"At every single moment of one's life, one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been." - Oscar Wilde

Today, I find myself thinking about change and one of the ways we are evolving as managers and leaders. I’m thinking about things we don’t talk about with regard to the challenges of managing and leading people. I’ve seen many managers over the years who took a very pragmatic approach to directing and leading their teams. They focussed on facts, data, and results and achieved varying levels of success in achieving their objectives. During most of my career, there seemed to be much less focus on, or acknowledgement of, the emotional aspects of how we do our work together. I can see us making progress in talking about these things.

I’ve wondered whether this reluctance to talk about emotions was, in any way, a reflection of the value western culture has given the “strong silent” leader. I have seen the attitudes and behaviors of managers change during the course of my career, and today I hear more discussion of emotional intelligence, what motivates employees, and the value of finding the “intersection” of passion, capability, and opportunity to help place people where they can make the greatest difference and experience the greatest satisfaction in their work. I still see a primary emphasis on data and results along with some skepticism about the real value of addressing the emotional aspects of work. Even where these are valued, many managers appear to struggle with how to identify and pursue changes that will make a positive difference.

In my own career, I’ve experienced many situations where colleagues resisted my advocating for more consideration of how our employees would feel about changes we pursued. Most often, this resistance seemed rooted in attitudes that our employees’ emotional response was either irrelevant or beyond our ability to influence. In the first case, the focus on results was of overriding importance and employees’ reactions were something we’d need to manage as collateral to the main focus of our efforts. In the second case, the approach was similar but with an added acknowledgement that these issues were important, but that there was nothing we could do about them.

Especially when we’ve reorganized and taken other actions that lead to significant change, especially cultural change, I’m confident that our success or failure has been strongly tied to how well we’ve addressed employees’ emotional response to these changes. It’s clear that changes like these can produce intense emotional reactions. Where we’ve acknowledged these and treated them with respect, people have been more able to engage with the and accept change. Where we’ve taken the position that we can’t do anything about how employees feel about change, or treated their feelings as irrelevant, I’ve seen much slower acceptance and a much longer memory of the change as a negative experience.  When we’ve treated employees’ emotions as fallout from the change, we’ve seen many other kinds of negative fallout.

It is also clear that we achieve much more together when people can identify with the values and mission of the organization and feel they are being treated fairly. Our common commitment to shared values and a meaningful mission can help bind us together in a culture characterized by mutual trust, respect, and open communication. Where we treat people with justice, we have a better chance to create an positive organizational culture that allows them to devote their energy to the mission. A culture strong enough to change as needed while continuing to honor the fundamental values and mission of the organization.

While they are oversimplifications, I’ve found two simple statements of priority that help clarify how managers emphasize people or results. Some managers align more closely with the statement “If we take care of the people, the results will take care of themselves”. Others with the statement, “If we focus on achieving results, the people will take care of themselves”, Clearly, I’m a “take care of the people” guy. Ideally, we’ll build teams that include both of these perspectives and strike a balance that honors the people and achieves results.

I’m encouraged to find that the managers I work with are talking about issues like these more often, and more openly. I can remember times when it was common for managers to hide their emotions in order to appear “professional” and to feign agreement with decisions they questioned to avoid being perceived as not being a team player. Today, I am seeing more respectful disagreement, and more discussion of how our proposals affect our people. I think the result is that the culture of our organization is growing stronger and the morale of our people is improving.

In the past, when we chose not to talk about these things, I think the result had a chilling effect on employee input, and reduced feelings of belonging to and being valued by the organization. Where people have not felt safe to share their thoughts, and confident that these would be welcomed, they have chosen to remain silent. When they haven’t felt they were treated fairly with regard to key issues like compensation, workload, and opportunities for development and career advancement, it has been hard for them to feel they belong. When they don’t feel our commitment to them, it is hard for them to commit to us.

The idea of emotional labor, and the fatigue it can produce, was first described in the literature of organizational psychology in 1983. In the nearly 35 years since then, the research has explored the emotional labor required to lead and to adapt to change, the tendency of people to hide their emotions about change to avoid being seen as resistant, and other aspects of the emotional work of change. Ideas about change, and human resource, management have evolved in response to this research, and to experience. I find this hopeful.

To create and sustain organizational cultures that support genuine engagement in shared values and a common mission, we need to talk about the results we want to achieve, and the data we have that helps us understand what we need to do and what impact we are having. We must recognize that it is equally important to talk about how we all feel about our work, the contributions we are each able to make, and the way we are working together. We’ve had much more experience, and are more comfortable, talking about results and data. We are still finding our way to an approach to discussing emotions with the same level of comfort and effectiveness.

I know there are still executives and managers who are skeptical about the value of this discussion. I am certain that we will achieve much greater employee engagement and satisfaction, and greater results, when we fully integrate emotion into our understanding of effective management and leadership. I hope that this will help us all enjoy making a difference together.