All the Manager’s Minutes this year have had a theme around emotions and values. These are all topics that leaders often fail to address in their organizations. We avidly pursue the great potential in the intellectual, learning and cognitive areas of leadership and organizational culture.
As with equality, political correctness and abuse, the topic of emotional intelligence has become yet another check box for corporate training and compliance. Training for creating an emotionally rich culture does not exist in the mainstream. How much is done to make sure that our employees come to work in an emotionally mature and safe culture every day? If all we do is train people to use the correct euphemisms and avoid certain words, we are putting a veneer of superficiality on everything that really matters in the culture of an organization. Emotions.
Don’t think that including words depicting emotions in the corporate mission will make a difference, it will not. Training on emotional awareness won’t make a difference either.
Helping others feel good at work will make a difference to the emotional culture of an organization. A good emotional culture be accomplished by a conscious effort to be kind, friendly and nice, both verbally and non-verbally and showing emotions rather than hiding them. Remember, emotions are neither right nor wrong, it is how we behave as a result of our emotion that can derail us.
If you, the manager, come to work every day with a frown on your face and a purposeful walk, you could be seen as being angry. The emotional tone of the company will be angry, in spite of that not being your initial emotion.
If the leadership team feels that emotions should be kept out of the business, a culture of suppression will result. New ideas and creativity do not come from environments of bland emotion and suppression, but from cultures of excitement and expressed enthusiasm.
If a departmental leader is constantly challenging the team to outdo their counterparts, he/she might think they are fostering healthy competition, but emotionally may be creating an atmosphere of stress, mistrust and envy.
Leaders are not typically trained on how to show love and compassion, elicit joy or to foster a caring culture, even in the healthcare industry.
I am here to help close that gap in your leadership development. The next few Manager’s Minutes will explore emotions and leadership.
If you can’t wait, contact me now and we can start making an impact on your emotional culture right now!