If you feel sad how do you behave? Maybe you are unusually quiet, maybe you remove yourself from others to be alone, maybe you cry. What if you are happy, how would you behave? Maybe you laugh, maybe you become animated, maybe you feel comfortable to express yourself to others.

Feelings like ‘happy’ or ‘sad’ are the primary colours of emotion. What if you felt appreciated, or courageous, or insecure, or inferior? How would you behave then? And what if you felt these feelings at work, would you behave differently?

Our behaviour is driven by how we feel. Sometimes, we can be told how to behave but this is rarely sustained over a long period of time. So, if feelings drive behaviour, why aren’t all organisations focused on how their people feel rather than how their people behave.

It is not uncommon to visit a workplace or website and see the organisations values displayed proudly on its walls. An organisation could promote values such as ‘we are one team’ and being ‘straightforward’, but if an employee felt judged every time they walked in the door are they likely to act as ‘one team’ or be straightforward with their peers and leaders? Probably not. It is also not uncommon to hear of an employee being ‘performance managed’ (disclosure: I despise when people use this term when describing a disciplinary process) due to unacceptable behaviour. Although the manager can clearly describe the unacceptable behaviour they may be at a bit of a loss when asked to describe how that person may be feeling.

An organisation’s values tell us how employees should behave and act. So, why do we rarely see statements of how organisations want their employees to feel? Why aren’t more organisations focused on feelings first? For the past two years I have been working with teams from the early learning sector to recognise and craft their emotional culture using The Emotional Culture Deck. Although each team wanted to feel different emotions, they all had one thing in common: everyone wanted to feel good at work.

One team I worked with were located in a low socioeconomic area where a large proportion of employees had a background of trauma. The team wanted to make the workplace a safe space where everyone could feel a sense of belonging. The team decided they wanted to feel supported, appreciated, connected, confident and open-minded. Once they had defined how they wanted to feel they set to work on changing their processes, practices and environments to reflect this. Appreciation Post-it notes are often dotted around the staff room, KPIs were shaped around if you helped your team feel the desired feelings, interviews and inductions were changed to ensure the desired feelings were experienced at every point.

So, how did focusing on emotions affect the behaviour of this team? The largest noticeable change was the reduction of safety incidents. In order for each other to feel supported, the team increased their helping behaviours which resulted in everyone feeling less stressed and taking time not to rush certain tasks. There was also a reduction in conflicts and disagreements as these were managed quickly and positively with individuals feeling confident to discuss how someone made them feel.

So, if you find yourself in a discussion around behaviour at work, or needing to change the behaviour of individuals at work, why not focus on feelings first.

#emotionalculturedeck #proelephantrider #ridersandelephants #emotionalculture