No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work by Liz Fosslien, Mollie West Duffy

Emotions play a key role in decision making

It is common for individuals to harbor anxiety, fear, frustration, and envy whenever things are not working well. You wear these emotions as badges, and they influence the quality of your decisions, your health, and how you relate with your colleagues.

More importantly, we have learned to bury these emotions as showing signs of vulnerability in today’s cut-throat business terrain could make us easy targets. To many, it is unprofessional to lay bare your weaknesses and to express our feelings. However, modern business culture relies on collaboration, and this has brought to the fore the critical role of emotions in productivity and performance.

In this book, the authors have found ways we can mold our emotions to optimize our work – how feelings come to play in the optimization of productivity and performance. You will discover how to curtail the pressure that comes with your job while avoiding its side effects on your health. In the words of the authors, the business world is heading into a phase where emotions play vital roles. And those who know how to bring their best self to work and sustain it are the ones that can survive in the long run.

Best self here, nonetheless, does not connote perfect. Your best-self entails that you identify your feelings, its source, and how to put it to good use. You have done extensive training on how to get from point A to B in your official duties, now it is time to learn how to deal with the chaos that could alter your emotional states or derail your work.

Therefore, this book outlines the essence of emotions in health, decision making, motivation, collaboration, culture, and leadership.

Emotions determine your wellbeing

As you might have noticed, emotions determine your wellbeing. And so, the authors suggest that you should become less passionate about your job. Take time out, go on vacations, and ensure that you do not tie all of your emotions to your work. Nevertheless, this does not mean that you should care less about what you do. Instead, you should realize that your “me time” as well as those times you spend relaxing, prepares you for your what is to come. More so, it gives you the energy to carry on.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

Why would you choose the tag of a work martyr, when you can spend less time doing good work. It is better to work effectively than to work hard. As such, you do not need to work through the night when you could have easily clocked out of work at 5:00 p.m. with the same output. Identifying and prioritizing important work would help you find time to take a breather.

Once you have gotten time to yourself, block off anything that reminds you of work. Also, strip yourself of any indispensable mentality that could make you believe that your absence from work could spell disaster for other employees or your organization. This messianic mentality makes it difficult for you to separate yourself from work. In addition, it is imperative to ensure that promotion, an office space with a view or a seat among the decision makers are not the things fueling your happiness.

Rather, it is good to set career goals while realizing that there are some things that are beyond your control. When you tie your happiness to these achievements, you are setting yourself up for unhappiness, especially when you are unable to achieve them. You could sidestep this emotional debacle by focusing on the present and understanding that there are days which could drain you of your positivity. Likewise, you could make friends and get involved with activities outside of work.

Find creative ways to motivate yourself

There are various ways of finding the motivation that will fuel our zeal to wake up every morning to resume work. Yet, for most professionals, the inability to decipher the concept of motivation has turned them into work zombies. As such, the authors assert that you should find creative ways to motivate yourself.

For one, you could rely on autonomy to get through the pressure of mounting workloads. If possible, choose your working hours, style and reward yourself on every win, no matter how insignificant they are. Secondly, it becomes easier to take on the challenges of your job when you find a deeper meaning to what you are doing.

Its not the load that breaks you down, its the way you carry it.

How is your job affecting others? Who are those benefiting from the time you invest in making things work? These questions will help you discover the value of your job and why you should keep at it. In addition, it is vital to develop healthy relationships at work. Apart from the apparent benefits of having confidants and friends in your workplace, it helps nurture your collaborative nature and pumps a sense of adventure or excitement to your work.

Furthermore, learning while working is another way you can motivate yourself. Once there is nothing new to learn in your current workplace, you might start feeling numb or bored. To counter this feeling, you can opt to join new departments or take on new tasks. You could also find mentors or motivators in your workplace that would serve as one more reason to get up in the morning.

Just as it is imperative to find ways to learn new things, it is also essential to take time to teach others what you know. Swap skills with other colleagues, identify new entrants that are struggling and share with them the things you have learned over the years. After you have tried all these things and you are yet to find a reason to keep going, then it is advisable to quit.

The role of Emotion in Decision Making

Many often think that emotion is a bad omen when making decisions. However, as the authors note, it is almost impossible to block our decision-making process from the influence of our current emotional state. It is natural to be torn in between two or more options as you find to establish a balance that would help you identify the relevant emotions to act on and the irrelevant ones to discard.

For instance, you can choose to downplay a colleague’s idea because you had a rough time getting to work. this example is a simple case of letting irrelevant emotions influence your decision as to the bad experience you had on your way to work has nothing to do with the decision at hand. And so, it is imperative that you identify the feelings that are fueling your thought process and which one to censor or the ones to analyze.

I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

In the book, the authors listed anxiety, anticipation, regret, and envy as relevant emotions. Anxiety could suggest that your fears are subsets of the need to remain in control. You do not want to leave anything to chance, so you fret over the outcomes of available options. Also, envy could stem from the realization that someone is actually better than you. Similarly, anticipation reveals that you are thrilled about the projected outcomes of the decision you are about to make. You could also base your decisions on the propensity of regrets that comes with choosing an option over another.

On the other hand, irrelevant emotions like stress, anger, excitement, and sadness are anomalies that could affect our capacity to make good decisions. Your decision-making process must filter these emotions out as they tend to push us to act on impulses. As such, it is advisable to take a break from making vital decisions when you notice that your emotions could cloud your judgement.

To avoid the pitfalls of emotionally-based decisions, you should create a checklist that informs you of all the factors that can influence the process. Firstly, list all your options, then highlight your present emotional state while counteracting irrelevant feelings.

Subsequently, link the relevant emotions to a specific source and discover your decision-making tendencies. This last point entails that you figure out whether you have the tendency to settle for options closely related to your predefined goals — a satisfier, or you are the type that is always looking out for the best possible option — a maximizer.

Regardless of your tendencies, it is crucial that you do not rush the process, especially in the final stages of choosing one of the many options before you. Likewise, you could welcome the inputs of other people who might help you identify biases that are stifling the process.

Address the emotional set up that could make or break teamwork

Current business practices support collaboration or teamwork, and so, it is critical to address the emotional set up that could make or break teamwork. In the book, the authors revealed that researchers found that individuals in the most successful teams had psychological safety. In other words, each member felt that they could contribute their ideas, admit their mistakes, and take a leap of faith, without facing backlash from other members of the team.

This free-spirited ecosystem is the most important factor that would drive the success of your team, not how smart each person is or the amount of experience each person brings to the table. Many team leaders often overlook this concept; therefore, they come to discover that some individuals naturally take center stage, talk over other team members, or shut down ideas that do not conform with theirs.

The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.

You can, however, contain such a feeling of entitlement and promote psychological safety by encouraging open discussion, welcoming absurd ideas, and clarifying cumbersome information that could sideline others. Regardless of all these initiatives, you will find that it is almost impossible to avoid conflicts.

There are times that clashes of ideas or personality could undermine your capacity to function in a team. When this happens, you should determine the real reason for the conflict. Is it that you do not support the contributions from a team member, or are you not cool with his or her personality? These questions will help you clarify the true emotions behind your actions and how to address them.

Moving forward, you could examine the other party’s arguments — try to pinpoint where they are coming from, if you are just being unreasonable, or if you could have found a better way to present your criticism. In the end, you will find out that most conflicts stem from a break-in communication — this is an issue that will come under focus in the next chapter.

Furthermore, the writers highlighted three types of people that should not find their way into your group. The first set of people are jerks who are always feeding off the vulnerability of people around them, the second is dissenters who often downplay other people’s ideas, without coming up with any of their own. Also, the third is slackers who will never put in as much effort as other members of the team.

Good communication skills can help handle work drama

As earlier mentioned, good communication skills can change your outlook on work relationships. You become aware of the emotions that could have fueled a response, an altercation or confusion. And so, you learn to dial up your down your feedback and how you handle work drama. This assertion is even more important when you need to convey your pain or disagreement to people that might have taken you for granted.

Having said that, communicating your feelings without overcomplicating matters could require that you listen to all the facts available. Do not base your decisions or judgment on assumptions and do not feel the need to tackle issues immediately — you will find that retreating and cooling off will help you see things more clearly.

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

In addition, you should skew your communication skills to become aware of inherent issues like gender inequality, racism, age, culture, and personal traits. In as much as you could ignore these issues and see everyone as equals, it will do you good to acknowledge that they naturally prevail on the way we communicate with others.

Therefore, become aware of your attitudinal shift around people of different backgrounds, skin color, gender or culture, and teach yourself to adjust appropriately. Also, you can use this information to guide the way you give feedback or present criticism. Ascertain that your criticism does not come as generic. Instead, highlight aspects of their work that need improvement and outline the ways they can go about it.

While this could go a long way to reassure the recipient of your objectivity, you could also go a step further by choosing the best environment and time to give feedback — this demand that you get to know the personality of the recipient.

This same level of detailing should also go into digital communication since many of our work interactions rely on emails and other communication platforms. In light of this, you should uncover the thoughtfulness and pitfalls of using emojis, the emotional weight of each word and sentence, and the effects of typos when communicating via message or emails.

Owing to the confusing emotional uncertainty of these modes of communication, the authors went on to advise that videoconferences are suitable as a standard communication platform for organizations with remote workers.

Emotions and Culture

We are beginning to see that the business culture of organizations tends to govern the relationship between employees as well as the accepted notion of emotions. While some companies allow the show of compassion and gratitude, others have established a more cutthroat way of interacting. Both approaches, as the authors noted, determine the mental state of employees.

Researchers have revealed that kinder working environments would likely spur employees to improve productivity than the lesser emotionally-inclined ones. Although some organizations are working on introducing programs that will allow workers to express themselves freely, others have set up the kind that numbs feelings. And so, the authors advise that you should consider your happiness and sense of belonging when deciding to stay put in your current work or to find a new one.

Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.

When it comes to belonging, you should note that diversity does not guarantee that you get accepted as a functioning member of your team. Diversity gets you into the team, but belonging determines whether your voice gets heard and accepted. This issue comes to the fore when sour topics like ethnicity, gender, and sexual inclusivity threaten the emotional wellbeing of employees.

Therefore, it is your duty to acknowledge these persisting issues and the challenges that minorities face in their careers. Also, choose to be a part of the solution rather than offering quick solutions when you have not had the chance to walk in their shoes or gathered enough facts. In addition to this, you could reach out to other members in your teams that are different. You could learn from their plight, advocate for marginalized individuals, and help them become comfortable with existing business cultures.

Still, on the issue of diversity, inclusivity, and belonging, it becomes one of your core responsibilities to tackle them when you hold a leadership position. As a leader, you must find ways to factor in your team members’ ages, races, genders, and personalities when you are trying to optimize their performance. This trivial task is one of the first indicators of your leadership skills.

If you are one of the minorities, however, and you happen to find yourself in a leadership position, then you must override the stereotypical narratives that have haunted people like you that had withstood similar conundrum. Learn from these people, make them mentors, and do avoid the pitfalls that come with feeling unsure or undeserving.

Nevertheless, all leaders, regardless of their race or gender, must know when to lay bare their emotions, and when to shield them. This phenomenon, which the authors coined selective vulnerability, allows you to project a capable and yet kind image to your team members or employees. It is imperative to realize that while it is good to divulge your weaknesses, too much information could make people question your authority.

Conclusion

Emotions clearly drive our performance at work and only the people that have mastered their feelings can escape the stress and drama that defines the business world. Irrespective of our ethnicity, culture, religion, skin color, sexual orientation, and gender, we are left to find the best environment where our emotions can thrive or else, we will continue to strain our happiness.