The power of a name

In Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino describes Andria, a city where identity is shaped by the names of its objects. Every landmark, street, and building carries a name that defines its place in the world. Without these names, the city would lose its meaning and coherence.

Agile teams experience a similar phenomenon—not with physical objects, but with emotions. Just as Andria depends on naming to exist, teams rely on emotional labeling to navigate feedback, collaboration, and psychological safety.

Without the ability to name emotions, feedback loops become tense, miscommunications escalate, and blame culture takes root. But when teams can articulate their emotional states, they turn frustration into constructive insight and uncertainty into clarity.

A persistent myth in tech and Agile culture is that emotion has no place in professional environments. Many assume that emotions are subjective, irrelevant, or counterproductive to logical decision-making. But the reality is different. Unlabeled emotions don’t disappear—they leak into communication, collaboration, and decision-making. Frustration that isn’t named becomes resentment. Fear that isn’t acknowledged leads to risk aversion. Unspoken disappointment turns into disengagement. By recognizing emotion as valuable data, teams can respond intelligently rather than react impulsively.

Andria’s strength lies in its names. Agile teams achieve the same stability by naming their emotions—transforming raw impulses into actionable insights.

Feedback, especially in retrospectives and post-mortems, often triggers defensiveness. People interpret feedback as personal attacks rather than growth opportunities.

Teams often rush into Agile ceremonies focusing only on process efficiency while ignoring emotional undercurrents that affect collaboration. Naming emotions normalizes them, fostering trust, transparency, and resilience.

High-performance teams don’t suppress emotions; they integrate them into their workflows. The more teams name emotions, the more they create a shared language of understanding, leading to better decision-making and stronger collaboration.

Andria’s identity is shaped by its names, just as Agile teams find stability through emotional labeling.

So, ask yourself: does your team name its emotions, or are they left unspoken?