It is a curious moment to be a trained therapist who works in organizational leadership. At once, I feel the opportunity of a moment so alive with potential and the overwhelming pressure to attend to so many intense feelings. Even when the nature of my conversations with leaders isn’t directly about feelings themselves, I always end up thinking about them and engaging in practice to help leaders regulate their emotions in my work. In the wild, walking around and talking to people, working to shift our discussion towards feelings directly is a tricky business. It takes delicate work to help people attend to their feelings and to talk about them. For so many, even mentioning their emotional state in a complete fashion elucidates a sense of exposure and discomfort. We are so used to social engagements where our feelings are undisclosed and unaddressed.
So why bother? It’s a question I had someone ask me about 10 years ago. A leader who I was working with had a particularly troubling situation at home, and we were working on how this had been coming up at work. They didn’t see solutions on the home front and weren’t interested in that work. They asked me why we were bothering to talk about their feelings, and in the moment I spoke off the cuff: “Because your feelings about home are fucking up your job, and I’m worried you’re going to get fired, and that won’t be good for your team.” I was tired and feeling stuck in the moment, but we ended up pausing and taking a moment to let my directness settle in. The leader then asked, “Is it that bad?” and heard from the leader’s direct supervisor that they were at their wits' end. The leader was being called abusive and volatile all around the organization. It absolutely was that bad; I had spoken with. We spent the following hour talking about not only how bad it was but also how it was predictable and even normal. They couldn’t shift their interpretation of the situation from their point of view, and my candid statement had ‘cut through’ their emotionally defensive posture.
Our feelings are intrinsic to our human experience; they are built into our neurobiology. Feelings play an intense and fundamental role in our thinking. They are built into our bodies and change our thoughts. They are inextricable. While inescapable, they are also predictable. Not logical per se, but adhering to a clear set of their own predictable conditions. Psychological theory has formulated many explanations and interpretations of how our emotions influence our thinking and behavior. In leadership work, I see many misses in how well we acknowledge that. Certainly, there are folks out there who will be squarely in my camp. From intuition or study, it seems obvious that feelings matter at work. However, there is so little attention paid to how to manage these arcane and intimate details of our lives that those of us who do this work can feel somewhat distant and isolated. The feelings of people that interfere with systems gain limited attention in the overall body of research, and the approaches to their regulation are fragmented.
Managing our feelings, the practice known as Emotion Regulation, is a fundamental component of psychotherapy. I would argue that it is just as fundamental a skill set in the field of leadership and management. Intense feelings have a notable impact on our performance and thinking. Research has shown a drop in creativity, task completion, motivation, and even fluid intelligence when emotionally aroused. In the same vein as that conversation a decade ago, when our feelings are out of sorts, it is that bad. We can’t do what is asked of us as leaders. When we are dysrgualted, our capacity to regulate and shap our feelings can be the make it or break it marker between success and chaos. I have watched dysregulated leaders tank presentations, demoralize a team, cause public outcry, or say something that results in an HR lawsuit. Even when they know what to do.
There are so many solutions to be deployed, so why aren’t we talking about them? Firstly, people do, but only in specific contexts. Leaders don’t share their feelings unless they are safe. Secondly, there is a real gender gap here. Men tend to score lower on emotional intelligence scales, and research suggests there are socio-developmental reasons they aren’t taught/learn these skills as well. Thirdly, output-based system theory prioritizes how well we perform at work rather than how we feel about it. Feelings, when not expressed openly (see point one), go unnoticed in a behaviorally operationalized system of work. You can’t measure and track what you can’t see. Finally, emotion regulation changes slowly. Building these skills is like going to the gym or starting a diet. You need practice to get comfortable with these skills. You can get help, but even that help will grow your skills over a progressive time period. It won’t be quarterly gains. That makes this kind of deep, transformative coaching work feel hard to invest in for leaders who often seek support to produce quick results in their jobs.
So much of our current moment calls out for skill-building in emotion regulation. If we want people to be genuine and open at work, we need to make room for the feelings that come with that and support people in learning how to work with them. The openness I’m interested in starts with being willing to acknowledge how we are doing and how that is showing up in our work. We can choose what to share and with whom, but we still have to attend to how our feelings affect the people we lead. Leaders need support for their own wellbeing, and the people around them need to be able to raise concerns when those feelings are making work difficult. In a moment filled with so much uncertainty, this work deserves time, attention, and practice. Even when we know what to do, we need the capacity to do it when things get hard.
