Welcome to the new Manager podcast. I'm your host, Kim Nichol. Hello and welcome. I'm glad you're here and I hope you're doing well. Emotions. There are so many, and you might not realize it, but managing people requires a ton of emotional labor, both in terms of managing your emotions as well as navigating the emotions of the leaders above you, your colleagues, and the emotions of your team.
Now, this doesn't mean that you need to be kind of invasive or nosy or sort of assume what people are feeling. It's more about becoming aware that emotions are always in the room when you have humans involved. We all experience emotions differently but they influence the way that we make decisions. Emotions also influence our behaviors and also like our our resistance, our non behaviors.
This shows up in terms of procrastination when maybe you know, you need to get something done, but you just, ah, you don't feel like it or you feel resistant to it, or maybe you are delegating something to somebody and you can sense their resistance or you can sense, you know, I don't know if I can really entrust this to them. I just, I feel like they are not going to be able to do a great job. I have some doubt. I feel some doubt about what's
going to happen next. You might sense it if you receive a direction or some kind of announcement from your leadership. And you might feel skeptical. You might say, I don't know where this is coming from. I don't know why leadership is doing this. It might start to send a little bit of a ripple effect in the sense of trust, which then turns into, like, hesitation and, you
know, not full commitment. And people start to lean back and start to disengage a little bit, like, let's just see where this goes until leadership follows up. And they say, here's why we're doing this. Here's the change we're making. Here's what we're responding to. Here's our goal. Here's the value that's driving this choice. And then people say, oh, now I feel so relieved. That makes sense. Now I can see that bigger picture. And now I can feel like I understand what my place or what
my role is in all of this. And now I feel relieved, and I feel more engaged, and I feel a renewed sense of commitment and I feel motivated again. And I feel inspired to make a difference and to really show up for my team and for the work that we're doing. It's so interesting when we really start to kind of look through the lens of what are the emotions that are happening here and how are they influencing what we're experiencing, the way we're working together.
Emotions are very human, and they are part of this relational skill set around communication and around the way that we make decisions at work. I think it's also helpful to know that as a human with respect to emotions, you got the full big box of crayons. So you might have some emotions that you tend to prefer or the ones that you use most often. But sometimes you're going to experience lots of emotions that might not be so familiar or comfortable or pleasant or
enjoyable. So just understanding, you know, that's, that's part of what it is to be human. And so one of the favorite tools that I like to use is called the Feelings wheel. And you can Google this and you'll see lots of different examples. I like the one on feelingswheel.com and you can refer back to it anytime you need to revisit what are all of
these different emotions? So if you look at the feelings wheel, you'll see it's this visual representation of emotions and they're sort of categorized by relatedness based on color and also proximity to this center core. So at the center of the feelings wheel, there are just a handful of emotions like happy, surprised, angry, sad, fearful. And then as you go out to the further edges of the wheel, you get more emotions and they have some subtle nuances, but they
are all kind of related. This can be really helpful because when you're thinking about, for example, communication, or you're thinking about how to be influential, ask yourself, how would I like people to feel? What is the intended feeling you want them to come away with? Do you want them to feel reassured? Do you want them to feel motivated? Do you want them to feel a sense of relief? Maybe you want them to feel a sense of greater trust.
Like, OK, I trust you. I might not like the decision, but I can trust you know where you're coming from, that you've got my best interests in mind. Think about the emotional results or the the emotional outcome as part of what it is that you want to see happen. It's almost kind of like I'm just like getting a flashback to being a kid and you know, someone tells you to do something and you say, oh fine,
OK, I can do that. You know, you can do something begrudgingly with no motivation and you can kind of half ass the job and just get it done, but not get it done. Well, because you're feeling, you know, disconnected, resentful, fine, you know, that sort of reluctance. Or if someone else asks you differently, you might say, Oh yeah, I can do that. I'd love to help. Of course I can help. My pleasure.
And so it's the same thing, You know, it's not just what we get done, but also how we get it done. What is the emotion there? And to be clear, we cannot control the emotions of others. Sometimes it will backfire. We'll say, oh, I said this to them because I thought it would help them feel this way, but it they actually felt this other way, which surprised me. I wasn't expecting that.
So sometimes that will happen. You know, people will not realize that the way they say a thing will not necessarily land as intended. That happens that the bigger idea is just to understand, oh, emotions are in play. And if I learn more about them both, learn more about the emotions I have and just realize every single person you work with has emotions, including your manager, including your leadership, including your colleagues, including your team.
Sometimes people mask emotions. Some people feel them more vividly than others, but they're always a part of the way that we work. So one of the ways that I like using the feelings wheel, and especially if you find yourself feeling kind of lost or overwhelmed, is to pull up this visual and then ask yourself, I feel blank because blank.
So you might say, well, I'm feeling confused because and then answer it and say that as as many sentences as many times as you need to in order to kind of get the tangle out of your mind and get it in front of you and get it a little more organized. Another way you can use this is you can say this framework instead. Say X happened. And so then I felt Y because Z, it might sound like this promotion happened.
And then I felt excited because I've been wanting to grow and I finally feel like I'm being recognized. You might run that same sentence and say I got promoted. And I'm feeling scared because now everyone is going to expect me to be able to have answers and do this. And I'm suddenly realizing I feel all this pressure. That's another one. I feel pressure because everyone seems to be coming to me for answers, and I'm suddenly unsure of my own judgement because I've never done this before.
So by starting to get a little bit organized to start to separate out, here's this feeling. Here's what I'm noticing where it's coming up. It allows us to sort of hold them a little bit more distantly so we don't feel so overwhelmed by them. And it can also help us understand, OK, so you know #1 like, is there a knowledge gap I need to fill? Is this feeling actually really normal and understandable
because of the context? Maybe this emotion is simply a very reasonable response to the reality that I'm facing right now. And it's not something that we need to fight or to resist or to hide, but to just acknowledge, say, Yep, this is part of what's in the room with me right now. If you're working with someone and you're feeling a little unsure about what they're doing or why, right, you can also approach it by asking, you know, hey, how are you feeling about
this project? You know, how you know on a, on a scale of one to 10, you know, 10 being you feeling really confident and assured and one feeling like you're just confused and uncertain of, of how to best start. Like where are you on that scale? You can use it to start to understand how people are feeling, how they're approaching things, which then might give you information, information in order to be able to help them a
little bit better. So, you know, realize not everyone is comfortable with emotions and talking about it. So we don't need to pry, but it's just something to know about so that it's in your pocket so that you can use and make use of them more effectively.
Emotional intelligence is really valuable, I think, especially as we've gone into a very hybrid work environment and when you have people working together of different generations, they're often very different generational norms around emotions, especially in the workplace. You know, it's interesting. I was talking with a friend of my dad's the other day. I was visiting him and his, you
know, neighbor. All the neighbor guys were hanging out and I was telling them about the work I do around coaching and supporting managers and new managers. And, you know, one of his friends said, oh, that's so weird. You know, when I, when I was a manager, we never had anything like that. And of course, he's a much older generation and the norm of that era and of in the industry that he was in was very much like, don't talk about emotions. Those are not professional.
But the reality was that emotions were there and they were still happening because people were there and people were still happening. But it's more like the emotions that could happen were stoicism, you know, or, or this sort of more of like a command and control style of work, which was a bit more typical in that person's time in that person's industry. And so for for them, it was a little bit mind boggling to think like, oh, emotions.
That's something that you talk about at work as a leader. No, like as a leader you're supposed to be impermeable and absolutely unassailable. And there was a sense of kind of
rigidity. And I just thought, wow, yeah, no, things are a little different now, you know, But I mention it because when you are at work, having in mind what are the people that you're working with, realizing they might have a different feeling about emotions and they may not be as comfortable or as aware of how their emotions are influencing their decisions and influencing their behaviors.
You know, this also makes me think like I, I this outdoor workout thing the other day and it was the first time I had done this and it was a class and there was this instructor.
And, you know, it's so interesting because a big part of being a fitness instructor is not just giving people the information about what they need to do and how they need to do it. A huge part of it is motivating people and helping them feel like they want to be there and helping them feel successful, especially when they're struggling. Because part of working out is you want want to find that edge where you're working enough
where it's kind of hard. And it's interesting, you know, to watch the different, the different techniques that this person was using. They're different than the ones that I used when I was a fitness instructor. But you know, there are lots of different ways. So it's not just about what to do, you know, it is about how we do it and the different ways that we tap into emotion in order to facilitate the outcomes and the experience that we want
to have. So you might have a situation where you're trying to motivate someone or you're trying to see a behavior change, or you're trying to get people more engaged or, or better working together and understanding. OK, how can I emotionally, you know, bring this emotional intelligence and awareness of emotion? How can I use that in order to facilitate the outcomes that I would like to see for this person, for our team, for the
result? So emotions, I think it's interesting too, you know, where there's so much conversation around artificial intelligence and it's like, yes, but we also still need to just deal with the human emotion part because that often gets overlooked. So let us not lose sight of that while we are trying to learn new things. So that's what I would like to share with you today. My challenge to you would be to check out that feelings wheel and also just do a little gut check for yourself.
What are the, you know, top three emotions that are present for you as you look to the week ahead? And then at the end of the week, ask yourself, what were the, the predominant emotions that you experienced in your own life, in your own work life, and if you had to, you know, sense or perceive or name, what are the predominant emotions that you notice with your team or maybe even with your leadership or
your organization? Just start being curious about the language you would use to describe that. And then you can get curious about, huh, I wonder what's driving that. I wonder if that's intentional or if that's more kind of reactive. Just be curious, see what you notice. All right, thank you so much for listening. If you want my help to develop your own goals and to get more skillful with emotions and work and all of that, there are two
ways to do it. 1, you can work with me one-on-one Ioffer private coaching focused on your goals and your situation. Go to my website, kimnickel.com or message me on LinkedIn and we can talk about it there. The other way you can work with me is through one of my courses. Go to the link below and sign up to find out the next time my course will be offered. All right, thank you so much for listening. Oh, and before you go, if you would please leave a rating or a
review. It means a lot and it really matters. OK, thank you so much. Have a great day and I will talk to you next time. When you're more effective at work, you're happier in your life, and when you're happier in your life, you're more effective at work. I can help. Go to my website, kimnickel.com and sign up for a coaching consult. It can get better.