#55 - Head or Heart?
In most corporate environments, rationality dominates the conversation. Why is it so? What are we risking by favouring “the Head” and dismissing “the Heart”? How can we design an organizational environment that welcomes emotion, encourages empathy and embraces individuality? This newsletter attempts to answer these three questions.
1. Focusing on the Head: Why does rational talk dominate the corporate environment?
"Some lessons have to be experienced before they can be understood." - Michael Batnick
Recently, I participated in a workshop on managing change. We started the workshop by sharing in small groups what's working well and not so well when managing change for ourselves, our teams, and our Firm. We also did a short poll on the key barriers to change.
What struck me is how rationality dominated the conversation and the poll results: if only we had better explained the need for change and better communicated the benefits and rewards of the new approaches, it would secure a successful implementation!
It was such a mighty contrast with the first EMC module at INSEAD with its deep dive into the unconscious! It got me thinking more broadly about the corporate communication I usually come across - only to realize that the emotions and empathy were almost universally absent from the conversation.
I can think of five reasons why it is so.
Firstly, it's cultural: we tend to believe that emotions do not belong in the workplace.
Secondly, managing rationally is relatively easy and neat. Rational arguments are mostly tangible, they translate well into nice PowerPoint presentations and budgets, and create an illusion of understanding - an illusion because abstract models and frameworks assume the existence of some average, soulless employees.
Thirdly, being empathetic and dealing with emotions is hard, precisely because average, soulless employees do not exist. It's messy and time-consuming because of the uniqueness of each and every person that will experience the same change in sometimes drastically different ways. I like how Morgan Housel highlights the importance of the individual experiences: "Everyone has their own unique experience with how the world works. And what you've experienced is more compelling than what you learn second-hand. So all of us - you, me, everyone - go through life anchored to a set of views about how money works that vary wildly from person to person. What seems crazy to you might make sense to me..." (Housel, M., 2020: 14)
Fourth, it's risky: we have to deal with what we uncover. And what if the things that we find out will inadvertently question or even destroy the neat rational model we have built?
And last, but not least, dealing with the emotional part of the change means facing our own fears and unpleasant emotions, which we'd rather ignore or deny.
The 20-century philosopher Martin Buber distinguishes between the two ways we are making contact with others: "One option is depersonalized, and very prevalent in the organizational life: this is the I-It relationship, in which others are instruments of our will - acknowledged through submission or 'buy-in' - so the right things can happen. The other option is what Buber describes as the I-Thou relationships, in which we are meeting and encountering others as fully fledged persons rather than interacting with them instrumentally." (Reynolds et al., 2020: 11). When I think about various relationships that exist across our Firm, most of them happen to fit into the rational, instrumental "I-It" mode. And by limiting ourselves to the instrumental mode, we miss important parts of the context and run big risks.
2. Neglecting the Heart: What do we risk when we focus only on rationality?
"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." - Maya Angelou
When we choose - consciously or unconsciously - to stay in the transactional I-It paradigm and see people as instruments, instead of practicing empathy - we deny the essential need for human connection.
When we choose - consciously or unconsciously - to ignore the emotional dimension of the change, it does not mean that this dimension disappears. It just means that we are ignoring the larger, "invisible part of the iceberg".
The less we know, the more we project.
The more we project, the higher the risk of misinterpretation, error, interpersonal conflict, and of ignoring the important signals - both positive and negative. When we project, we do so from the place of our own unconscious, our own way of seeing and experiencing the world, our own emotions, fears, and anxieties - all of which can be very different from how others would experience the identical situation.
The more the risk of misinterpretation, the fewer chances to successfully manage change.
Focusing on rationality makes us ignore both Emotional Friction that augments resistance to change and Emotional Value that can facilitate it. Nordgren and Schonthal (2022, 111-114) describe the importance of understanding both: "Emotional Friction is defined as unintended negative feelings that inhibit a new idea or innovation. Emotional Friction takes many forms. We encounter Emotional Friction every day, in decisions big and small. Even the most promising idea can unintentionally trigger negative emotions that become significant barriers to adoption. (...) To better understand Emotional Friction, we first need to start with its mirror opposite - Emotional Value. One of the best frameworks to understand Emotional Value is the "jobs-to-be-done" theory. The foundational principle is that people "hire" products and services to deliver three basic needs: functional value (e.g., it will save you time), social value (e.g., it will impress your friends), and emotional value (e.g., it will bring you joy). These three dimensions of value are present in each and every decision."
So, if ignoring the Heart is not an option, how can we bring it into the workplace? Isn't it too daunting?
3. Bringing the Heart back to the workplace: How can we design an organizational environment that welcomes emotions, encourages empathy and embraces individuality?
"We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us." - Winston Churchill
Bringing more empathy into the decision-making and more heart and humanity into the organization does not mean completely abandoning rationality and becoming touchy-feely. It can start as simple as acknowledging the existence of the emotional dimension and extend to creating structures and practices that allow for time and space to embrace emotion and individuality.
The question is so vast and complex that I will outline just a few ideas that speak to me and that I have been practicing in my daily work.
Recognizing the existence of the emotional dimension
Notice it. It's important to distinguish between underlying negative emotions and their symptoms. Nordgren and Schonthal (2022: 213-215) highlight that emotional friction is tricky to observe because people tend to keep their negative emotions hidden and rarely express them clearly: "What we often observe are the symptoms of the underlying feelings - symptoms that may confuse or even belie the true problem. Sometimes a colleague's "anger" shows up as "apathy". If we were to only treat the symptoms of these Emotional Frictions, we would not be able to overcome the cause of someone's resistance." The methods they propose to uncover the hidden emotions are (1) focusing on why instead of what - asking good questions to uncover underlying motivation, (2) becoming an ethnographer - observing what people show "in the wild" rather than tell you in an interview, (3) bringing the outside in - having the people you serve actively participate in the change process.
Name it. It can feel hard and embarrassing to express emotions at the workplace when you are not used to it and when you find it difficult to find the right words to match your feelings. I found it useful to occasionally refer to the Wheel of Emotions when starting a team call or a workshop - it works really well in the virtual environment and can strike a good balance between the need to express emotion and preserve anonymity. There are several versions of with varying degrees of granularity (Pattemore, 2020). Mentioning upfront an array of emotions your team members may be experiencing in the current circumstances can be liberating for further conversation. What is also important, is that this practice requires a certain degree of vulnerability to openly recognize and name your own emotions.
Structures and practices that help embrace emotions and individuality
I find it useful to distinguish between the macro level (organizational design, structures, and incentives) and the micro level (daily practices at the level of teams and one-on-one interactions).
At the macro level, I like thinking about it in terms of Herzberg's motivation theory which distinguishes between two different types of factors: hygiene factors (status, compensation, job security, work conditions, company policies, supervisory practices) and motivators (challenging work, recognition, responsibility, personal growth) (Christensen et al, 2012: 32-33). Bad hygiene factors cause job dissatisfaction, however, only motivators cause us to truly love our jobs. Hygiene factors tend to be more generic, scalable, and driven by firm-wide policies, while motivators allow individuality to shine. Hence, it's important to get the basic hygiene factors right and thus allow more time and space to focus on individual motivators.
At the micro level, the key place where change happens is teams, hence the importance of great managers, as well as practices and rituals that happen at the one-on-one and team levels. The best opportunity to uncover emotions and individuality is through regular and frequent interactions. As a manager, I have tried and tested many ideas and particularly like the following two:
(1) The span of control. How many people should you manage? Buckingham (2019) thinks that "the best managers check in with each of their team members once a week, for about fifteen minutes, to discuss their near-term future work. These weekly, one-on-one meetings increase the team’s performance, engagement, and retention. It’s that simple (...) Your perfect span of control, as a manager, solely depends on how many employees you can meet with for the weekly check-in".
(2) The coaching habit. Regular one-on-one conversations offer a perfect time and space to honour the individuality of each person in your team, uncover underlying emotions and build trust. One great framework that I often use is the seven essential questions proposed by Bungay Stanier (2016). Though none of them directly asks about individual feelings and emotions, they are built in a way that makes it easy to uncover individual motivators and emotional frictions.
Bringing the Heart back to the workplace is the only way to respect the essential humanity of people who make any organization succeed or fail. It does not mean eliminating rationality. It means complementing rational way of thinking with organizational practices that recognize emotional drivers and barriers and allow individuality to shine. Quite often, all it takes is a few simple habits.
Inspiration of the week
The cover image of this newsletter comes from the book “The Atlas of Beauty” - a photography project I’ve been admiring for years.
“Beauty is much more than what we usually see in the media. Real beauty has no bounds, and you’ll find it anywhere, from villages in Afghanistan to big avenues in New York City, from isolated communities in the Amazon to crowded crossings in Tokyo. Real beauty is not about how we look, but about all the qualities that make us good human beings. In a more and more divided world, The Atlas of Beauty aims to show a different perspective, promoting hope and love.”
The musical inspiration of the week - the work of one of the greatest bass players - Victor Wooten - comes from an unusual place: I owe it to my son Arthur, who, earlier this week, had his first bass lesson and came back inspired and overjoyed. As I wanted to browse some bass works on Spotify, I came across Victor Wooten and his 2016 album, a mix of beautiful bass pieces and reflections about life.
Stay inspired, listen to both your head and your heart,
Arina
Bibliography
Buckingham, M. (2019). How Many People Should You Manage? https://www.marcusbuckingham.com/how-many-people/
Bungay Stanier, M. (2016). The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever. Box of Crayons Press.
Christensen, C., Allworth, J., & Dillon, K. (2012). How Will You Measure Your Life? Harper Collins Publishers
Housel, M. (2020). The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness. Harriman House Ltd.
Nordgren, L., & Schonthal, D. (2022). The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Pattemore, C. (2020). Emotion Wheels Help Us Label Our Feelings – Here’s Why That’s Important. https://greatist.com/grow/wheel-of-emotions
Reynolds, A., Houlder D., Goddard, J., & Lewis, D. (2020). What Philosophy Can Teach You About Being a Better Leader. Kogan Page Limited