No Hard Feelings

The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work

Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy

Who Should Read: Anyone who has a workplace that consists of more than themselves!
Huskies- talk about emotion in the workplace! 

Favorite Quotes: “Get comfortable with being rigorously unproductive once in a while.”

I feel that there is an unspoken (and sometimes spoken) expectation that emotions are dangerous in the workplace. I feel there is even more pressure in the veterinary field to keep them in control. At least, that’s what I expected of myself. And when I run into those tender-hearted people that struggle with the harsh realities that come up in vet med, I worry and fret over whether they are a good fit for the field. While the emotions that come with vet med tend to be very unique and amplified compared to more traditional work environments, the struggle for cultural expectations regarding emotions in the workplace are not unique. Liz and Mollie have written and illustrated a delightful overview of strategies to help us navigate this challenge. Seriously, go check out their comics and memes, especially if you have an inclination towards introversion- absolutely worth the time! (@lizandmollie). They are my favorite find of the last 6 months!

One of the big take-aways I had from Emotional Intelligence 2.0 was the need to acknowledge and process emotions, rather than ignore or stuff them. Liz and Mollie essentially draw out (pun intended) the tasks to do just that, with a specific focus on your work environment. It is a major step in achieving the crucial skill of renewable empathy in our field. They recommend expansion of emotional intelligence into emotional fluency. Emotional fluency is the ability “productively sense emotion, and to know how and when to translate what you feel into healthy action”. To give you a starting point in understanding your emotional tendencies, they provide an assessment you can take for free. 

They focus on the following areas that emotions tend to be troublesome for humans (and boy do I see it in vet med!): 

Health

‘Physician heal thyself’ is not just trite- it’s true. In order to be your best, your health has to be a priority. In the context of work, they make the very strong statement: “Be less passionate about your job”. This is not to be misconstrued as having no passion- just to make sure you are more passionate about your well-being! Have very defined no-work periods. Vacations should be a priority, as should taking a night off from accessibility from work. Don’t turn your hobbies into an after hour job, and don’t fall into the emotional trap of thinking you are the only person capable of doing your job. Learn to manage your times of feeling bad- don’t let feeling bad make you feel more bad. You are allowed to experience sadness, anger, fear and frustration. But be careful about chronically venting these negative feelings. Both suppression and dwelling on negative feelings creates more depression and anxiety. They should be processed and, if warranted, addressed. Focus on the situations and instigators of negative feelings you can control, and build a plan to address them. A thought or a feeling is not permanent, and may not always be the complete truth! A few minutes a day to purposefully review and process your emotions can be an extremely healthy strategy to maintain your mental and physical well-being. 

Emotions play a very strong role in your general well-being and health- in both positive and negative ways. 

Motivation

Very skilled leaders often have a talent for motivating people. But, ultimately, you are the master of your motivation! Learning to be able to inspire yourself can be incredibly valuable in managing your well-being at work. Recognizing common reasons that contribute to a lack of motivation can be very useful at aiding self-management. Four common reasons include: Lack of control over work; Lack of meaning to the work; Lack of learning during work; Dislike of coworkers. Potential solutions to these common problems include asking for more autonomy, job crafting, learning to cultivate curiosity, swapping skills or starting side projects, finding and cultivating work relationships that fulfill the roles of confidant or inspiration, and perhaps even a frenemy to serve as healthy competition. 

Creating your own inspiration can revolutionize your experience of work.

Decision Making

Contrary to what wrinkly old, chauvinistic white men might tell us, assessing our emotions is a critical part of decision making. This does not mean that all emotions should direct your decisions, but they should at least be understood and recognized before choosing whether they have a role to play. The strategy Liz and Mollie suggest is to classify emotions as relevant or irrelevant, and keep relevant emotions while tossing the irrelevant. Relevant emotions are directly tied to the choice. They should be utilized as a navigational system. Anticipation, anxiety, regret and envy can serve as good relevant emotions. Irrelevant emotions aren’t directly created by the choice at hand. They can still consciously or unconsciously impact your decisions if you neglect to examine them. Common irrelevant emotions include excitement (unrealistic optimism or impulsivity), sadness (creates pessimism), anger (hot-headedness), stress (creates riskier behavior for man, while women tend to be significantly more conservative in their decision making). Obviously, some of these emotions can play roles in either category. 

Emotions have a very important role in making decisions. 

Teams

A feeling of psychologic safety is critical for us to be our very best at the work-place. Members of a psychologically safe work environment feel safe sharing ideas, concerns, asking questions and taking risks. A study evaluating medical errors found that medical personnel in a psychologically unsafe environment made significantly more grave mistakes, misdiagnosis, and errors in prescribing treatment or resuscitating patients. While management definitely carries a heavy responsibility for creating a psychologically safe work-place, you play a pretty critical role yourself. Do you encourage discussion regarding your treatment plans, or shut down anyone that asks a question? Do you demonstrate curiosity and ask questions? Do you encourage or discourage the idea makers around you? Believe it or not, it is possible to maintain a psychologically safe environment even during conflict. Validation and mutual respect are critical in managing conflicts. Management has the ultimate responsibility to be intolerant of bad apples, but you can still speak up and create a culture and response that disproves of jerks and slackers. 

A sense of psychological safety is critical to flourish in your work-place. The entire group bears responsibility for creating this environment.

Communication

Communicating our feelings is challenging, regardless of the context. The problems tend to arise when our feelings overwhelm our ability to communicate. We can overcome this by learning to talk about feelings, without becoming emotional. Beginning to view communications of feelings as feedback can be very useful in developing this skill. Considering feedback as a means to improve relationships and team work can also be helpful- both to help you speak up, and also to help you find a strategy to formulate your communication. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that ALL communications of emotions is helpful and appropriate- there are helpful and unhelpful ways to do so. A really good reference for helping your formulation of feedback can be found here. 

Learning to talk about feelings without letting feelings hijack the conversation is a positive power move!

Culture

E.V.E.R.Y. person in your workplace influences the emotional culture. While you can’t personally control other people’s contributions, much like a ship’s rudder, you can help influence the direction the emotions flow. “Compassion and generosity have a ‘cascade effect’.” Microactions compiled can create macroexperiences! Creating a sense of belonging not only provides psychological safety, but also encourages people to bring more of themselves into their work. 

Strategies to help create a sense of belonging include: Acknowledging and validating different individuals face different challenges.
Behave as though it is never not my problem
Identify and empower missing voices
Ask more questions before tackling problem solving (See The Coaching Habit)
Work within the power you have
Be the culture you want to experience! 

Leadership

The way your leaders handle emotions begins to reflect within those they manage. Leaders need to demonstrate how to handle emotions effectively and healthfully, rather than projecting an emotionally devoid persona. However, they need to do so strategically. “Selectively vulnerable” is the recommendation from Liz and Mollie. Employees want to know that you are human, but they also want to know that you can lead them out from problems and challenges. So when you do express emotion, make sure you demonstrate a forward path. Now, even if your nametag doesn’t have a leadership title on it, know that others will be looking to you in this field. It may be junior employees, externs, or clients. We can all benefit from considering ourselves leaders and developing these skillsets! 

Express your emotions, but do so carefully and strategically. 

I highly recommend this book- each chapter and component was packed full of good information, and the illustrations succinctly summarized the info in a manner that I connected with quite personally. It also gave a great vision for what our work environments could be, with some work and intention.

How do you feel about expressing emotion in your workplace? Is it a safe thing to do? How do you think it would impact your satisfaction in this profession if healthy expressions of emotions were encouraged in our workplaces?

Hungry for more resources? Further reading/resources:
Emotional tendencies assessment
Emotional Intelligence
Health/Joy: Read to Lead Podcast: Hacks for bringing joy to your job
Motivating your Team
Feedback
Building an Empowering Culture

Leaders that make you feel safe