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Lets talk about emotions when we discuss agility, inclusion and diversity.
Franco Greco • Nov 17, 2019
In the second article on the Managing Emotions at Work series, I ask "are we missing the emotional experience when we focus on agility, inclusion and diversity?"
Everyone is talking about workplace agility, inclusion and diversity. However, the employee's emotional experience is often missed.
Organisations have a long history of sidelining messy emotions. The standard view is that employees and leaders alike can be either optimistic or stoic – but never outwardly angry, sad or disappointed. In the face of change in the workplace, there’s pressure to ‘just get on with it.’
How does that align with the ’in vogue’ organisational goals like being more agile ... driving inclusiveness ... leveraging off diverse views?
It is simply not possible to engage in driving towards these goals unless the organisation has a greater level of openness towards the more difficult emotions that people are experiencing.
When we embrace the full range of the human emotional experience it does results in better outcomes for all parties.
Susan David - Harvard Medical School Psychologist and author of the best selling book Emotional Agility
- states that:
“so-called negative emotions play profoundly important roles in the workplace. Innovation and collaboration are often accompanied by failure, disappointment, and conflict.”
In an organisation, difficult emotions signpost the things people care about. Dissenters are often labelled as troublemakers, but David says dismissing their concerns is a mistake.
"If someone in your team is frustrated because they are bored at work, it’s usually a sign that they value growth and development and need a new challenge."
"A staff member who voices misgivings about a new strategy could be highlighting a clash with the organisation’s values, while grumbling about a project’s timeline is a red flag that an employee is worried that quality will be compromised."
"When organisational leaders push that feedback aside, they lose the opportunity to explore whether it can help the organisation to develop a better product, a better outcome, or a better strategy."
”Organisations must move away from the narrative that there are good and bad ways of feeling and recognise that they are dealing with humans who experience the full range of emotions.”
A key prerequisite to foster this level of emotional agility is psychological safety!
Here is an idea - focusing on ways to help employees feel safe to bring their emotional truth to the workplace without feeling that they are going to be fired, scapegoated, or branded negative - may reap more benefit than just talking about being more agile, inclusive and diverse.
Interested in your thoughts?
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