When Jana spoke at the Learning & Development Summit in December 2020 about whether emotions belong in business, it was in the middle of the pandemic. Companies were working out how to keep people engaged remotely, and emotions were everywhere: fear, exhaustion, frustration, but also relief and gratitude. Even so, in a work context they were still talked about as something to leave at the office door.
Our H2O approach, Heart to Organizations, grew out of the conviction that this does not work. Not because we are sentimental. But because emotions are information, and a company that ignores it makes decisions based on incomplete data.
What emotions are for
An emotion is the brain’s fast reaction to what is happening around us. Fear says something is under threat. Anger says a boundary has been crossed. Joy says we are on the right track. When someone in the team goes quiet and answers in single words, that is an emotion telling you something has happened long before you see it in the numbers.
The problem is not that we have emotions at work. The problem is when we cannot read them, in ourselves or in others, and react to them impulsively. That is where the sentences come from that teams remember for years.
What this means for a leader
- Notice your own emotions before you decide. A decision made in anger or fear is good only by accident. A few seconds are enough: what am I feeling right now and why?
- Name what you see in the team. “I notice you have been quiet since that meeting. What is going on?” One sentence that opens up more than an hour-long meeting about numbers.
- Do not take emotions as an attack. An angry employee is usually not against you. Something they care about is under threat. That is information you can work with.
- Work with the emotion, not against it. An emotion cannot be ordered away. It can, however, be lived through, named and turned into a decision.
Stress is not weakness, it is a signal
The question we hear most often in trainings is how to cope with stress. The answer is not “endure more”. Stress is a normal reaction to demands that exceed our resources. So the question is where we get our resources back. Sleep, movement, people we trust and boundaries between work and the rest of life are neither a perk nor a luxury. They are the conditions under which the brain can make good decisions at all.
In our work with managers we also use objective stress measurement through heart rate variability. People who see on paper what drains their energy during the day change their behaviour far more willingly than those who are merely told.
Humanity and performance are not opposites
At work, too, we need to stay human and not give in to numbers, reports and spreadsheets at the expense of our own nature.
Srdce do biznisu, podcast introduction
The companies we work with long term do not have smaller goals or softer results. They have leaders who know that behind every number there is a person with emotions, and who take that into account when deciding. That is why we say we bring heart into the world of numbers. Not instead of the numbers. Into them.
Our podcast episodes on what emotions are for, on working with your emotions and on coping with stress cover the topic in Slovak. You can find them on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.