The importance of understanding emotional culture

When was the last time that anyone in your team, division or your company asked you how you were feeling? Outside of the pleasantries of “hey, how are you?”, where you are expected to give the standard response of “I’m good thanks” I imagine not very often.

Indeed, why should you care about the emotional culture of your organization? And what on earth do I mean when I am talking about emotional culture anyway?

Emotional culture is understanding how your people feel — yes, feel. The f word!

There has been much written about how to quantify your company’s emotional culture, emotional contagion and the importance of managing your emotional culture in the Harvard Business Review and other publications. I don’t think any leader today has missed Daniel Goleman’s groundbreaking work on Emotional Intelligence.

Research has proven that positive feelings influence satisfaction, connection, motivation, and engagement. Negative feelings usually lead to poor performance and high turnover. Yet, rarely do we talk about or explore feelings in the workplace.1

Diving deep into emotional culture as part of my training as a facilitator of the emotional culture deck, I reflected on the different leadership roles I held over the years. At no time do I recall any training in emotional culture. My bosses would often shudder when I started to talk about how I felt.

There was nothing which encouraged me as a leader to focus on my emotions or how they could be used for good. How were my emotions affecting my and of equal importance, the emotions of my team (how were they affecting each other).

This may be down to poor memory but even studying business at university there was little discussion on emotions. Yes, there was the standard training on how to give feedback, how to manage poor performance, 360-degree feedback and Myers Briggs but nothing on emotions.

Below I share five things I have learned through this research. As an executive coach and facilitator, I encourage all of my clients to talk about emotions, how they are feeling and share the research with their teams.

Five things I learned about emotions and their importance to culture and success

1. Emotions are contagious!

2. Emotion drives our behaviours

3. Employees who feel love perform better

4. Don’t only focus on cognitive culture focus on building an emotionally agile culture

5. Small gestures go a long way

Emotions are contagious — yes, I know I was surprised! People catch feelings, it is important to model the emotions you want to cultivate, this can be as simple as smiling when you walk into a room. This is also true of negative emotions such as fear and anger. Pay attention to what you are communicating verbally and non-verbally and how people are communicating with you.

Emotions drive behaviour — when you understand how your people feel, you can understand and influence their behavior. Emotions influence employee commitment, creativity, decision making, work quality, and tenure. Emotions impact your bottom line! 4

“Love has a strong influence on workplace outcomes” 3 Companionate love embraces a culture that is warm, affectionate and is socially connected enhancing feelings of wellbeing, belonging and compassion. Love is not just about romantic love, actively listening and empathizing goes a long way to create a positive emotional culture.

Cognitive leadership development is the go-to training in most organisations, focused on shared values, results orientated and driven). Expanding to include emotional culture shifts the focus to verbal and non-verbal cues, enhancing performance and reducing stress and burnout.

Creating an emotional culture does not need to be onerous and difficult.

As a leader, you can start today by smiling as you walk into a room and asking how everyone is, and listening to the answers. Starting a gratitude practice with your team, telling them what you are grateful for at the end of each week and encouraging them to do the same. By placing tissues in offices signaling it is ok to show your feelings, having a kudos board to acknowledge good work. Share learnings about emotional culture with your team, ask their opinion and suggestions of what you could implement.

Work with an emotional culture deck facilitator to start a company-wide discussion on emotions and how you want to lead and what is important to your people.

Leaders who cultivate gratitude, compassion, and pride in their team will see increased productivity and wellbeing, isn’t this what we all what for ourselves and our people?

In a world where we appear to become more disconnected, lost online, the ability to talk about emotions and feelings will become increasingly crucial to the success and wellbeing of individuals, teams, and corporations.

Sources:

1. The emotional culture deck, Jeremy Dean, Riders and Elephants

2. How emotions shape your work life, Dr. Jochen Menges, Cambridge University

3. Employees who feel love perform better, Barsade & O’Neill, HBR

4. Manage your emotional culture Barsade & O’Neill, HBR

Photo by Engin Akyurt

Want to learn more about The Emotional Culture Deck?

There are a few ways you can you learn more about the deck

Visit www.theemotionalculturedeck.com

Download a free Lo-fi PDF version of the deck at the website Free Download

Download the #emotionalcultureworkshop for free here (yes for free but I can also facilitate this workshop for you and your teams if you wanted some help)

You can go through The Emotional Culture Masterclass (like I did), click Masterclass for more info.

If you still have questions, feel free to contact me! #theemotionalculturedeck #proelephantrider #ridersandelephants #emotionalculture #emotionalculturedeck