Human Emotions are a Very Good Thing
/Human beings are naturally messy, emotional, clumsy, imperfect. Corporatism desperately tries to condition these unhelpful and inconvenient dynamics out of its employees. But Human beings are also fabulously talented, creative, extraordinary and resourceful, and Corporatism loses most of this amazing potential in the process. I believe you can’t have the positives unless you are prepared to acknowledge and then live with the ‘negatives’. This for me is actually the basis of diversity, not just the aspects concerned with race, gender, sexual orientation or disability, although these are of course crucial.
A diverse working culture first of all embraces humanity in all it’s richness of human genius and human flaws.
We are truly all beautiful, flawed geniuses. So leaders have to create and then nurture a working environment that allows people to be human. We have to talk about emotions. We have to ask people about their feelings. We have to notice when they themselves avoid the discomfort of doing so. We have to demonstrate that we are trustworthy and that we care. Trust is essential so that people know they are free to be messy and clumsy and unsure and hesitant and down and tired; free to make mistakes and generally not be perfect. And when a working culture embraces these aspects, not just allowing them but celebrating them, that’s when people start to unleash the good stuff – the stuff that’s always been there and latently on offer, but which has been withheld because we as leaders have not earned the right to expect body and soul.
Again this is not a ‘nice to have’ – it is essential. If we don’t let people feel their emotions at work, then we reap a heavy penalty. First people learn, through that dreaded negative conditioned learning, that they must not feel their emotions, and that if they do they are weak. (We of course don’t mind if they feel shame or guilt because that will make them work harder!) We teach people to dissociate from their emotions, and this is the start of the de-humanising process – the process that ends with a nurse walking past an elderly patient who’s been left unattended for so long on a trolley in a corridor that they’ve soiled themselves, and is quietly whimpering in distress. It’s also how corporate citizens come to be traumatised by the repetition of seemingly low levels of abuse from the unconscious controlling habits. Since they are not allowed to feel nor express their emotions at work, that emotional energy gets trapped in the body, and the sheer frequency and volume of repetitions adds an inexorable layering. This is how Corporate Traumatic Stress Disorder (CTSD) is contracted.
The second damaging aspect of corporatism’s abhorrence of human emotion, is that if people cannot feel their own emotions, they invariably act out onto others, either projecting that anger, disgust or fear onto those around them, victimising themselves in the process, or becoming serially passive aggressive. If the corporate workplace were under the microscope of a Psychiatric Regulator studying levels of mental health safety, I suspect many companies would be shut down as blatantly unsafe. My goal for CTSD to be accepted as a recognised condition could be the catalyst for the worst companies and leaders to be identified and held to account.
Many Psychologists now prefer the term ‘emotional competence’ to ‘emotional intelligence’. Certainly emotion recognition is a crucial human skill. In the report by Linda Geddes, ‘Control Yourself – understand the language of emotions and we can manage them more skilfully’, Marc Brackett, Director of the Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence, says, “None of us are born knowing the difference between feeling over-whelmed and worried, elated and ecstatic. It’s a language that has to be taught. When you take a physical change in your body and understand it as an emotion, you learn to make meaning out of that change”. In the mid 2000s, Brackett helped create a programme called RULER, now used in some 10000 US schools, to teach children and young adults to interpret the physiological changes in their bodies linked to emotions, label them, and learn strategies to regulate them. Not only do competence levels rise after such training, but there is strong evidence that it improves the relationships between students and teachers.
Since gestures and movements are essential to the language of emotional expression, the more skilled we are as not just as listeners, but as ‘noticers’, the greater our opportunity to give people the space they need to make an honest connection with their emotions. Geddes continues, “some of us of course learn ineffective strategies for emotional regulation, such as avoiding emotionally charged situations, or simply trying to shut down our emotions completely. Research shows that people who address emotional situations directly rather than avoiding them, have higher levels of wellbeing and are better able to cope with stress”.
Corporations however are not places of psychotherapy, existential debate or philosophical enquiry. Actually I would hope that they are indeed places where these activities are honoured, but it is not the prime purpose of a corporation to do these things. A corporation is founded or created to achieve a tangible purpose – therapy, debate and enquiry are processes not objectives.
So why should a corporation be interested in people acting authentically? Why can’t people simply follow the Frederick Taylor / Henry Ford type dynamic of simply following processes, rules and procedures and turning out the required goods? Well, whilst that dynamic arguably served the world well when it wanted mass produced, cheap, uniform consumer products, today consumers want concepts, services and virtual or digital content. And these require a workforce that can think and create – which in turn means allowing people to be human. If we want their flair, their creativity, their passion, then we have to take the whole package, and that means also taking their worries, their troubles, their flaws and their messiness. All very inconvenient, but a necessary part of the package.
Actually the real trick of course is not just to tolerate the flaws, since that implies a judgementalism that will come through in unconscious controlling behaviours. The real trick is to see human flaws as positive contributors to the whole creative process. We should celebrate our messiness as humans, rather than roll our eyes and tut.
The real opportunity for us within corporations is to create workplaces that are real communities of growth, learning, progress, innovation and achievement. If you are managing a workforce of automatons, command and control style hierarchies work mechanically pretty well. But managing a workforce of human beings, with all their flaws, emotions and external distractions, requires something altogether more sophisticated and refined. It requires humanity – it requires leaders who are authentic human beings first.
References:
Linda Geddes - ‘Control Yourself – understand the language of emotions and we can manage them more skilfully’ - New Scientist (12.01.16)
About the Author:
Gareth Chick is a 40 year corporate veteran with a global profile. His career has included hugely successful spells as CFO, CEO and Chairman in both public and private sectors, including private equity. What makes Gareth's experience unique is that he combined those executive roles with a part time career as a leadership trainer, researching psychology, neuroscience and psychotherapy to create leadership development programmes used now by many major global corporations. In the last 15 years Gareth has trained over 5000 managers and served as Executive Coach to over 200 senior execs including FTSE100 CEOs and Fortune 500 VPs. As Founder of Collaborative Equity LLP, “promoting corporate cultures and sustainable business models of shared ownership, shared responsibility and shared rewards", Gareth acts as consultant to many global leaders, specialising in first time CEOs and Start Up founders. ↠ find out more at ceq.com
Recommended Article: Corporate Traumatic Stress Disorder - by Gareth Chick
