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The Newsletter | Edition 035
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In our Off-White Papers, we provide practical guidance on how to respond to our rapidly-changing world. This weekly newsletter explores those topics in real-time, with information and action steps on how to make progress now.
IN TODAY'S NEWSLETTER...COMMANDING EMOTIONS
Humans are emotional creatures by nature, and that doesn’t go away when we sit down at our desks. And right now, emotions are particularly heightened as we reckon with uncertainty around health, safety, security, identity, politics, and more. So how do we effectively manage our emotions at work? When should you lean into your emotions instead of out?
- Letting feelings into the office, from Makena Drutman
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A real reason for procrastination, from Trevor Larry
- When ego has its place, from Cole Nielsen
- Breaking through in conversation, from Merideth Bogard
And this time, our illustrations from Ash Casper.
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BRING YOUR EMOTIONS TO WORK DAY From Makena Drutman
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TL;DRHaving emotions is a natural part of being a human. And as smarter and more advanced AI solutions continue encroaching, emotions are the biggest advantage we humans have over computers. As Forbes contributor James Snow points out, experiencing strong emotions—whether positive or negative—lets us know that something important is happening, or that we care about something around us. Understanding and commanding our emotions not only strengthens our relationships with those around us, but can also help us make smarter decisions.
WHY IT MATTERSFrom the growing market for mental health apps, to integrating therapy speak in daily conversation, to heightening emphasis on emotional intelligence in the workplace, it’s clear the world is not only acknowledging the importance of mental and emotional wellbeing, but actively working to find solutions for these challenges. But while cures or treatments are important, a hyperfocus on hiding or minimizing negative emotions like anger, anxiety, jealousy, sadness, or frustration can diminish the incredible value of human emotion. This is especially important in a space as highly emotional as work. Yet we’re still pressured to “keep it professional” and appear as though we’re cool and collected at all times. Instead of suppressing emotions or lashing out, the answer might lie somewhere in the middle: elevating strategies for leveraging emotions as our greatest tool.
ONE THING YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW
Invite emotions into the workplace.
TIPSRather than stopping, hiding, or subsiding emotions, we can use them to our advantage by paying them attention, addressing them, and encouraging those around us to do the same:
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Let emotions be our guiding light. If you feel something in your gut, pay attention to it and know that you’re having a response to something that is important to you.
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Identify what we’re feeling. Try to understand what specifically we’re feeling (beyond just “stressed”) so that we can accurately address the cause of it, use that knowledge to make smarter business decisions, and maybe even communicate this useful context to our teams. More on naming our emotions in Procrastination Station below.
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Embrace them in a positive way. Sometimes ya just gotta cry at work! In classic frame-a-negative-as-a-positive style, you can explain to those around you that your strong emotional reaction is due to the fact that you passionately care about your work (and practice affirming this when it’s happening to someone else!). Find some good examples of this here.
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PROCRASTINATION STATIONFrom Trevor Larry
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TL;DRContrary to the popular belief that procrastination is about avoiding work, psychologists Timothy Pychyl and Fuschia Sirois suggest that we procrastinate primarily in order to avoid negative emotions. The key to overcoming procrastination, then, may not be better time management, but better emotion management.
WHY IT MATTERSProcrastination can creep up in small ways. It doesn’t always go so far as to mean missing deadlines (more often for me it means pushing administrative responsibilities until the evening and messing with my work/life balance). Targeting underlying negative emotions causing our procrastination can be a useful first step—maybe it’s anxiety over criticism, confusion about the purpose of a task, or boredom of having to go through the motions—once we identify the specific negative emotions we’re avoiding, we can better manage them and come up with solutions to keep procrastination at bay.
ONE THING YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW
Build emotional counterbalances into your workflow.
THOUGHT-STARTERSLet’s dissect the unappealing parts of your job in hopes of making them a little more pleasant. (I’m not saying you’re going to absolutely love filling out timesheets, but...who knows?) What negative emotions stir up when you think about this task? Go deeper than the simple answers of stress or anxiety. Try to write out 3 negative emotions with their root causes, and then think of how you can build emotional counterbalances into your workflow that alleviate those negative emotions.
For example, completing timesheets:
- On meaninglessness—it’s not just part of an administrative checklist, it helps resource projects properly and protect our team’s time
- On feelings of monotony—it might not take too much thought, but that means I can turn up the tunes to power through
- On feeling guilt—there’s an odd cycle of guilt that somehow further discourages me from completing this task; practicing a little self-compassion and not beating myself up for it can go a long way
Timesheets: complete
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LEAN INTO EGOFrom Cole Nielsen
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TL;DRIn innovation design, we’re often told to “check our egos at the door”—that the best work comes from learning without bias from consumer behaviors to develop better solutions to fit their needs. An #OldieButGoodie article from Forbes, however, reminds us of the power in bringing our heart, our mind, our ambitions—and yes, our ego—to our work if we hope to achieve creative and transformative solutions.
WHY IT MATTERSEgo gets a bad rap. But a healthy dose of ego ensures a relationship with our professions that drives work we can be proud of! Work touched with ego can be work that is full of emotion, ambition, and creativity. On the other hand, HBR reports that organizations who fail to account for people’s emotions had “significant consequences,” including “low productivity, lukewarm innovation, and an uninspired workforce.” Cultivating environments where people have secure enough egos to bring their emotions to the table not only ensures moving work, but that people doing that work will want to stick around to do more of it.
ONE THING YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW
Share a vulnerable part of your ego—a brave idea, a personal story, an ambitious dream—with your teammates.
THOUGHT-STARTERS
- If your work is feeling emotionless, search for a challenge where you can put some skin in the game. From securing a new project or launching an internal initiative, put your ego on the line to enlist all the emotions that come with it.
- In projects that may need a boost, share and invite personal stories that connect to concepts in development. This can strengthen the work and bond teammates together in the creative process.
- Build, build, build, build your teammates’ egos also! Let it be known that risk-taking is seen and appreciated—even, if not especially, when that seed of an idea is small and vulnerable. Remember: you are not the only one with—or that you want to have—skin in the game.
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CONQUERING CONFLICT PHOBIAFrom Merideth Bogard
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TL;DRThe New York Times’s word of the day is 'quell,' and, perhaps, no emotion is quelled in the workplace more than the anger, frustration, and hostility tied to conflict. At work, conflict is often feared and suppressed, yet an open embrace of conflict is not only key to innovative thinking, but also to a truly equitable workforce. As the leaders of the nonprofit Code2040 shared in a recent Fast Company piece, open conflict actively stymies diversity efforts and harms Black and Latinx workers disproportionately.
WHY IT MATTERSFrom an early age, we learn that conflict is negative and uncomfortable, something to be avoided. At the same time, we often think of strong work cultures as harmonious where everyone gets along. But, in reality, welcoming conflict is good for all of us—it allows people to feel confident expressing themselves and their true feelings and it invites growth as realizations and new ideas are unlocked from the friction. As leaders and teammates, how can we start treating conflict as a positive to be embraced rather than a problem to be suppressed?
ONE THING YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW
When you feel the tension bubbling, keep talking.
OTHER THOUGHTSOur natural reflex when conversations get tense is often to get short and superficial or go silent and shut down all together. So, the first step, is just to keep the dialogue going. As Reuel Howe states in his book, The Miracle of Dialogue: “…it must be mutual...and the parties to it must persist relentlessly…when two persons undertake it and accept their fear of doing so, the miracle-working power of dialogue may be released.”
As you keep talking through the tension, a few helpful things to keep in mind to:
- Get out of emails and talk face-to-face.
- Check your ego and the need to ‘be right.’
- Listen as much as you speak.
- Center on the words rather than the tone.
- Take a break to reflect, but always come back.
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