Feelings

8 minute read...

We associate the phrase “thinking clearly“ with using our brains to “think logically”. 

Or in other words: intentionally assessing a situation to unearth what’s real and what isn’t, gaining clarity on the causes and effects, surfacing assumptions, testing hypotheses, using the information we’ve extracted to make sound decisions.

But then there’s that thing that often gets in the way. That something that differentiates humans from computers. Our feelings.

How many times have you tried – or encouraged someone else – to push feelings away in order to think something through?

As I wrote that last sentence, Morris Albert’s 1975 hit song “Feelings"  came to mind.  Click here for a listen. "Feelings, nothing more than feelings, trying to forget my feelings of …”

Here’s an alternative angle – the start of an assumption hack if you will:

Perhaps it’s not really our feelings themselves that get in the way, it is instead what we do with them. More precisely, it is our attempts to suppress those feelings that get in the way of clear thinking and sound decision making.

We feel physically and emotionally. 

When you’re feeling something physically, there is an emotion that goes with it. And when you’re feeling something emotionally, your body is feeling it too. This happens whether you notice it or not. 

Here are a couple of examples to illustrate:

Imagine for a moment that you are being attacked by a pack of wolves. What are you likely feeling? My bet is fear.

_{A fear-inducing face.}

Now consider what happens physically when you feel that fear. Elevated heartbeat. Faster and shorter breaths.  Perhaps pain in your legs. You might even freeze in your tracks, unable to move.  

Okay, so we’ve experienced hypothetical fear. Let’s do joy now, illustrated with a recent personal example. 

My sisters and I are very close, and we truly enjoy being with each other. But our ability to be together is quite limited. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, one of my sisters lives in the Chicago area, and my other sister lives in Sydney, Australia. In May, the three of us met up in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to celebrate one of our birthdays. 

Have you ever felt so happy to see someone that your body goes warm and you sense a kind of expansion within? Smiling until your cheeks hurt, without even realizing you're doing it?  As my sisters and I greeted each other in the Puerto Vallarta airport, this is exactly how I felt.

 _{What joy looks like. My sisters and me in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.}

You might notice something about both of the occasions I have described thus far, whether it be a wild animal attack or a familial reuniting. You see, both of these examples take place outside of those times when we put our thinking caps on and try to logically assess situations and make decisions.

Uncomfortable emotions accompany difficult conversations.

A few weeks back, I was in a meeting with a client’s leadership team. The topic of the meeting was the company’s brand image, both inside and outside the company.

The meeting's facilitator had asked each of the leaders in the room to write down what the company was all about and to do so in just a single phrase. Then he asked each of them to read aloud what they wrote. The first few who spoke verbalized something along the lines of helping their customers.

But then one of the leaders took a deep breath and said, “making money”. When asked to elaborate, this leader said that – inside the company – the messaging was more about making money than anything else, even though the mission statement indicated otherwise.   

It was now one of those moments where you could cut the tension in the air with a knife. 

I won’t go into the details of the responses the leader received, but suffice it to say it wasn’t long before this individual began to weep. While this person did their best to brush away the tears and push their feelings aside, others were showing their own emotions. Some were red in the face, some were fidgeting in their seats. Bodies were much more stiff than relaxed and most eyes were averting from those of their weeping colleague. 

The facilitator and one of the leaders then tried to move the discussion forward, as if the emotion-packed moments either didn’t happen or were behind them.

But those moments were not yet behind them. Trying to push emotions out of the room doesn’t get them out of the room. Unless they are actually processed, emotions don’t go anywhere. Instead, they fester like an untreated infection.  In this case, the faces and bodies in the room told the festering story – shame, rejection, overwhelm, disappointment, humiliation, anxiety.

Suppressing emotion does not lead to clearer thinking or better decisions. It leads to fractured teams and the blame trap.

The Lead-Up

The mission of this particular business centers on helping others, and that mission has not changed.  

All of the leaders in the room that day understood and had previously acknowledged the 3 needs the business must constantly satisfy in order to accomplish its mission now and into the future:

1. It must have ever more customers that are happy to do business with them.
2. Its employees must be effective in their roles and happy to work there.
3. It must be profitable.

Heading into the meeting, some of the leaders (let’s call them group A) perceived that some of their peers were emphasizing employee happiness to the detriment of profit – any profit. They perceived what they heard as an absence of care for the necessity of profit. This created anxiety in Group A. They began seeking and accumulating evidence for such a laissez faire attitude. The more their colleagues emphasized employee happiness, the more Group A emphasized the need for profitability to improve. 

Conversely, there were those in the meeting (let’s call them group B) that perceived some of their peers (i.e. Group A) were focusing on profits with little care for employees. This seeming lack of care for employee satisfaction created anxiety in Group A. The more evidence Group B accumulated for this attitude, the more they emphasized the need for employee satisfaction. 

Take a moment and think about the feelings you have when you believe that an important, significant need is under threat. Now add to it the increasing belief that one of your own colleagues isn’t even paying attention to that need. Or worse, doesn’t even care about that need!

Fear and anxiety don’t mix well with clear thinking. It can (and did) lead to the blame trap, which triggered feelings of anger. This is the emotional baggage that entered the room when the meeting started.  Is it any wonder the meeting evolved into a tearful encounter?

By suppressing emotions – instead of elevating them – this team found itself in the metaphorical “wolf” scenario I started this newsletter with, and they were clearly in a worse mindset for decision making because of it.

So I interrupted the meeting, put my arm around the tearful leader, and asked the team to acknowledge and address what was actually happening. 

Once we acknowledge – and even witness – what we and our colleagues are feeling, we are in a much better position to examine the assumptions we made that triggered the feelings in the first place. And that gives us a much more open path to uncover the problems, develop the solutions, and convert those solutions into reality.

And this is what the team did. While they spent more time on the brewing conflict than they anticipated they would, they gained a much better understanding of each other and remembered that they were not only a leadership team, they actually cared about each other. They were able to dispel the false assumptions they had about each other as they re-discovered that their colleagues recognize and are committed to all 3 of the necessary conditions.

Now the simple but difficult work lies ahead of them. Putting the strategies and tactics in place to ensure their business embraces the beauty of the “and”. Employees AND Customers AND Profits.

Thinking and Feeling

No matter how much we try, the belief that we can push our feelings under the rug is ludicrous.  When not allowed to process, uncomfortable feelings fester. They are as damaging as an untreated infection, threatening the health of our selves, our relationships and our organizations.  

Alternatively, if we give ourselves a chance to feel our feelings – both physically and emotionally – and to have our feelings acknowledged and witnessed by those we can trust, we open the way for clearer thinking for everyone involved. 

I encourage you to check in with yourself when your own uncomfortable emotions show up in your meetings or in your decision making processes. Take the cues from your body. And then allow yourself a few moments to breathe and acknowledge, even just to yourself, what you’re feeling. Follow that by asking yourself what is the assumption you’re making that triggered the uncomfortable feeling (remember the assumption Group A had about Group B and vice versa?). And give yourself the gift of hacking that assumption before you continue. Even if you need to delay a conversation or decision by an hour or a day.  You’ll find it’s time well spent.

- Lisa

_{Thinking and feeling.}

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