The Forbidden Human Attribute of Emotional Insight at Work and Our Search for Better Engagement

The aim of 21st-century organizations is to cultivate environments, where the majority of its constituents (if not all) can thrive through unleashing of potential. Though this is an admirable strategy, there is often one major roadblock to the acclaimed mission – the condition of our human spirits and the unspoken, yet socially forbidden collective norms.

Human Spirits Diminished…

The majority of us start our adult working lives on a condition of dependency. Similar to an experience in childhood, we have a need to gain new knowledge, develop skills through application, and grow a sense of intuitive intelligence on our way to mastery. The difference in adult development is that by the time we reach the age of joining the workforce, we have already grown a deep sense of personal identity and often, a deeper sense of separateness, neither of which we had as children. The kind of interruptions and mental models we may have encountered during our developmental phase(s) up until we show up in the workplace combined with unattainable goals and aggravated expectations mandated onto us end up manifesting itself then as various behaviors of fragmentation, alienation, emotional stickiness or mental exhaustion.

To keep it short: Somewhere along our developmental journey, we learn to look over/past/beyond our very own emotions that guide and navigate our life mission and bring to life, our individual values.

Even if we were skilled to navigate through the ocean of our own experiences, in today’s modern society, the pace of work, the high demands, professional exigencies, and the pressure to meet regulatory standards put many of us back at the fence in effectively shaping our relations in the organizational context. It doesn’t help that our highly competitive, often control-seeking organizations promote values dictated by the utility and extreme pragmatism contributing to the dissonance of our artisanship either.

The result?

Research from credible organizations such as the World Health Organization reports depression, which is already a major illness across the globe will be the number one disease by 2030 and the major trigger is workplace experience. In the meantime, Fortune 500 companies continue to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into “well-being” programs.

Re-Activating Human Spirit thru Awakening of Emotional Insight…

Emotional insight is a core human attribute, one of eight we have found to be playing an active role in growing leadership capacity and in driving positive organizational climates in our ‘human-centered leadership’ research. It is also closely related to one’s holistic well-being.

Although most commonly referred to as ‘emotional intelligence’ in the popular literature, we have come to think of emotional insight slightly differently – as a?capacity?to become aware, to identify, express and work with emotions (self and others) effectively. Having this sort of insight and later the skill to navigate through allows us to see beyond what may be often visible when in contact and in connection with others. By attending to our complex ways of being and to others, we found, we allow ourselves the opportunity to explore into unforeseen and catch one another at the level of our deeply rooted, multi-layered, and often buried or hidden humanities.

Another common saying about emotional insight is that it requires a significant amount of empathy. Though this is largely true, empathy alone is rarely enough to build self-rapport and trust, let alone to lead healthy, effective, sustainable relationships with others. To achieve all that, we need first a strong compass, then a dictionary and navigation tools. Interestingly, the science of emotional insight often points us to the body, calling attention to emotions being somatic events and having distinctive physiology, we need to know how to notice and label them first. Then, comes the psychology that shapes our tendencies to act in certain ways.

In her book,?Emotional Agility, a Harvard Medical School psychologist and Founder of?the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital, Susan D. shares a scientific approach to expanding emotional capacity and argues that the way we perceive our inner selves becomes a key determinant of how we live and the successes we incur. While our emotions have been driven out of work historically, the kind of insight that comes through emotional awareness and agility proves a source of fundamental advantage for future organizations.

Through our studies and living in practice, I have come to think of emotional insight as an outcome of the ignition of the human spirit. The human spirit, as?Sherwin Nuland, a professor of surgery and an award-winning author, once wrote: “is the result of adaptive biological mechanisms that protect our species, sustain us, and serve to perpetuate the existence of humanity.” When our spirit is ignited, it supports our momentary choices by allowing us to step deeper into our ways of being, offering an enhanced, richer experience of who we are and/or becoming. When we accept and own our emotions and insights in their entirety, then, we are able to meet others at the level of their humanity, too.

What About the Organization?

At an organizational level, we have been able to validate through our research that in environments, where leaders are reportedly more in tune with their emotions, demonstrate components of self-esteem, and show the ability to relate in a conscious manner to others’ feelings, employees feel better heard of, cared for and organizations do significantly better in employee engagement scores holistically.

This finding offers a good explanation as to why many work environments feel "insane" to us. Every day, we observe?leads who don't do as they say or say as they do; who have a hard time admitting to mistakes or offering an apology, where necessary. We experience the application of rules or policies that are hard to understand, inconsistent, and at times, unfair. We live by and try to navigate through the expectations of leaders whose emotional lives are less than predictable. It is truly a missed opportunity that many times culture in an organizational setting is described only in values, artifacts, and behaviors, leaving out the biggest driver, emotions at the center.

Organizations are living organisms, just like human beings. Organizational cultures give us emotional norms and display rules just as much as they give us behavioral norms and expression rules. How we feel at work is equally about us as it’s about the demonstrated leadership behaviors and the collective culture in which it is deemed appropriate to feel that way. There is a deep interdependency there that is often looked over and underplayed when it comes to organizational effectiveness and emotional insight.

This is not to say it is possible to theorize about the ideal state of an organization’s culture with expanded emotional insight, yet there is enough evidence that supports certain individual behaviors such as welcoming a range of emotions without labeling them as positive or negative, assuming the best out of each other in correspondence, supporting a repertoire of virtuous behaviors, making balanced assumptions and decisions about the value of experiences in the environment helps build positive collective engagement. In other words, whether we like to admit it or not, there is a clear connection between the ability to express our make-up, the way we show up and relate to others, and the overall quality of our joint cultures. If we want to rejuvenate levels of engagement in the workplace, then, we must start nurturing – not only the cognitive and physical intelligence of our people, but emotional and spiritual, to…

I end with this poetic statement for us to reflect upon:

The artist always has a direct influence on the DNA of its climate. Our thoughts are the kind of brush, our state of heart is the pallet of our colors and our eyes are the form of weight coloring in painting our reality. The artist’s hand is the vehicle to reflect the spirit of being in the picture. The choice, then, is to whether paint a black-and-white picture or a colorful one or at all with what we have and can offer. In the end, the outcome is translated to either a full spirit of being that comes to life or a sheer body that simply clocks in and out… Both will do to get a job done and arguably, both are beautiful (since they are reflections of a greater being,) the question remains around the quality of experience for the parties involved… And that alone may be the reason we rethink the place of emotions at work and in business…

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Emotional Insight is also one of the core human attributes found in a collaborative study we did with?Stanford University’s CCARE?worth investing in if we aim to expand individual capacity and grow organizational resilience as 21st-century leaders. For more information about?Human-Centered Leadership?can be found in our?book?or via our?short course?on LinkedIn Learning. Thank you!