Welcome to the New Manager Podcast.
I'm your host, Kim Nicol. Hello and welcome.
I'm glad you're here and I hope you're doing well.
Today I wanted to highlight a very important topic that every
new manager needs to have on their radar.
And this is the topic of emotions.
We have them. We are humans.
They are a normal part of the human experience.
And it's interesting because in the workplace sometimes you'll
hear people talk about, you know, being professional means
not having emotions, making decisions, not from an emotional
place. And I kind of get that, But I
think that really overlooks the reality of being a human and
working with others. You know, when we think about
how do I motivate my team, we're looking for an emotion, right?
Motivation is that sense of desire to participate and be
engaged? Motivation has emotion kind of
baked into it when we are doing things like employee pulse
surveys and trying to get a sense of how people feel.
When we think about morale, is morale high?
Is morale low? That's an emotion thing.
When we are asking, you know, do our staff and team have
confidence in our leadership and our decisions?
That's an emotion. And the answer to that will
indicate the kind of work you're able to do together.
And it can really point to the health or the trouble that a
team or that an organization is in.
You know, it's a lot harder to work well when there's no trust,
when morale is low, when people are not motivated.
All of those are emotion things. So I find there's a lot of value
in #1 acknowledging humans have emotions.
That is normal. It is absolutely part of our
professional life and the more that you can become comfortable
with the emotion part of being a human and working with humans
and understanding that, the more you will be able to influence
and lead and inspire and be more effective in how you work with
people. It sometimes is tricky because
for a lot of us, you know, we we never received specific guidance
or teachings on how to work with emotions.
And there's definitely also a social kind of gender norm
around what emotions are expected in in humans, kind of
depending on where they are across the the gender norm.
And so I want to acknowledge that because that's also part of
the reality that's influencing how we work together is
understanding, you know, where you grew up and how you grew up.
You definitely received some messages about what emotions
were OK for you to demonstrate or to have, and what emotions
did you need to hide or cloak or distance yourself from.
It's really interesting. I think when we kind of look at
things through that lens, it helps us to make better sense of
the challenges that we face in relationships at work and the
opportunities we have to change the way we do things and do
things a little bit better. So one emotion I want to
highlight today is the emotion of disappointment.
I think it's one of the most influential emotions because we
tend to bend over backwards to avoid it.
We don't want to feel it. And this is, you know, when
people tell me the, you know, they'll say, oh, I would rather
not try and rather like I would rather not try something because
if I try and fail, I'll feel so disappointed and it will feel so
bad like that. Sometimes when people talk about
a fear of failure, what they're really pointing to is a fear of
being disappointed when they fail.
And what that will mean about them.
Like the the idea sometimes of holding the dream but not going
for it feels easier than holding the dream, going for it.
And then the fear that now you're encountering a potential
disappointment. And disappointment is often so
uncomfortable that we will also avoid conversations with others
when we fear that they will be disappointed.
That's that, that feeling that comes up when, for example,
let's say you have someone on your team and they're really
hoping to get a promotion or they really want a raise and you
want that for them, but you're not able to grant it either
because you don't have the authority, you don't have the
budget. Maybe they're not performing at
the level that would permit you to give them the raise.
Like they think they're performing above expectations,
but based on what you've seen, they're not.
And so you know that they will be disappointed that they are
not getting the thing that think that they the thing that they
are not getting the thing, you know they want.
And so the discomfort of, oh, I'm going to have to tell this
person they're not getting what they want, and they will feel
disappointed, and then I will feel bad.
And there can be so much discomfort in expecting someone
else to feel disappointed that we end up avoiding those
conversations or cloaking them and not being direct, not being
clear. And so one of the places that
you can start, especially with disappointment, because I think
this comes into play often more than we realize.
It's kind of in the background, and we'll describe it as a fear
of failure or a, you know, a fear of, you know, letting
people down, a fear of what will people think.
And really underneath that, it's some version of I just don't
want to feel disappointed and I don't want them to feel
disappointed. I think one of the reasons why
is because we often have unclear, unexpressed
expectations, because disappointment only exists in
the presence of some kind of expectation.
And when that expectation is not met, then we feel let down.
Then we feel disappointed. And sometimes we're very clear
about what the expectation is. Sometimes, though, we're not,
and it isn't until we feel bad we feel let down.
We can start to ask what was the expectation that I had that
maybe I didn't even realize was there until I felt really bad
that it wasn't met? And as a pro tip, you can bring
the same kind of inquiry into other relationships and other
areas of your life I think you might have heard of a few
episodes ago. I shared the burrito experience
where I had expected to order a breakfast burrito, but when I
got to the cafe they were sold out.
So my expectation was I'll wake up in the morning, I'll go to
the cafe, I'll order a breakfast burrito and I will have it and
it will be delicious. But when I got there, I hadn't
expected that they might be sold out.
And so I felt let down. You know, I was like, I guess I
could have a bagel. I don't really want one.
I want, you know, I want what I want, but it's not available.
But that was a pretty low level disappointment because it was a,
you know, a pretty transactional relationship.
And it didn't feel deeply hurtful to me that the
expectation wasn't met. Instead it was like, Oh yeah,
that happens sometimes, you know, cafes run out of stuff,
they sell out. And I guess I just assumed that
it would be available when I wanted it.
But in our relationships, in our working relationships, in our
friendships and partnerships, sometimes we have expectations
that feel a little bit more weighty.
And then when the expectation isn't met, it can feel not just
like, Oh yeah, sometimes this happens.
It can actually feel like a betrayal.
Like I had expected if I did this, I would get that.
If I, you know, performed at this level, I would get a raise,
I would get a bonus, I would get a promotion.
And when that expectation isn't met, it can feel like a breach
of trust. It can feel like a betrayal.
And that's also why, especially when you're in this position
where you do have real power and real influence over people's
livelihoods and over their career, it is so important to
have clarifying conversations about what, like I want to say,
what are we doing? What are the expectations, what
counts, like our people on track so that we can avoid some of
those surprises. At the same time, sometimes
things will happen. You will have had an intention
and then something will change along the way.
And now maybe the company isn't in a position to follow through
and deliver on that expectation. And so, in your role as a
manager, it is so important to understand how disappointment
shapes your decisions, shapes the way that you communicate or
don't communicate. And the advice that I would give
to you like the way that I would want you to think about it #1
Realize disappointment is part of the human experience.
So the goal is not to eliminate it from the human experience,
but to accept and understand. There will be times when you
feel disappointed and there will be times when people that you
work with will feel disappointed.
The goal is not to avoid it 100% of the time we want to accept.
Sometimes it will happen. The other thing you want to do
is to identify what are the expectations.
Be clear about the ones you can be clear about and ask or you
know do the work to reflect and identify what are the perhaps
unspoken expectations, Are there clear agreements that also
support a particular expectation?
Has anything in the environment changed that might affect those
expectations and agreements? So it might be, you know, when
we first planned this a year ago, we thought things would go
this way. But now we've had some senior
leadership changes or our work environment has changed and now
we will not be able to fulfill that initial plan.
Can you communicate what's changing and why?
That often can help to add more of a feeling of understanding
when we kind of can see like, if this was the expectation, why is
it changing, right? Like, help us to understand and
see that. And the third thing you want to
do is you want to learn from it. And sometimes that learning is
about yourself learning to feel uncomfortable, either on the
receiving side of disappointment or learn to be OK with other
people feeling disappointed. There will be times when you
might be the bearer of bad news and someone might be
disappointed, but what your role there is to communicate as
cleanly and as clearly and as compassionately as you can.
Sometimes we try to kind of fall all over ourselves, trying to
apologize for things where that doesn't actually help because
it's actually not about the other person.
It's actually about you trying to not feel bad for
communicating a clear update or a clear, you know, like updating
a clear change. So you want to learn from it and
you want to be really curious. Curiosity is always your friend.
You want to stay curious. You want to learn.
There might be expectations or desires, or you know, things
that the people on your team want that you weren't aware of.
They might have secretly hoped for something to happen and not
actually told you. So you want to stay curious.
You want to understand. You want to ask questions, to
understand how are they seeing things?
How is this landing for them? Once you do that, it's a lot
easier than to process the emotion, to let yourself feel it
all the way through and then to continue to move forward in the
way that will best serve you, your team, your organization.
And I'm talking a lot about, you know, you being in this
relationship with your team, but also with your manager and your
leadership. There might be things that they
decide that you feel really disappointed by.
You want to be able to pause, accept the feeling, identify
where is it coming from, what was the unmet need or what was
the expectation that you're now seeing was there.
You want to learn from it. What is this disappointment
telling you? It might be telling you
something about your own particular values in the
workplace. It might be telling you about
something that's really important to you.
You want to understand and learn from that feeling of
disappointment, and you want to be really curious.
And that curiosity can also hold a sense of possibility in it,
like well, so that's not going to happen.
I wonder what's next? What else might be possible?
The more awareness, the more mindfulness you can bring to
emotions at work generally, and disappointment specifically, the
more intentional you can be and the more courageous you can be
in your communication, in your decision making.
And my guess is that it will have you experiencing less
avoidance. We sometimes don't even realize
how much we're trying to make ourselves smaller or kind of
twist ourselves into a shape that will allow us to prevent or
avoid disappointment. And I think sometimes what's
required is actually the willingness to feel
disappointed. Like I'm willing to ask for what
I need and I'm willing to be disappointed if they say no
because I want to have a conversation about it and I want
to communicate that this is my need or I want to communicate
this is my expectation, knowing full well I might be
disappointed. You know, I think this is also
sometimes why, if you are in a job search, right, we sometimes
don't apply for the jobs that feel expansive to us.
I don't want to feel disappointed if they say no.
So I'll apply for a job that feels really similar to where I
am or maybe even a little bit smaller, because then I feel
confident that I have the background for it.
And so if you're wanting to kind of have this more expansive
experience in your own life, in your own career and in your
work, then it will require making some peace with this one
specific emotion, the fear of disappointment, of feeling it or
a feeling responsible for someone else's disappointment.
So remember, it is human. It is sometimes hard to be
human, but disappointment is a an emotion.
It is a part of our human experience.
And in your role as a manager and a growing leader, you want
to have some, like a clear line of sight about how this emotion
works in your own life and might be shaping your decisions and
assumptions in some ways that maybe you hadn't fully realized.
It'll help you to deal with all kinds of situations every single
day. So I want to thank you so much
for listening. And if this is something that
you want more help with, if you're really into learning
about emotions and how they affect us and how we work with
them and with teams and all of that, then I invite you to come
work with me. Go into the show notes.
You can book a free consultation where we'll talk about what your
goals are, what you're working on and how I can help you.
Or you can go to my website, kimnickel.com, and you'll find a
link to book a consult there and we'll talk about what we can do
together. All right.
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a great day and
I'll 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.