How are you feeling? And why..?

Hi there!

How are you feeling? Indeed, what are you feeling? I’m writing this in the middle of a mini-heatwave that’s making life in London a little more challenging than usual. You can see the physical discomfort and unhappiness on the Tube, the decrease in patience on the roads, and all those heat-filled sleepless nights spilling over into grouchy mornings. “How are you feeling?” Takes on a whole new meaning at times like this. 

It’s therefore the perfect time to talk about our emotions! And how we can better understand their impact on our experience of work through our levels of emotional literacy.

Emotional what?

Emotional literacy refers to our ability to recognise what we’re feeling, and why. To be able to navigate the impact emotions can have on our behaviour, and to explore emotions in ourselves and others with curiosity. And as the name would suggest, to be able to talk about our emotions with some degree of fluency. At the heart of this concept is the notion of values, and how our emotional expression and behaviour should be aligned with the kind of person we’d ideally like to be. 

Research has demonstrated that higher emotional literacy is associated with lower incidences of conditions like anxiety and depression, improved navigation of stress, higher life satisfaction, increased interpersonal connection and increased proactivity. 

Emotions are core to our experience of what it means to be a human. But rather than taking our cue from emotions, we can learn to see them as a ‘blinking light on the dashboard’, an indication that we need to consider our next steps. Do you stop your car as soon as you see a blinking light, or do you think about its implications for the journey you're taking? 

We can view emotions like data to be explored, not directives to be followed. By developing our emotional literacy, we’re better able to decouple emotion from action and show up in a way that’s helpful and sustainable. 

A simple enough idea, but when was the last time you actually paused to notice what you were feeling and how it was showing up in how you interacted with those around you? Exactly. 

Emotions and leadership

When it comes to the role of leaders, I think we can all remember a time when our boss’s emotional state meant we hesitated to approach them. If they were a particularly volatile person, we might have had to pick our moment when delivering bad news or asking for a favour. Their emotional explosions - what they might have called ‘wearing my heart on my sleeve’ - inevitably made working life more difficult. 

Leaders’ emotional volatility can detract from a sense of psychological safety, putting increased distance between them and their direct reports. Others can be less likely to give them the feedback they really need. And when taken to extremes, a lack of emotional management can contribute to career derailment. 

To be clear, we're not suggesting leaders only communicate 'positive' emotional states like happiness. But rather that what they display to others matches the message they're trying to convey. Which is why an emotionally literate leader can definitely communicate their frustration at a delay, but in a way that relays the seriousness of the situation. It doesn't mean their frustration is in the driving seat, controlling their behaviour. 

Which is why we make the call for emotional literacy to be a core component of leadership development. A key intra-personal and inter-personal skill, as we outline in our recent white paper. It can enable leaders to better weather challenges and setbacks, helping them represent an oasis of stability and dependability in a world of change and volatility. 

Tips for building your emotional literacy

We cover some simple tips for building emotional literacy in the latest episode of 'My Pocket Psych', but here are some impactful first steps to get you started:

• Seek feedback and act on it. You may not be aware just how much your emotional expression is ‘leaking’ into your interpersonal interactions, potentially impacting others. Ask colleagues how your style is landing and how you might better navigate upsets and ‘difficult days’. 
• Regularly review how you handle difficult situations. Once through a crisis, it’s naturally to want to move forward as quickly as possible. However, it’s also the perfect time to pause and reflect on how well you navigated it, and specifically the extent to which your emotions played a role in your decision-making
• Expand your emotional vocabulary and practice using it to describe how you're feeling. Most languages have an abundance of words to describe our inner lives, so how come so many of us answer questions about how were doing with “Busy” or “Fine”. Motivated, overwhelmed, excited, satisfied, uncertain, worried, overjoyed, frustrated, relieved. All these words tell us so much more than the thought-terminating “Busy”. 
• Practice pausing to reflect on your emotional experiences. Ask yourself "What am I feeling right now? And why?" You may well identify some trends to your emotional experiences and notice that emotions don't always match the context you're in. Emotions may be a result of what you're remembering or predicting. Not what's happening in this moment.

How to learn more

If you’d like to learn more about emotional literacy, its role in leadership effectiveness and how it can be developed, check out Ep188 of My Pocket Psych. I’m joined by my good friend and colleague Ross McIntosh for a discussion that will leave you with plenty of ideas for taking this forward. You can watch our conversation below.

And of course, if the above resonates with your own organisational context, get in touch to find out how we can coach and train your leaders to better surf the waves of their own emotional experiences. 

Leadership and wellbeing

On a related note, our next ‘Sustainable Leadership’ webinar takes place on July 8th. As with all these sessions, it’s completely free. I’ll be exploring some of the challenges leaders can face when it comes to their wellbeing - psychological, physical and social. You can reserve your place by visiting this link. 

To find out more about Sustainable Leadership and download our free white paper, visit the online hub here. 

Until next month, thanks for reading!

Richard