Do You Track Emotions As a Metric the Way You Track Hours of Productivity, Lines of Code Written, or Numbers of Zoom Calls a Week?

Data-driven decisions are the mantra of most businesses, as they should be. Data has driven our actions since time immemorial…I would posit that we have lasted as long as we have, against all odds it would seem, because data has driven our survival as a species. While other life forms react by instinct, humans assimilate data, derive insight, reflect, revise, and act—they don’t just react.

We once recorded and saved our data on cave walls, stone pillars, scrolls, books, and recording tapes. As the methods of storage have become more advanced, so has the amount of data we’ve collected and saved. Fast forward to our digital age, and the seemingly endless storage capacity of our servers (the Cloud in reality) allows us to talk about thousands upon thousands of data points we can call up for almost any individual on the planet.

Covid…the great lockdown…the ZOOM revolution…the work from anywhere but the office movement…as you can well imagine, introduced a whole new stream of data related to work and the workplace.

Frankly, most of the data was designed to show how incredibly efficient it had all become despite our remote work needs. Some of that is backfiring now as savvy businesses try to implement a hybrid protocol because the data is functional…time and output tabulated…looking at us all like machines…giving new and sad meaning to machine learning, no??

Yet, there is no lack of anecdotal information (I’d say data, but it's not treated as such) that suggests that people were not really all that efficient; that single parents had a hard time with child care; that folks living solo suffered depression and loneliness more than others; or that many craved seeing their colleagues in person.

Typically, emotions in the workplace are dismissed or rather sent to the realm of HR counseling and coaching. After all, how do I datapoint a smile or a frown?

Actually, it turns out you can, and I dedicate this chapter of Imagine to the memory of Dr. Sigal Barsade, who recently passed away, and whom I had the honor to meet and talk with only once. It was during Covid, but it was a memorable conversation.?

Dr. Barsade was a Professor of Management at the Wharton School. I want to quote her beautiful obituary in the New York Times (also the Wall Street Journal…both worth reading). She “was a pioneer…in: the affective revolution the study of how emotions, not just behavior and decision making, shape a workplace culture, and in turn how they affect an organization's performance.”

And here is the key…in an interview, Dr. Barsade gave to the MIT Sloane Management Review in 2020, she said: “One thing we know after more than a quarter-century of research is that emotions are not noise – rather they are data. They reveal not just how people feel, but also what they think and how they behave” (bold/italics mine).

Emotions as data are the key. They unlock the reasons that a hybrid workplace is the solution for our current return to office debate and why that return is critical to all.?

What’s astounding to me is that her studies quantify reactions that we all talk about and casually believe in…but the quant makes it data and applicable. Ergo…we have all, at one time or another, used the phrase, “Smile, and the world smiles with you” or its equivalent in order to lighten up a room or situation. Now, though, we can actually apply that thought to our current dilemma and make data-based decisions for business success.?

• The NYT wrote: “In one study, she showed that?emotions and moods are contagious?— that we unconsciously mimic the expressions and demeanors of those around us. She gave groups of people a task to complete together; unknown to the participants, she also assigned one person in each group to express a particular emotion — to lean back and scowl or lean forward and smile. Those in the scowler’s group, she found, had a much harder time agreeing, while those sitting with the smiler came to a consensus faster and with much less conflict.”

TAKEAWAY: There is so much to unpack from that particular study. It would seem that not only are we losing the ability to read people and a “room” on ZOOM (generic term), but think about our inability to change the room—the attitude—when we aren’t in person. Think about the damage a bad vibe might cause by its infectious spread on a video conference.?

• The NYT continued: “In another study, conducted with Hakan Ozcelik of California State University, Sacramento, she surveyed 650 people about loneliness in the office and found that it had a significant impact on productivity — but also that even a single office friend could offset those negative impacts.”

TAKEAWAY: what could be clearer and more applicable to our needs today? Think about all those people, alone at home, without daily access to friends and colleagues. I’d suggest that we rethink some of the productivity data we have been throwing around to justify Work from Wherever. And BTW…do pay attention to your employees, friends, and colleagues who are isolated.?

No doubt this will sound soft and mushy to some…not hard-edged like our productivity data…but the New York Time’s explained how Dr. Barsade strongly advocated for “Compassionate Love…the mix of affection, compassion and friendliness that she said marked a healthy workplace culture.”

TAKEAWAY: to the uninitiated or the skeptic, this is what makes teamwork possible, and yes, efficient and productive…even more, it is what gets people to want to come to work instead of sitting in their pajamas all day.?

Bottom line? This research is critical for all of us as we face the possibility of further disintermediation from our workplace… Whether it’s from the employees saying, “Why bother coming in, I can do this from anywhere?” Or the pending calls from workplaces saying, “Don’t bother coming in, AI just replaced you…” We’re surrounded by amazing technology, but it can pull us away from each other if we let it…as we keep looking down into our devices and not up into each other’s eyes or into the world…my avatar will meet yours in the Metaverse.

Dr. Barsade left a legacy that we would all do well to at least study…and my bet? The best companies will follow.

What’s your view?