Trust and Emotions in the Workplace

I will check in;

I am glad; writing this post on trust and emotions in the workplace.

I am sad/afraid; I cut out a lot of material I wanted to include. I will create future posts.

I am glad; getting better at drawing, slowly.
I am glad; respecting people’s time, wanting to be concise, wanting to keep it simple.

I am mad; not having time to write more frequently.

I am glad; I want to  engage in a discussion with my readers!

I’m in.

(I check in this way to make myself vulnerable and to gain your trust)

Why Trust?

Trust is the real fuel of a productive team. Processes may be useful to organize complex knowledge work, but without trust, even the cleverest process will suffer. Knowledge work involves creativity which involves taking risks (including the risk of making mistakes).

Great teamwork requires trust and vulnerability among team members. How do team members get to this state?

What if they started with a clean slate every day or at the start of meetings- by sharing the current state of their emotions?

When I am able to do this and be welcomed without comment, I am ready to tackle my day, my meeting or my personal interactions so much more openly. If others do the same, even more so.

Why Emotions?

I’ve been thinking a lot about emotions in the workplace, specifically how suppression of feelings can lead to so many  unproductive interactions and missed opportunities.  We may enter the workplace not feeling whole. We may say ‘Hello’ and  ‘How are you?’ to our colleagues. We leave part of ourselves behind, hidden. This is the norm.  We often don’t know what professional and/or personal stresses, joys, fears, sadness team members are carrying with them. We don’t have an acceptable way to switch on our emotional selves. Instead, we arrive home and vent our frustrations about work at the dinner table.

If, when we start our interaction with other people, either one-on-one or in meetings, we start with a ‘reading’ of where people are emotionally, amazing things can emerge – empathy, calmness, resiliency, and trust too. It is not that people want to hide; rather there is a widespread cultural notion that emotions and business settings are like oil and water and which we should not mix.  Yet, here is what can happen when we do mix them:

People can connect to my humanity (and me to theirs). Explicitly hearing someone’s feelings of sadness, anger, joy helps me trust a person faster, knowing him or her as a full, rich human, not just as an actor functioning in a process. Vulnerability, the willing to let ourselves be more fully seen is a great way to create trust.

Think about your current environment:

• What emotions do you notice people are hiding in your workplace?
• When is it good to suppress feelings and when not?
• How might it feel to work in an environment where your colleagues welcome your emotions without judging you?
• How would it feel to share and have others share observations, feelings, needs and requests instead of blaming, placating, and coping in incongruent ways?
• How might bonds of trust between colleagues improve if you knew more about their past influences and their future ambitions?

Explore posts in the same categories: Core Protocols, Listening, Teams