Understanding the emotions of your team

Visit https://www.moodfirst.ai/ for more information.

With the ever-growing emphasis on mental health, more so after the Pandemic, organizations are now understanding the importance and prioritizing “Emotional Culture” within the workplace.

We can no longer deny that emotions are a part of our daily lives — personal or professional.

‘Corporate culture’, which we so often talk about, is governed by shared values, intellect, norms etc., which serve as a corporate-wide guide for individuals and groups in an organization to thrive. They strive to determine how employees ‘think’ and behave. For instance, how innovative or customer-centric they are. And it is undeniably a critical factor for the organisation’s overall success.

‘Emotional Culture’ is more about how individuals ‘feel’. It’s more to do with how an organization encourages an overall culture in terms of attitudes, values, belief systems, and, most importantly, emotions. This is important how an employee feels because this determines if someone feels driven enough to deliver and impacts the overall productivity and employee engagement.

Why is driving a positive Emotional Culture important for your organization?

Emotions of any kind have a tendency to push up, wanting to come out and be expressed.

There are proven studies to show that organisations where employees feel safe and comfortable, are more likely to grow. Emotions at play in the workplace are not just noise — it’s data. Emotions dictate not just an employee’s wellbeing and engagement but also business outcomes such as productivity.

Hence, emotional culture is not just literal. It’s more deep-seated than you can comprehend. Whether your organization is defined by a culture of positivity, optimism, or anxiety will ultimately determine work outcomes such as burnout, absenteeism, psychological security, and even operating costs.

So, what can you do when workplace emotions are overwhelming?

How we handle tense situations by saying “Calm down” or “grow up” may not be the best solution to manage emotional situations after all.

When managing a disruptive emotional situation, be mindful of:

· Staying Neutral — One way to show that you are in control of the situation is by staying neutral. Attributing blame or taking sides often aggravates a situation instead of diffusing one.

· Acknowledging the issue — be proactive about managing and prioritizing the issue at hand. The best way to calm a distressed person is to show that you understand that there is a situation and you will do everything in your power to manage it.

Positive emotional culture in action

It might sound a little over the top, but we can apparently distinguish among 135 emotions. However, thankfully we need a handful of them to understand and mend emotional culture in the workplace. Those are — joy, love, anger, fear, sadness.

So, here are few ways to bring about a positive and lasting change in the emotional culture of your organization.

· Culture of Joy — Outings, celebrations, rewards and recognition (for even the smallest of achievements) foster a culture of positive emotions. Even consider rewarding a person for promoting fun at work. And then track those emotions. Mood First is one such tool that you can use to track emotions within your teams.

· Culture of Love — another way of encouraging a positive emotional culture is by motivating an environment of affection, compassion and care towards coworkers — also known as companionate love. For this, coworkers need to be ‘careful’ of each other’s feelings. It can be something as simple as bringing someone a cup of coffee when you go to get your own.

· Culture of Anger, Fear and sadness — Organisations are also defined by a negative emotional culture — such as anger, fear or sadness. Several things drive this, like the fear of being yelled at for making mistakes, or not knowing things, or even fear of challenging authority. These fears can give rise to anger and frustration over a period of time and can impair judgement and memory, eventually affecting work and productivity. Empowering employees and not penalizing them at every misstep are good ways to turn a culture of fear around.

To cultivate a particular emotional culture, organisations need to get people to feel the emotions valued by the organization or team as a whole.

A workplace is a blend of different emotions — both positive and negative. And harnessing both these types of emotions is important. Encouraging only positive ones and putting the lid on the negative ones will make the latter fester beneath the surface and will come out in more counterproductive ways. Hence, it’s important to listen when people express dissatisfaction.

Model the emotions you want to nurture

If you make it a point to always walk into a room smiling, you’re much more likely to create a culture of joy. Your employees will smile back and eventually will start to mean it. That’s far better than wearing a neutral expression.

Remember, negative emotions can spread like wildfire. If you frequently express frustration, that emotion will infect your coworkers. Before you know it, you’ll have created a culture of frustration.

Emotional culture is shaped by how all employees carry themselves day in and day out.

What’s the emotional culture at your workplace? Please tell us what you think is the best way to foster a positive emotional culture.