Emotions

Live & Learn EMOTIONS

By Diana Theodores

The subject of showing emotion comes up frequently in my coaching sessions with senior leaders. They often cite former US president Barack Obama as a source of inspiration. Why? Because while Obama demonstrates dignity, gravitas and integrity, he also shows his emotions. The more his eyes well up with tears, the more he is perceived as a powerful leader and speaker.

Campaigner Mike Haines set up a charity called Global Acts of Unity in memory of his brother, an aid worker, who was kidnapped and murdered by Isis in 2014. In a recent radio interview, he struggled with his composure as he explained how he had channelled his grief into a powerful project of love and reconciliation.

In the days before the UK left the

European Union earlier this year, many

MEPs welled up as they said their goodbyes to colleagues. Watch any number of inspirational TED Talks or leadership speeches and you will witness the beauty and power that comes when people display emotion while performing a professional role. In the workplace, there are many occasions when showing emotion can be positively inspiring to others. These include giving presentations, Illustration by Janne IivonenShutterstock making motivational talks to your team, pitching your vision as a leader, mourning the loss of a colleague, or coping with a huge disappointment or failure. All of these situations are instances where demonstrating the intensity of your feelings, passion or pain can raise the humanity factor

in the room and grant others ‘permission’ to own their feelings more courageously and authentically.

Of course, there are a few situations where showing all your emotions or crying may not serve you or your audience well. The best moments to break down might not be when you are responding to feedback, talking in an interview, or having a critical conversation about a promotion or the next steps in your career. For a quick ‘composure reset’, stop, breathe and get grounded. Really see where you are – look at the other person, or people, in the room and get yourself into the ‘now’. The more present you are, the more connected and whole you will feel. It’s OK to touch a core of vulnerability for a moment, to well up, and to be emotional. It doesn’t mean you are in meltdown. It just means that you value yourself and can give the gift of compassion to yourself and to others. In the words of US poet Walt Whitman: “I am larger than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness.” Stop ‘obeying’ role models who believe vulnerability is off-limits in the boardroom, or risk leaving your authentic self at the door. Instead, be inspired by role models who show their humanity. Drop the corporate mask and allow yourself to express emotion rather than dampen it down. Share your vulnerability rather than blockade it, and harness your animated, passionate and energised self. Dr Diana Theodores is an executive performance coach, speaker and director of Theatre 4 Business. She is also author of ‘Performing As You: How to Have Authentic Impact in Every Role You Play’. For more, see www.theatre4business.com

Live & Learn REMOTE WORKING

By Nancy Doyle

Even forward-thinking futurists could not have predicted that the global economy would have been forced into lockdown this year. Neither would they have imagined that we would be given the opportunity to come back to a very different working world – a chance, in some cases, to start again from scratch.

For too long we were told that most jobs had to be delivered from a central location, that the 9-5 or, let’s be honest, the 8-6 daily routine was a norm that we couldn’t change. In the past, many workers with family responsibilities, or with disabilities, had unsuccessfully requested flexible working. Now we can no longer deny the feasibility of widescale remote working. We’ve had months to show that the majority of businesses can work – at least to some degree – in a virtual space.

Successful leaders are learning from the temporary measures implemented during Covid-19 to reimagine what’s possible. They are exploring what works well, what saves or costs the organisation money, and what employees want or need. They need to take that learning and plot the visionary future that we are prepared to work hard for.

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It’s been an unhappy reality that in the past many of us have held an unhealthy view of work. We have assigned value to the job and used it as a way to confirm or establish identity. “What do you do?” is seen as a reasonable question to ask, so that you can pigeon-hole a person you’ve just met.

People have too much or too little work. There are few winners. And the sacrifices we make to keep our ‘nose to the grindstone’ invariably impact

on our family life, our community engagement, and our mental and physical health. We are ‘human beings’ not ‘human doings’. Yet the inflation of our occupational abilities has led to discrimination against disabled people, family carers and parents. Competition and comparison have been more prevalent than collaboration and cooperation.

Having been forced to hit pause on the global rat race, perhaps now is the time for us all to have an awakening about our psychological engagement with work? This could be a time to look at what we discovered during the lockdown that we could incorporate into working life going forward. It could be an opportunity to draw up policies that are fairer, healthier and perhaps even more productive.

This year we found that individuals, their families and the environment benefited in both small and big ways from mass working from home. Although the practice didn’t suit everyone, some people found it possible to build relationships through effective virtual communication. We had more time for exercise, and could spend time with family, once we no longer needed to commute. City pollution improved and we could hear birds singing in built-up urban environments.

Yet many people found the loneliness very real and, without the connections taken for granted at work, some people lost engagement and faith in their place within the team. Video conferencing, which we have relied on to connect colleagues, family and friends, is cognitively exhausting. Zoom fatigue was inevitable. Phone calls without visuals are draining too. So, if we’re going to continue to rely on technology as our portals to the outside world, we need to develop good habits.

Meetings will still be part of working life. We will need to check in with colleagues when it’s not possible to wander by their desk. This means that meetings, if done properly, will actually benefit the mental health of the team. But informal communication is also essential. We can’t spend all our meetings focused on work; we need the chitter chatter to feel connected. Tools that were originally devised to aid inclusion of disability, for example automatic closed captioning, mind-mapping software and ergonomic workspace design, have proven extremely useful for everyone.

But not all technology has a feel-good motive. There was talk of employee monitoring and increased sales of software that tracks the number of hours an employee was at their desktop, or even the number of character strokes on a keyboard per minute. That doesn’t just seem draconian – it’s missing the point. Your colleagues are not machines to be switched on and kept working until they justify themselves as ‘full time’. Productivity is the goal. Many organisations have found that without office-based interruptions, work is done quicker and more effectively when it is done from home.

Work is not simply about the hours spent on a task. Nevertheless, time management skills are something we all need to develop. We need structure, routines and rhythms. But these are different for different people. There are morning people and there are evening people. There are also those who take longer to come to a conclusion, but whose conclusion trumps the conclusions raised by people who make immediate decisions.

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, there have been examples of people helping each other. Circles of support became essential. It also became clear that they worked better peer-to-peer rather than in the context of management chains. We should draw on these successes during the next phase of this new working world.

There is no doubt we are living in the paradigm shift of the century. We have a few short months to rewrite the future – to plan a move from the urban-centric, time-poor, planet-damaging working environment of the past to a better world. Atypical ideas will be welcomed because radical is what is required when the world has changed so completely. The ‘neuro-unusual’ may be the ones who can see through the now-useless shackles of tradition, to help us all find ways to work well, healthily, supportively and successfully. Dr Nancy Doyle is founder and chief executive of Genius Within, a provider of neurodiversity inclusion services and other support for employers. See www.geniuswithin.co.uk