Welcome to the new Manager podcast.
I'm your host, Kim Nichol. Hello and welcome.
I'm glad you're here and I hope you're doing well.
Emotions. There are so many, and you might
not realize it, but managing people requires a ton of
emotional labor, both in terms of managing your emotions as
well as navigating the emotions of the leaders above you, your
colleagues, and the emotions of your team.
Now, this doesn't mean that you need to be kind of invasive or
nosy or sort of assume what people are feeling.
It's more about becoming aware that emotions are always in the
room when you have humans involved.
We all experience emotions differently but they influence
the way that we make decisions. Emotions also influence our
behaviors and also like our our resistance, our non behaviors.
This shows up in terms of procrastination when maybe you
know, you need to get something done, but you just, ah, you
don't feel like it or you feel resistant to it, or maybe you
are delegating something to somebody and you can sense their
resistance or you can sense, you know, I don't know if I can
really entrust this to them. I just, I feel like they are not
going to be able to do a great job.
I have some doubt. I feel some doubt about what's
going to happen next. You might sense it if you
receive a direction or some kind of announcement from your
leadership. And you might feel skeptical.
You might say, I don't know where this is coming from.
I don't know why leadership is doing this.
It might start to send a little bit of a ripple effect in the
sense of trust, which then turns into, like, hesitation and, you
know, not full commitment. And people start to lean back
and start to disengage a little bit, like, let's just see where
this goes until leadership follows up.
And they say, here's why we're doing this.
Here's the change we're making. Here's what we're responding to.
Here's our goal. Here's the value that's driving
this choice. And then people say, oh, now I
feel so relieved. That makes sense.
Now I can see that bigger picture.
And now I can feel like I understand what my place or what
my role is in all of this. And now I feel relieved, and I
feel more engaged, and I feel a renewed sense of commitment and
I feel motivated again. And I feel inspired to make a
difference and to really show up for my team and for the work
that we're doing. It's so interesting when we
really start to kind of look through the lens of what are the
emotions that are happening here and how are they influencing
what we're experiencing, the way we're working together.
Emotions are very human, and they are part of this relational
skill set around communication and around the way that we make
decisions at work. I think it's also helpful to
know that as a human with respect to emotions, you got the
full big box of crayons. So you might have some emotions
that you tend to prefer or the ones that you use most often.
But sometimes you're going to experience lots of emotions that
might not be so familiar or comfortable or pleasant or
enjoyable. So just understanding, you know,
that's, that's part of what it is to be human.
And so one of the favorite tools that I like to use is called the
Feelings wheel. And you can Google this and
you'll see lots of different examples.
I like the one on feelingswheel.com and you can
refer back to it anytime you need to revisit what are all of
these different emotions? So if you look at the feelings
wheel, you'll see it's this visual representation of
emotions and they're sort of categorized by relatedness based
on color and also proximity to this center core.
So at the center of the feelings wheel, there are just a handful
of emotions like happy, surprised, angry, sad, fearful.
And then as you go out to the further edges of the wheel, you
get more emotions and they have some subtle nuances, but they
are all kind of related. This can be really helpful
because when you're thinking about, for example,
communication, or you're thinking about how to be
influential, ask yourself, how would I like people to feel?
What is the intended feeling you want them to come away with?
Do you want them to feel reassured?
Do you want them to feel motivated?
Do you want them to feel a sense of relief?
Maybe you want them to feel a sense of greater trust.
Like, OK, I trust you. I might not like the decision,
but I can trust you know where you're coming from, that you've
got my best interests in mind. Think about the emotional
results or the the emotional outcome as part of what it is
that you want to see happen. It's almost kind of like I'm
just like getting a flashback to being a kid and you know,
someone tells you to do something and you say, oh fine,
OK, I can do that. You know, you can do something
begrudgingly with no motivation and you can kind of half ass the
job and just get it done, but not get it done.
Well, because you're feeling, you know, disconnected,
resentful, fine, you know, that sort of reluctance.
Or if someone else asks you differently, you might say, Oh
yeah, I can do that. I'd love to help.
Of course I can help. My pleasure.
And so it's the same thing, You know, it's not just what we get
done, but also how we get it done.
What is the emotion there? And to be clear, we cannot
control the emotions of others. Sometimes it will backfire.
We'll say, oh, I said this to them because I thought it would
help them feel this way, but it they actually felt this other
way, which surprised me. I wasn't expecting that.
So sometimes that will happen. You know, people will not
realize that the way they say a thing will not necessarily land
as intended. That happens that the bigger
idea is just to understand, oh, emotions are in play.
And if I learn more about them both, learn more about the
emotions I have and just realize every single person you work
with has emotions, including your manager, including your
leadership, including your colleagues, including your team.
Sometimes people mask emotions. Some people feel them more
vividly than others, but they're always a part of the way that we
work. So one of the ways that I like
using the feelings wheel, and especially if you find yourself
feeling kind of lost or overwhelmed, is to pull up this
visual and then ask yourself, I feel blank because blank.
So you might say, well, I'm feeling confused because and
then answer it and say that as as many sentences as many times
as you need to in order to kind of get the tangle out of your
mind and get it in front of you and get it a little more
organized. Another way you can use this is
you can say this framework instead.
Say X happened. And so then I felt Y because Z,
it might sound like this promotion happened.
And then I felt excited because I've been wanting to grow and I
finally feel like I'm being recognized.
You might run that same sentence and say I got promoted.
And I'm feeling scared because now everyone is going to expect
me to be able to have answers and do this.
And I'm suddenly realizing I feel all this pressure.
That's another one. I feel pressure because everyone
seems to be coming to me for answers, and I'm suddenly unsure
of my own judgement because I've never done this before.
So by starting to get a little bit organized to start to
separate out, here's this feeling.
Here's what I'm noticing where it's coming up.
It allows us to sort of hold them a little bit more distantly
so we don't feel so overwhelmed by them.
And it can also help us understand, OK, so you know #1
like, is there a knowledge gap I need to fill?
Is this feeling actually really normal and understandable
because of the context? Maybe this emotion is simply a
very reasonable response to the reality that I'm facing right
now. And it's not something that we
need to fight or to resist or to hide, but to just acknowledge,
say, Yep, this is part of what's in the room with me right now.
If you're working with someone and you're feeling a little
unsure about what they're doing or why, right, you can also
approach it by asking, you know, hey, how are you feeling about
this project? You know, how you know on a, on
a scale of one to 10, you know, 10 being you feeling really
confident and assured and one feeling like you're just
confused and uncertain of, of how to best start.
Like where are you on that scale?
You can use it to start to understand how people are
feeling, how they're approaching things, which then might give
you information, information in order to be able to help them a
little bit better. So, you know, realize not
everyone is comfortable with emotions and talking about it.
So we don't need to pry, but it's just something to know
about so that it's in your pocket so that you can use and
make use of them more effectively.
Emotional intelligence is really valuable, I think, especially as
we've gone into a very hybrid work environment and when you
have people working together of different generations, they're
often very different generational norms around
emotions, especially in the workplace.
You know, it's interesting. I was talking with a friend of
my dad's the other day. I was visiting him and his, you
know, neighbor. All the neighbor guys were
hanging out and I was telling them about the work I do around
coaching and supporting managers and new managers.
And, you know, one of his friends said, oh, that's so
weird. You know, when I, when I was a
manager, we never had anything like that.
And of course, he's a much older generation and the norm of that
era and of in the industry that he was in was very much like,
don't talk about emotions. Those are not professional.
But the reality was that emotions were there and they
were still happening because people were there and people
were still happening. But it's more like the emotions
that could happen were stoicism, you know, or, or this sort of
more of like a command and control style of work, which was
a bit more typical in that person's time in that person's
industry. And so for for them, it was a
little bit mind boggling to think like, oh, emotions.
That's something that you talk about at work as a leader.
No, like as a leader you're supposed to be impermeable and
absolutely unassailable. And there was a sense of kind of
rigidity. And I just thought, wow, yeah,
no, things are a little different now, you know, But I
mention it because when you are at work, having in mind what are
the people that you're working with, realizing they might have
a different feeling about emotions and they may not be as
comfortable or as aware of how their emotions are influencing
their decisions and influencing their behaviors.
You know, this also makes me think like I, I this outdoor
workout thing the other day and it was the first time I had done
this and it was a class and there was this instructor.
And, you know, it's so interesting because a big part
of being a fitness instructor is not just giving people the
information about what they need to do and how they need to do
it. A huge part of it is motivating
people and helping them feel like they want to be there and
helping them feel successful, especially when they're
struggling. Because part of working out is
you want want to find that edge where you're working enough
where it's kind of hard. And it's interesting, you know,
to watch the different, the different techniques that this
person was using. They're different than the ones
that I used when I was a fitness instructor.
But you know, there are lots of different ways.
So it's not just about what to do, you know, it is about how we
do it and the different ways that we tap into emotion in
order to facilitate the outcomes and the experience that we want
to have. So you might have a situation
where you're trying to motivate someone or you're trying to see
a behavior change, or you're trying to get people more
engaged or, or better working together and understanding.
OK, how can I emotionally, you know, bring this emotional
intelligence and awareness of emotion?
How can I use that in order to facilitate the outcomes that I
would like to see for this person, for our team, for the
result? So emotions, I think it's
interesting too, you know, where there's so much conversation
around artificial intelligence and it's like, yes, but we also
still need to just deal with the human emotion part because that
often gets overlooked. So let us not lose sight of that
while we are trying to learn new things.
So that's what I would like to share with you today.
My challenge to you would be to check out that feelings wheel
and also just do a little gut check for yourself.
What are the, you know, top three emotions that are present
for you as you look to the week ahead?
And then at the end of the week, ask yourself, what were the, the
predominant emotions that you experienced in your own life, in
your own work life, and if you had to, you know, sense or
perceive or name, what are the predominant emotions that you
notice with your team or maybe even with your leadership or
your organization? Just start being curious about
the language you would use to describe that.
And then you can get curious about, huh, I wonder what's
driving that. I wonder if that's intentional
or if that's more kind of reactive.
Just be curious, see what you notice.
All right, thank you so much for listening.
If you want my help to develop your own goals and to get more
skillful with emotions and work and all of that, there are two
ways to do it. 1, you can work with me one-on-one Ioffer
private coaching focused on your goals and your situation.
Go to my website, kimnickel.com or message me on LinkedIn and we
can talk about it there. The other way you can work with
me is through one of my courses. Go to the link below and sign up
to find out the next time my course will be offered.
All right, thank you so much for listening.
Oh, and before you go, if you would please leave a rating or a
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matters. OK, thank you so much.
Have a great day and I will talk to you next time.
When you're more effective at work, you're happier in your
life, and when you're happier in your life, you're more effective
at work. I can help.
Go to my website, kimnickel.com and sign up for a coaching
consult. It can get better.