Emotions are part of every human being. Accept it, embrace it and learn to manage the emotions of your team to be an inspiring leader, writes Chella Pandian
“Human beings are nothing but a bundle of emotions. If you take the emotions out they are nothing but a living body equal to those in a coma state.”
Every human being wants to express their emotion and feeling through some form every day. The bottled up emotions lead to stress. The culture and environment of home, workplace, society and nation plays a vital role in the display of emotions. This understanding calls for a need to manage emotions in every facet of life.
Emotions are exhibited in every human interaction, whether it’s the simple act of saying hello to someone on the street, or addressing a nation of millions people; every form of human interaction is wired with emotion. The ability to navigate emotional subtleties is often essential to an impactful discussion and a favourable outcome. However, when it comes to work, along with its connotations of clean, polished professionalism, there is sometimes an inclination to put aside emotions and focus instead on completing the task at hand or on achieving the targeted goal.
Managers often look at employees in terms of how they think, act, perform and are more worried about the results. Equally important, however, is how they feel and behave. Thoughts provide motivation and ideas for action – but emotions provide drive, inspiration, and lasting vigour to energise one’s actions, even in the face of obstacles. Workplace performance ultimately hinges on the achievement of pre-determined goals, but this alignment of thoughts, actions, and emotions is all the more important to optimise team performance. It doesn’t stop at performance either.
Why it's important
Good management and alignment of emotions in the workplace gives employees a feeling of security and safety. When their feelings are acknowledged and addressed, employees develop trust in their managers and teammates. This is the key to allow individual team members to open up, thus encouraging a ‘speak-up culture’ among the team. In this way, there is an improved communication, improved outcomes and improved relationships for all concerned.
Thus, the creation of aligned positive emotions also promotes stability and longevity. Failure to do so, on the other hand, can cause alienation and a disconnect between individual members and the rest of the team – and, by extension, the team’s purpose. In this way, an emotional disconnect can open up a rift which leads to a cognitive disconnect, which in due time will also affect actions and behaviour. By this point, the phenomenon may have built itself up to a point where reconciliation becomes difficult and separation a likely outcome. Emotionally mismanaged employees are thus at a starting point which may lead to an unnecessary exit from the organisation.
Leaders who can recognise and address this will be able to build and maintain stable, high-performing teams.
Doing it better
Emotions are exhibited in different ways such as how we act, how we behave, how we reveal our feelings. In order to achieve a team goal, especially a difficult one, leaders must create an alignment between thoughts, feelings, and actions. Seeing, perceiving, interpreting, navigating and managing emotions are very important for every leader.
However, this is not an easy task considering each person’s emotions and the way they show their emotional connections are very different. Generation gaps and technology advancement has only added to the complexity that today’s leaders must deal with.
Exit interview surveys suggests that 60% of departing employees had an emotional disconnection with the organistion or manager due to various factors such as discrimination and bias, lack of team work, lack of inclusiveness , and a demotivating environment. The common link was an emotional disconnection. On the contrary, 75% of those who stay in an organisation have an emotional connection with the organisation, its managers, leaders, team members, and the products and services it provides. It’s interesting to observe this phenomenon not just in Malaysia but in many parts of the world, independent of whether an organisation is dominated by Gen X, Gen Y or other generations, or a mix of multiple generations.
The question is whether emotions will remain important in the future as we are gear up to embrace a technology dominated world?
In my view, human emotions will continue to dominate as long as human beings exist, despite advancements in technology, robotics and artificial intelligence. Also, Asian cultures, which are very family oriented and hold strong tradition, tend to be very reserved and give less importance to expression of emotions. However, they are quickly changing as a result of globalisation and international consumerism. In these nations, emotional leadership is only going to increase in importance as newer, more emotionally-attuned generations take to the workforce.
With this in mind, the answer to the question is quite simply: YES. Emotions are part of every human being. Accept it, embrace it and learn to manage the emotions of your team to be an inspiring leader.
The views and options expressed are those of the author and not of Merck Sharp & Dohme.
About the author
Chella Pandian is the HR director and global talent development lead for Merck Women network
