrade your career instead of dwelling on feeling victimized. (In all likelihood, you weren’t happy in that job anyway!) - Generate a counteracting emotion
Sometimes called the “dual-emotion solution,” you can counteract a negative emotion by inducing yourself to feel a different one. Stated another way, the solution to pollution is dilution. If you drink a vial of poison, you’ll likely die. But if you dump that same poison in the ocean and drink the same amount, you won’t even experience a stomachache. The same is true for emotions.
The Contagious Nature of Emotions
Emotions can be contagious, especially when they come from higher-level managers. Stress at the top leads to stress at the bottom, just as optimism from leadership can spark a positive mindset for the rest of the organization. Flaherty offered a word of caution on the wildfire effect emotions can have.
“Once you get to a point where that high-velocity emotion starts to come out, that’s going to be contagious to everyone around you. You’re making a situation worse and not better, and that’s not your job as a leader,” she said. This doesn’t mean you should hide your emotions, rather you should find a way to channel them.
To keep these emotions from spiraling, Flaherty encourages leader to understand how they best process emotions and what helps them regulate.
“A past mentor knew I was a verbal processor and encouraged me to find a speaking partner that I could go to in challenging situations,” she said.
A speaking partner is someone you trust implicitly, but isn’t necessarily your cheerleader. Their role is to help you process emotions after a tough meeting or a difficult project.
“Rather than swallowing my emotions or letting it become contagious, I’m able to talk through it in a safe space and get out of that ‘fight or flight’ zone,” Flaherty said. She adds that additional tactics for this might include meditation, going for a walk or journaling. “Part of having a high emotional intelligence is building your unique toolkit that will help you cope and strengthen resiliency.”
Leading and Embracing Your Team’s Emotions
As a leader, you’re tasked with not only being responsible for your own emotions but also supporting your team with how they manage stress and anxiety. And that starts with building a culture that encourages and supports self-discovery and self-awareness. When people better understand themselves and their colleagues, it helps build a team climate that reduces negative emotional responses.
One data-driven way to do this is to have the team use assessments as a self-awareness tool. Daniels’ preferred assessment is Insights Discovery, an evaluation based on the work of the renowned psychologist Carl Jung. This tool creates a foundation for understanding yourself, understanding others and learning to adapt to other preferences to increase the performance and effectiveness of your people.
Flaherty said Insights and other assessments are particularly helpful for leaders because it allows them to see the organization holistically, understanding how each member of the team can be supported to do their best work. Additionally, they put words to complex topics like emotions.
“I believe assessments are powerful because they give teams a vocabulary and common language to express themselves and productively handle challenging situations,” she said. “The biggest part about emotions is understanding and being able to articulate to yourself: What is this emotion that I’m feeling? Why am I feeling it? And what do I need to move through this?”
Conclusion
Emotions are all around us in the workplace and they aren’t going anywhere. The best leaders will need to adapt to those around them, empowering their employees and supporting them in an individualized way.
It starts with personal exploration, Flaherty said, before blossoming to a team environment. Managers can’t be effective at emotional leadership if they can’t understand their own motivations. And, at the end of the day, an authentic leader is a powerful one.
“Vulnerability and honesty are what really make leaders stand apart,” she said. “If you can foster that culture within a team or organization, everyone starts to model that together.”