Integrating Emotions at Work

Workplace culture experts like Brene Brown and Simon Sinek make it clear that everyone is supposed to “bring their whole selves” to work. Anything less is dehumanizing for the person and, according to relatively new research, limiting people’s expression and wholeness actually hampers a team’s creativity, adaptability, and sustainability. 

But whole people are messy and emotional. They have hidden histories and sometimes chaotic lives. How can you, as a leader, welcome your full, complete team members to work without getting sucked into drama, wasting time, or straying from the mission? Or worse, what if a whole person arrives at work in distress, and you do something wrong and cause more problems. You are not a trained counselor, how are you supposed to handle “whole people?” 

The key is making sure you bring your full self to work and that you employ some simple “whole-person-friendly” procedures with your team. 

I had the great honor of leading a small nonprofit organization serving local youth. We recruited 100’s of volunteer mentors and had a core administrative/program team of eight people. Our mission involved helping teen boys develop resilience and relationship-building skills so they could rise above their trauma and their life challenges. Of course, we had to ask those boys to bring their full selves to the program. Which meant that the adult volunteers had to be trained and supported so they could bring their full selves to those crucial interactions. That, of course, required that our core team be full, complete people in the workplace, as well. Anything else would have been a betrayal of the values we were teaching the boys. 
 
The techniques and practices that we used at the nonprofit to support “full selves” are accessible and applicable in any team. 

Want to build a strong team of complete individuals? Try adopting “check-ins” as a core practice. In our nonprofit team we started every meeting with a check-in, which is just a simple go-round where each individual states their name and what he/she/they is feeling at the moment. We held this “ritual” everytime we met with a cohort of teen clients or a gathering of volunteers, at the beginning of every staff meeting, and even at the start of a board meeting. This regular recurrence helped create and support an organization-wide culture of emotional literacy, vulnerability, safety, and support. 

Some tips for using Check-ins

• Note that the question is “What are you feeling right now?” not “How do you feel.” The former prompt guides us to identify emotions. The latter is more ambiguous and can lead respondents to report their physical state or to tell stories about recent events. Humans are naturally empathetic and we can connect much more equitably around emotions than specific stories.
• You may have to prompt people to choose actual feeling words. Gently remind your group that “fine” or “tired” is not a feeling. The simplest feeling list is “mad, sad, glad, scared, excited.” There is a more complete, nuanced lists of feeling words here: http://feelingswheel.com/
• The leader or facilitator can model the level of vulnerability or depth of detail. A check-in at a weekly team meeting may be shallower or quicker than one at a yearly retreat.
• Additional questions added to the check-in
• Check-ins work great for video meetings as a way to engage everyone before diving into the agenda. A text-based version of a check-in even works on Slack or Teams.

 
But what if a team member reports in a check-in a “difficult” emotion like anger or sadness? 

Say “Thank you.” 
Seriously… expressing simple gratitude is the best response. Saying “thank you” acknowledges your teammate makes several important points clear, all at once. 

• Your response validates the emotion as something real and welcome.
• By not getting emotional or triggered yourself, your relatively neutral response sends the clear message that your workplace is safe for whole and complete humanity.
• Your simple calm response shows your steadiness as a leader. 

Resist the temptation to FRAP
FRAP stands for Fix, Rescue, Advise, or Project. It is 100% natural that we want to reach out and help someone who expresses sadness, anger, or anxiety. But FRAPing moves the focus of the person with the emotion, off their own resources, and onto the advice-giver or rescuer. When we trust each other enough to sit with challenging emotion, we actually all grow more capable. 

It’s really OK to “just” sit there, in your full humanity, witnessing the other in their full humanity.

Consider If or How to Follow Up
As a team leader, you may want to follow up with your team member if they seem in distress. Resist the temptation to dig in during the check-in; let everyone check-in before shifting gears. Know that you have some options. 

1. Ask after the check-in but before diving into the rest of the agenda, “Is there anything we need to process as a team?”
2. Use a group check-out at the end of the meeting to see if an emotion has shifted. A check-out is just another go-around with the same prompt to name an emotion felt right now. In our experience, both with teens and adult team members, the meeting or discussion often provided the connection, interaction or information needed to reduce anxiety or loneliness. 
3. Do a post-meeting follow up with the team member. 
   • Ask him/her/them about their current state. 
   • Elicit ideas for self care if there’s still some distress. 
   • Offer support or accommodations in the short term. Follow any HR procedures or principles you have in place. 
   • If teammates seems stuck in their emotion, make sure they have access to outside help and support. Consider referring them to counselling or crisis intervention. 

Many leaders may fear using check-ins or opening up their team to emotions because they fear a breakdown or imagine there will be weekly outbursts. Know that in my ten years using check-ins with literally thousands of different participants, I’ve only had to follow up a handful of times and I’ve never had to handle a situation that disrupted the work day for more than 30 minutes. 

Call to Action

Ideally, after reading this post, you feel more confident about welcoming emotions and whole people into your team. Consider implementing check-ins with your core team as soon as possible. 

A Deeper Dive: 

• Watch How to Validate in Place - my TEDx Talk about validating emotions and how to avoid FRAPing. 
• Read Why a Quick “Check-In” Makes Meetings More Effective - Another article about the art and science of the check-in 
• Take a Mental Health First Aid course - A course designed for lay-people to assist people experiencing a mental health crisis. 
• Read The Way of Council - the seminal book about group process

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