Can you remember the last time you quietly judged a client or colleague for losing their cool in front of you? Or the last time somebody else’s decision undermined all your hard work and you took it very personally?

Did you stop and get curious about those uncomfortable emotions and where they were coming from?

Or did you quickly label them as “mad,” “sad,” etc. and start preparing your own reaction?

I’ve probably done the latter hundreds of times over the course of my career, and I’d venture to guess that you have too…

Emotions play a big role in our experience of work

They always have, and they always will, because emotions are a vital part of being human!

And the more relationship-driven our knowledge work and leadership work become, the more we will need gather and work with emotional data.

GATHERING EMOTIONAL DATA TAKES CARE

More often than not, we trust our first reading of an emotion in order to move on as quickly as possible…

I need to fix [mad] and make things better…
Please make [sad] go away so I can get through this day…

But the truth is, humans are not very good at labeling emotions, and their attempts to do so get even more imperfect when time pressure, pay, power, and influence, and gender are part of the equation!

But the good news is, if you want to gain an advantage in the new “relationship economy,” you can start gathering and working with emotional data fairly quickly.

Here is my basic approach…

ALLOW

Allow you (or someone else) to emote. Emotions are cathartic so holding space for emotional relief without judgment can release the pressure valve on any subsequent conversations, decisions, or collaborations.

ATTUNE

Attune yourself - with eyes and ears - to yours (or someone else’s) unmet needs and desires, and what else may be going on in their life. Logic usually sits right underneath surface emotions, so see what else might be worth getting curious about.

ALIGN

Align with the emotion and underlying logic - even if just for a few extra moments! - because the two things are inextricably linked. Trying to change one while ignoring the other won’t work, so moments of compassion in the short term will be critical to making progress in the long term!

ASK

Ask a few open-ended questions about the emotional guesses you’ve made, those unmet needs and desires, and how they could be accounted for going forward. This is not an effort to dismantle their underlying logic, but rather to engage curiosity and makes new room for understanding and collaboration.

Once you know more about what you, your clients, or colleagues are really feeling; what needs or desires they’re still hoping can be met, the faster you can start recalibrating:

…the time and energy you will need to recenter and keep moving (or how much you need to back off)

…the words you will need to use in order to be heard (and the words you will need to avoid)

…the behaviors you will need to exhibit to build trust (and the behaviors you will need to modify)

So you can start working on more congruent, creative, and innovative solutions that reflect a more thoughtful integration of emotions and logic.