Should leaders show up their emotions?

Disclaimer: This is a part of a series of articles on my career working for products. Each of them represents my way of viewing the world coached by mentors I admire the most and help me along the way.

What does it mean to be a good leader?

I surely don’t have a straight answer to that question, but it’s something that keeps in my mind every single day. However, beyond any work-life boundary, I’ve learnt that every single human needs:

• To love and be loved;
• To get rid of suffering;
• To find peace and joy.

Some people have better emotional tools to express those needs, others struggle and sometimes wear another masking emotions that make it hard to remember their basic needs.

This article is meant to bring reflections, not answers on:

1. How open should we be emotionally in the workplace?
2. How to manage with compassion ?

Expressing Emotions

In most organizations, being a good employee means projecting a calm, unflappable demeanor. We never want to lose our composure, so we develop strategies for keeping a professional face on. Who among us hasn't spent a time after meetings yelling a tirade to an invisible boss or coworker? And remaining dispassionate can be an asset. However, that same carefully crafted exterior falls flat when, as leaders, we need to build engagement and enthusiasm. This burden is hard to carry on! Do we need to build engagement and enthusiasm every time?

There is a beautiful research lead by Ofir Turel, published in Frontiers in Psychology, that evaluated team performance and inspiration. The results shows that emotion came up repeatedly as the gateway to authenticity. If people don’t see your true emotions, then they can’t see you. It was also replicated by many other authors in the field, as Juan Moriano in this Multilevel Investigation.

In fact, true emotionality is necessary for inspiring others. As soon as you make the transition to manager, rather than avoiding emotion, you should harness it. This doesn’t have to be an abstract exercise.

I myself tend to start conversations with my managers saying that I have major depression, bipolar disorder II and that from time to time my mania makes me hyper productive and happy and every month, I’m feeling completely melancholic — and that is seasonal. Understand your emotional rides and exposing them consciously it’s wise and open the doors for others to be more transparent with you about how they are feeling in the workspace. This is part of what is understood as compassionate leadership.

Compassionate Leadership

We should start with a understand of what does compassion means. A classic definition of compassion is the awareness of the suffering of others, leading to wise action intended to alleviate that suffering. When we break that down, we believe that effective compassion requires three elements:

1. An awareness of others and their feelings — it means be mindful of where is the pain of the other (and also in yourself!)
2. Courage to take a empathic response towards the suffering condition. Sometimes it’s easier to skip it. It requires courage to be with it.
3. Wisdom to use the best of your available tools and decide if the best path is to take an action, which action and how.

Compassionate leadership emerges where leaders live and interact in ways that exhibit compassion for themselves, and in relationship with others. Compassionate leaders act intentionally to create positive impact in the world as a whole.

Given that theory and philosophy behind what does it means to be a compassionate leader, let’s raise some question on how are our acts leading toward a more compassionate leadership or making it distant.

Starting with self compassion

How do you care about yourself? Are you aware of your own suffering and the ways you can cope?

Having genuine compassion for others starts with having compassion for yourself. If you’re overloaded and out of balance, it’s impossible to help others find their balance. Self-compassion includes getting quality sleep and taking breaks during the day. For many leaders, self-compassion means letting go of obsessive self-criticism. Start noticing how often do you criticize yourself in your inner voice for what you could have done differently or better. You probably wouldn’t talk to a good friend or colleague who needed help the same way you address yourself. Instead, cultivate self-talk that is positive. Then reframe setbacks as a learning experience. What will you do differently in the future?

Are you mindful of what people most care about?

It's tied to our human need to be loved. We all want to feel that someone cares about us. Do you honestly think the people in your team cares about you?

I developed a way of measure the Health of the team — inspired on Spotify's model — that consists on sending a anonymous feedback form with closed and open questions every Sprint. The goal of sending this form is to:

1. Evaluate team's feedback on critical areas related to their work and mental health;
2. Make the shys have the opportunity to express themselves in written words before the Retrospective Meeting.

We then sit together in the following days to review what they pointed and wrote. Everytime we have something that could improve, it's important to create action items, so everyone feel that they are really heard.

Based on your reality, which steps could you do to show people you really care about them?

Do you focus on serving or more for requiring?

It's good to get the job done, but how?
How do you like to work, on a high pressure not caring environment or in a caring one? How was you treated when a child? Did you like it?

In my team, my north star is always: "how can I help this person to excel the most?". If I transfer the filtering of a good technical person to the hiring phase, I can come with the following hypothesis:

H1: If everyone in the team is good technically, our job as leaders is to make them feel happy, loved and challenged, so they can grow healthly.

How do you interact with people?

Before important conversations, speeches, or meetings, consider: What is the emotional takeaway I want to impart? It might be excitement, gravity, or fun, for example. Remember that emotions are contagious, and leaders in particular have a strong influence on the team’s mood or group affect. If you want others to feel that emotion, then you need to express it. And keep in mind that if you don’t deliberately set the emotional tenor, it will happen by accident. If you show up tired and distracted, those are the emotions you’ll be telegraphing.

Are you really transparent or fake-kind?

As leaders, it is our responsibility to provide the guidance people need, even if it is difficult for them to hear. Sometimes it's hard, but did you try to treat it like giving feedback for someone you love? You probably will find the best way to do it.

When a team member is underperforming, experiment to be candid and tell her or him what to work on. If you conceal your concerns in an attempt to be kind, people will neither understand expectations nor benefit from your wisdom. Because of this, concealing tough criticism is not kind — it is misleading. Instead, being clear is kind. Investigate in yourself how kind and transparent are you.

One last point: There’s an important distinction between true and false emotion. Inauthenticity is easy to suss out, so doing any of the above in a false way is likely to backfire. The best way to connect on a deeper level is to be transparent about the emotions you’re currently feeling. You’re not acting — you’re emoting.

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If you liked these investigations and want to talk more about leadership, product management or just connect with, feel free to reach me on LinkedIn ❤