The ONE skill that separates FUTURE leaders from others

A manager recently told me:

”My job is to deliver RESULTS. That’s what is expected of me. When I go to meet my bosses, they ask me about the results only. That’s it. They’re really not interested in anything else. So, I focus on increasing our profits and efficiency. It’s not really on my agenda to think about how people feel. Sure, I don’t want people to feel bad and I hope they like working here. But I really have no time or energy to start taking care of their emotions. It’s not my job. I’m not an expert on such topics. I’m a business leader. I expect my employees to manage themselves and to do their jobs.”

This type of thinking is very common among managers. It’s understandable. After all, this is what they are trained to do. To manage a business. To manage strategies, processes, and finances. Their job is to get results. That’s what they are ultimately accountable for.

But to be honest, this type of thinking is outdated. It doesn’t really work in the modern, complex, high speed, 24/7 connected world. It doesn’t work with millenials and future generations. Also, we have seen where this type of thinking has lead us. The world is filled with emotionally dead corporations. People get sick with the corporate syndrome. They lose their passion. They become like zombies, walking around, feeling unfulfilled, giving only a fraction of their true potential. They become emotionally dead.

The Gallup’s employee engagement statistics are horrible:

15% of employees worldwide feel they are engaged with their work24% are actively disengaged (undermining all efforts to improve conditions)21% feel they are managed in a motivating way

These statistics mean there is a vast amount of wasted human potential in the workplaces. Disengaged employees take more time off, are less productive and more expensive. Gallup estimates that active disengagement costs the US in the region of $450bn to $550bn per year. In Germany, it ranges from €112bn to €138bn ($151bn to $186bn) per year. In the UK, actively disengaged employees cost the country between £52bn and £70bn ($83bn and $112bn) per year.

Yet most of us would want to have a great job. To feel motivated and energized… To be treated well… To feel good about what you’re doing… To have a good spirit at work… To make a difference.

The future leaders have understood this. They have read the research showing that companies whose employees feel good about their work, bring up to 184% more stock return in the long run. They understand you have to create a connection before you can lead. They know that compassion is a more effective managerial tactic than just being a tough guy. They understand that the emotional climate of an organization is the future competitive edge that winning companies have; organizational climate may account up to 20-30% of organizational performance. Future leaders know that a team’s emotional climate (psychological safety) is the number one success factor for a high performing team.

To sum it up: Future leaders know that skills for DEALING WITH EMOTIONS are crucial for success.

Sometimes I wonder: Why is it that so many managers ignore the significance of how people FEEL at work? Even though the research is so clear. To date, I have not yet seen any research indicating that emotions are irrelevant or that a bad emotional climate would be good for business.

After talking with hundreds of managers, I’ve come to understand there are two major obstacles preventing them from true success. Either 1) they really are unaware of these facts. They don’t have an inborn, natural understanding and interest in the topic. They have not seen, read, or understood the research. The topic is out of their awareness and they just don’t think about it. Or 2) they understand it, but they don’t know what to do about it. “Yes, I understand emotions have a huge impact on employees’ performance. But what can I do about it? What should I do now if I want to boost the emotional climate here?” And because they don’t know what to do about it, they go on as they have always done.

Yet I want to emphasize this one fact: the skills for dealing with emotions are learnable and available to absolutely everyone! I’ve seen it hundreds of times. There are dozens of easy, practical things you can learn and do. If you just WANT to learn these skills, you CAN learn them. The key question is: do you WANT to?

I want to help you with your first step. Actually, the first step is one of the most difficult steps. So if you learn to do this, many of the later techniques will be much easier for you.

The first step is that you start building your emotional vocabulary. Many times, we can describe our emotions at a very general level only: “I feel good”or “I feel bad”. But if this is your level of describing emotions, it’s like a wine taster who can only say wine is red or white. But a true connoisseur has a rich vocabulary for describing wines: rich, full-bodied, aged, with a hint of oak, black currant and vanilla… Once the connoisseur develops a rich vocabulary, also his ability to notice and distinguish different flavors increases. Language and skills develop together.

It’s the same with emotions. Once your vocabulary for emotions increases, you’ll start noticing and distinguishing more emotions. And once you start noticing more emotions, you also start experiencing more emotions. And you start seeing with much more precision what is actually happening in yourself and in your team or organization. Because emotions are information and energy. They are telling you something, and they are adjusting your levels of energy.

To help you get started to build your emotional vocabulary, I created this map of 36 emotions for you. It’s a great way to get started with your emotions skills. Print it out and place it above your computer screen or some other place visible where you can see it easily. Then ask these two questions at least once a day:

1. How am I feeling right now?

2. What emotions do I see expressed in my workplace today?

That’s it! You just ask these questions every day, and your skills for dealing with emotions start building.

By tapping into this crucial skill, the potential for growth is enormous. Not only in your leadership role, but also in your personal life. Because I strongly believe that growing as a leader means growing as a human being.

Give it a try. Ask these two questions and use the map to help you. Don’t settle with “People are pissed off” or “They seem to be fine”, but dig into it more precisely: Are they feeling angry? Sad? Curious? Relieved? You’ll be surprised to see the amount of emotions at your workplace! And in yourself. This is the first step to build skills for leading the emotional climate. You have to see the emotional climate before you can lead it.

As you do this, many questions tend to arise. I’m here to help. Hit me with an email or leave your comments below, and I’ll do my best to help you further.

/ Jarkko

Use this POWERFUL tactic to grab people’s attention

It’s SO frustrating… You try to tell others something important. But they’re not hearing.

You tell your team: ”This is what we need to do during the next weeks. First, we need to implement the new IT systems. Then we need to fix the customer interface problems.” NO reaction. Some are staring at their computers. Some are staring at you with a blank face. Some seem to be half asleep.

You’ve just presented your new strategy. ”So this is our new strategy. Any questions or comments?”

Deep silence. No comments. No questions. 

”Did they even hear what I said?”, you wonder. Next day, nobody’s talking about the strategy. It’s obvious your message didn’t get through.

You tell your spouse: ”Listen, I would really like us to spend some more time together. Maybe we could have dinner at that new restaurant this Saturday?”. ”Yeah, sure, maybe… But you know what aunt Lisbeth told me yesterday? She bought this new dress, but then it turned out it doesn’t fit her shoes at all. So she went back to buy new shoes also, and ….” Blah blah…

You tell your teenage son: ”We need to set some ground rules regarding your home coming time. You can’t stay out all night!”

”Right… Well, but I need to go now. See ya, bye!”

Influencing others is NOT easy. But what makes it unnecessarily difficult is a common blindspot. A common mistake most of us do when we’re trying to make others listen to us.

Once you understand this blindspot and a simple tactic to overcome it, your level of influence goes way up. It can be one of the most powerful tactics in influencing you’ll ever learn, if you learn it right. Yep. It really can. Keep on reading.

So what is the blindspot and mistake I’m talking about?

When we try to influence others, we often fall into the trap of believing: “we just need to TELL people the facts. Share our information with them.” We think that when we tell people the facts, they absorb the information and change their behaviour accordingly. It seems we assume people are rational, and by just giving them the rational information, things work out. But it doesn’t work like that.

It’s actually quite amazing! We try this over and over again, even though it doesn’t work. Especially corporations are FULL of rational information flow.

This is our strategy… These are our goals… These are our processes… PowerPoints… Emails… Information.

And then we wonder: “Why the heck aren’t people doing their stuff? I did send that email. And I told them the facts in the meeting. What’s wrong with them?”

So let me tell you something you know already. And if you don’t know, then its time you learn this deeply. It’s time you understand this once and for all.

So here it is: PEOPLE ARE NOT RATIONAL!

And let me repeat it again, just so you remember this: PEOPLE ARE NOT RATIONAL!

Got it? So now you know this.

Then comes the next question: “So what can I do about it? If people are not rational, then how do I get my message across?” Great. THAT’s a good question.

The answer comes from understanding the fact that people are also EMOTIONAL. You must understand that what ever you say or do, it evokes some kind of emotions in people. Even if you only talk about the facts. Even if you don’t show any emotion yourself (and actually, if you don’t show any emotions, it’s likely to make people feel bad…)

For example, when you talk about the goals of your team, your message elicits emotions in people.

Maybe they feel anxious. “Oh, I’m stuffed already. I can’t possibly take on anything new!”Maybe they feel excited. “This is great! I’ll get started right away!”Maybe they feel afraid. “I’m afraid I can’t do what he asks me. If I pretend I didn’t hear, maybe he’ll just leave me alone and I can just keep on doing what I’m used to doing.”Maybe they feel indifferent, and your message has not touched them at any level. “This is just same crap as always. Nothing of interest to me here.”

So there are many, many possible emotions that could be relevant here, but now I want to focus on one particular emotion – the most important emotion – that you need to evoke first if you want to influence people.

Because if you want to influence people, the first thing you need to do is to get their ATTENTION.

If you don’t have people’s attention, they will not hear what you say. Their thoughts are somewhere else. They are checked out. The communications channel is closed.

There is one particular emotion that is especially relevant to attention. An emotion that directs your attention. That emotion is CURIOSITY (often also called interest).

Curiosity has been researched thoroughly over the past years, and it is actually a very, very interesting emotion. But now I don’t want to overwhelm you, so I’ll share just a very brief overview of curiosity. So you can improve your influence with it.

What is curiosity and why is it important?

Curiosity is a powerful emotion that has a central role in acquiring new knowledge. It is the emotion behind all science and progress. With the power of curiosity, we have developed modern physics, medicine, IT and internet, and conquered our planet and space around us.

Curiosity has an important message to you: “There is something I WANT to know, and I don’t know it yet.“ It is a powerful emotion when you want to influence others.

Why? Because curiosity:

-directs your attention towards the thing that evoked curiosity

-increases your motivation to learn and get new information

-improves your memory – we remember better those things we’ve been curious about

-makes you feel good when you learn what you wanted to learn

This example will help you understand the point:

You’re watching an interesting movie in the evening. You have an early wake-up tomorrow morning, so you know you should go to sleep. But damn, that movie is so interesting… You WANT TO KNOW how it ends… You are so CURIOUS… And you watch it till the end. And next morning, you’re tired.

Yep. Nobody asked you to stay up late. You didn’t get paid any extra for it. Actually, you pay a price for it yourself – you’re more tired today. But the power of curiosity was too strong. You WANTED to stay up and see how the movie ends.

So think about this. If people were as curious towards your message, they’d stay up late just to hear what you have to say! You wouldn’t need to do any extra persuasion or give any extra rewards to make them hear you out. Just getting them curious would do the trick.

Sounds worthwhile, doesn’t it?

So HOW do you get people curious?

Well, the trick is that you have to convey your message in a different way than what you are used to. Don’t just TELL people the information and expect them to listen. Instead, think about these questions, first:

Am I myself interested in what I have to say? (This is important, because emotions are highly contagious. If you’re not interested yourself, nobody will be.)Do I believe people are interested in what I have to say? Should they be? Why is this message important to them?How can I make my message so interesting that they just WANT to hear me out?

Then you can think about ways to get people curious.

In principle, it is quite simple: you just have to make people know that you have some important or interesting information that they do not yet have. In principle, you could just say: “Hey, I have something important to tell you.” Already this simple statement can be enough to awaken curiosity.

Or you can tell only a part of the story and leave the rest for a later time: “But this is not the whole story. There are two other important points. I will share them with you next time we meet.”

Here are some other examples you can try to get people curious:

“This year, our strategy will be very different. Be prepared for a surprise!”“Hey, I just came up with something… Yes, this is a big insight!”“Look, there’s something you need to know. Something important.”“You know what? I think we’re missing an important point here.”“Tomorrow I will tell you what happens next…”

These are just simple examples, but I hope you get the point. If you want to influence people, you need to get them to listen to you. You need their attention. You need to make them WANT to hear what you have to say. And there’s nothing as powerful as CURIOSITY to make people listen to you.

Go ahead and try this. Try to make at least one person curious TODAY! Then share your experiences in the comments below.

/ Jarkko

PS. If you found this blog useful, please do me a favour and share it with others!

How to ENERGIZE your LEADERSHIP TEAM

It’s been estimated that leadership team behaviours explain 50-70% of the organizational climate.

And why does it matter? Because the emotional climate is crucial for business success. The emotions experienced in the workplaces have a huge impact on people’s decisions, motivation, social interactions – and eventually the business results. Those companies with higher employee satisfaction outperform their peers by 2,3% to 3,8% per year in long-run stock return. In a study of 62 management teams, those companies whose leadership team had a positive climate were more successful financially.

But how is the everyday leadership teamwork in corporations? After all, working in a leadership team should be inspiring. Is there a better place to see the big picture, make a real impact, work with true professionals, and develop as a leader?

Yet I see many leadership teams struggle with the same motivational problems as the rest of the teams. To be honest, many leadership team meetings are FRUSTRATING.

There are internal struggles. Personal chemistry problems. Too much focus on details and non-strategic issues. Lack of energy and inspiration. Not enough talk about vision, strategy, and the future. The meetings get BORING – just another burden on a leader’s overloaded to-do list. Just another waste of time that drains your energy.

This is really frustrating for many leadership team members. Because at that level people ENJOY being challenged. They WANT to look at the big picture, take responsibility, and get results.

The missing ingredient?

Many leadership team development projects focus on creating a common vision, purpose, structure, ground rules, priorities, efficient meeting practices etc. The list goes on.

And sure, they are often helpful. But none of them guarantee a high performing leadership team.

It’s very possible that you have all the basics in place, and still the leadership team is not reaching high levels of inspiration and performance. Because there is one crucial aspect that is often forgotten in leadership teams.

It is actually very much possible that a leadership team has none of those basics in place, yet it is highly inspiring to work in the team. There are lively, meaningful discussions, collective responsibility, and high accountability – despite the lack of structure.

So what is the missing ingredient?

It’s the emotional climate of the team. Even the best strategy and vision or the clearest priorities and rules do NOT guarantee success if the climate of the team is bad. Because emotions are the fuel for human performance.

When the emotional climate of the leadership team is good, then there’s energy and commitment. There’s trust and psychological safety.

Let me make this very clear. We all understand that what happens around us has an impact on the emotions we experience. For example, if there’s too much work to be done and not enough resources (e.g. time) to do it, then anxiety arises.

But what we often don’t understand is the fact that emotions are also A CAUSE to our situation. Because emotions have a huge impact on the way our minds work.

For example, when anxious, our perceptions get distorted and our mind is focused on threats, random details and ruminating. If you’re sitting in a meeting where everyone is anxious, you’re not likely to be very innovative. How do you create an inspiring, out-of-the-box vision if your mind is stuck in details?

Then again, research shows that when you’re feeling positive emotions, like joy, pride and enthusiasm, your mind is much better at seeing the big picture, playing around with ideas, connecting the dots. A leadership team with better emotions is much more likely to see the big picture, come up with new ideas, and deliver better results.

So how do you build the emotional climate in a leadership team?

I recommend starting with getting the basics in place. Many times increased clarity on the common vision, priorities, targets etc already relieves frustration and builds motivation. But that’s not enough.

Once the basics are in place, here are four steps to get started with building the emotional climate:

1. Build momentum by clarifying the significance of being a member of the leadership team. I often start with something like this:

“There are probably tens of people in your company that would LIKE to be a member of this leadership team. But of all people, YOU have been selected to be in the team. So people are looking at you as individuals and as a team. How do you behave? How do your faces look like when you come out of team meetings? How do you FEEL about being a member of this team? And what kind of an image of this team do you want to give your people – are you a bunch of uninspired individuals or are you a competent team who enjoys working together? People are sensitive in detecting your emotions. What kind of an emotional climate do they perceive when they’re looking at you? Your behaviors have a HUGE impact on the organizational climate.”

2. Have a discussion about the current emotional climate of the leadership team. What kind of emotions do we often experience and express in this team? You can use the map of emotions I shared in this blog.

An honest discussion about the team’s emotional climate is immensely liberating. I’ve seen it work like magic so many times. When you do it in a right way, leaders are really, really eager to share their experienced emotions in their work.

“I’m often so frustrated about the ineffectiveness of our strategy implementation… Sometimes I worry how our people can take the pressure… It pisses me off when people don’t deliver what they’ve promised… I’m so excited about our new product lines…. Sometimes I feel like I’m not living the values I talk about…”

The discussions are often lively and there’s a great feeling of mutual relief and increased trust.

3. Have a discussion about the desired emotional climate of the team. How would we like to feel when working in this team? What should be the prevalent emotions we’d be experiencing and sharing in this team?

4. Learn the skills to lead the emotional climate of the team and the whole organization. There are plenty of ways to deal with emotions, and I’m sharing examples in my blogs. But there are other resources also. For example, Center for Positive Organizations is doing great research and applications around the topic.

I hope these ideas are helpful for you to get started. The most important thing is to have a really honest, authentic discussions about the way your team works and how it FEELS to be a member of this team. Time wasted on uninspiring leadership teamwork is expensive. Make sure working in your team is inspiring and meaningful. Your whole organization (and business) will benefit from it greatly.

/Jarkko

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