Embrace Emotions: How to Build a Healthier Workplace Together with Your Employees

CareerBuilder tells us that 71% of employers value emotional intelligence (EQ) over IQ.?

As a CEO and marketing coach, I fully understand why: emotional intelligence, also known as an emotional quotient (EQ) in the workplace, can be essential in growing a sustainable and stable working environment.?

Unlock Productivity by Cultivating Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace

It is easy to overlook the role of emotions, dismissing them as mere fluff in the grand scheme of your business operations. Yet, the emotional culture within a workplace plays a crucial role in predicting workplace outcomes.

If you invest in the emotional culture of your business, you can tap into your organisation's true potential, reach business goals, and address persistent challenges (such as employee turnover). After all, business is not just about processes and incentives; it's also about how people interact daily and how they process uncomfortable emotions in real time.

A workplace culture that cultivates EQ allows you to:

• Strengthen collaboration between teams and departments.

• Empower employees to navigate the pressures of work life with empathy and resilience.?

• Pave the way for a more productive workplace culture.?

Create a supportive and harmonious environment that fuels creativity and employee well-being by investing in your organisation’s emotional culture.

Personal Tips on How to Navigate Emotional Waves at Work Like a Pro

We've all been there, a day when frustrations bubble up, leading to miscommunication between colleagues, hindering teamwork, and slowing down task progress. It's normal, but acknowledging these emotions and their potential impact is the first step towards building a healthier work environment.

As someone who is part of the marketing world, my best examples stem from there, so just like how a successful marketing campaign connects with people's emotions, it's equally important to develop emotional understanding among your employees to yield successful collaboration and culture.

Next time you’re unsure of how to navigate your emotions at work, remember this:

• Pause and Reflect. One day before a big launch and your team made a huge error which you warned them about at the beginning of the project. Or did that one person again place the documents in the wrong Google Drive folder??

It happens, but releasing your full emotional frustrations on that employee or team may not be the best answer. Take a step back, breathe (maybe punch a pillow), and process and release that emotion. Then, reflect on the best course of action.

Why? Because you are the leader, your emotions can set the tone for the rest of the team, and a team high on frustration can make the project quickly fall apart.

• Communicate Openly. The week after the mistake, the dust has settled; you can now reflect on the events, meet with your team, and encourage open and honest communication between everyone.?

List the pain points and figure out how to collaboratively work together to address them so that there is less pillow punching during the next project.?

Day-to-Day Conflict Management: How to Empower Your Team

After you’ve figured out the problem, the next step is to give your team the tools to handle conflict better. This will help ensure that even when you are not around, things can run a little smoother, and your teams have some direction on resolving conflicts that are hindering their productivity.?

3 Actionable Tips to Help Your Team Manage Conflict

• Open Communication: Foster an environment where team members feel safe expressing their concerns, ensuring open dialogue and a deeper understanding of the underlying issues driving conflicts.

• Mediation and Training: Engage neutral mediators to facilitate constructive discussions and invest in conflict resolution training for employees to equip them with the necessary skills to manage conflicts proactively and collaboratively.

• Clear Guidelines: Implement clear and transparent policies for conflict resolution, with designated escalation points, to ensure timely and fair handling of conflicts.

If you already have these implemented and find that they aren't working (or they aren’t working well enough), consider revising them. The first draft can always be improved upon to deliver better results.

5 Emotional Wellness Activities You Can Share With Your Team

Here is a list you can share with your team on improving their emotional wellness; it has a zen feel to it with some team exercises you can experiment with:

1. Gratitude Circle: Gather employees in a circle where they take turns expressing something they're grateful for, whether work-related or personal. Sharing gratitude fosters positivity and strengthens team camaraderie.

1. Mindful Breathing and Meditation: Plan a concise mindfulness session for employees to practice deep breathing and meditation. It reduces stress, boosts focus, and enhances emotional regulation. Use guided meditation apps or invite an expert to lead.

1. Team Building Games: Include activities focusing on emotional intelligence, empathy, and communication. Use role-playing exercises for conflict resolution or games that require effective collaboration and problem-solving.

1. "Emotion in a Jar" Exercise: Create a jar with emotion-themed prompts. Employees take turns picking a prompt and sharing their experiences, fostering vulnerability and empathy within the team.

1. Random Acts of Kindness: Encourage a "Random Acts of Kindness" challenge where team members perform kind gestures for colleagues, like leaving supportive notes or offering help.?

How Will You Create a Flourishing Workplace Culture?

As we weave through the layers of emotional intelligence in the workplace, let's not forget to draw inspiration from the artistry of digital marketing.

As a digital marketer, harnessing your EQ will help you understand your audience's emotions better and enable you to create relatable content that appears more human in conversations. Drawing similar parallels to the workplace EQ will help build stronger internal relationships, supporting better collaboration in teams and making you more relatable to your team members, pushing productivity in the workplace.

Before I sign off, remember this: emotions make us human, and in embracing them, we uncover the potential for greatness within ourselves and our teams. After all, your staff are your brand. Let's create a workplace where authenticity is celebrated, vulnerability is welcomed, and compassion thrives.

P.S. If you have any personal experiences or insights about emotions in the workplace, I'd love to hear them! Share your thoughts with me at [email protected]. Let's keep the conversation going.?