Embracing Our Emotions At Work — No Hard Feelings #booknotes
2022 was the year I have worked as a professional for about a decade. There are ups and downs for sure. And so many learnings from working at various environments; in the jungle, in offshore field off-the-map, and having a transition into office environments, and not to forget my almost-a-year hiatus. In doing so, I also worked with various kind of people. And most of the times, emotions are not often talked about. Sometimes, for the sake of being professional at work.
However, thanks to the recent awareness on mental health, I think it’s getting more and more common to talk about emotions at work. Even though it’s still not easy for me. And in the end of the day, we work mostly with people. With our colleague, other team member, team from other departments, and of course our clients. We cannot deny that human are emotional creatures.
I am glad to be able to pick up the book by Liz and Mollie recently. The book is titled No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work. I have been following their social media for their short comic/illustration about work. I am really curious about the content of their book.
I am curious on how I can be a more balanced person on and off work. And I think this book provide a great guide, complimented with the witty visual comic.
In the book, Liz & Mollie wrote:
By ignoring our feelings at work, we overlook important data and risk making preventable mistakes. We send emails that cause unnecessary anxiety, we fail to find work meaningful, and we burnout.
I also learn a term emotional fluency. It’s the capacity to productively sense emotion, and to know how and when to translate what you feel into healthy action. The book is a helpful guide to look at emotion as something that can be treated with care and affection.
Liz and Mollie summarized Seven New Rules of Emotion at Work.
The book digs deeply enough on the practicality of each rules into relevant chapters: Health, Motivation, Decision Making, Teams, Communication, Culture, and Leadership.
As I read it in the middle of vacation, the Health chapter hits harder. The chapter explains that being less passionate is not about being lazy. However, it’s possible to be overly attached to any job at any level.
Liz and Mollie highlighted that we are now living in highly connected era. We’re constantly accessible, which means we feel constantly accountable. But we need to remember that chronically overworking is bad for our health and — counterintuitively — for our success.
Related to taking a break, I think these are interesting ideas to be tried to:
- Block off a day. Without meetings and social events. This is dedicated to catch up work and do focused work. If it’s not possible to block entire day, try few hours within the week.
- After-work ritual. Some ideas: brief exercise, listen to music, read a magazine, or lift weights. Simpler ideas is just to simply turn off our computer and said some kind of phrases as a symbol work is done for the day. Cal Newport (author of Deep Work) ends his day with the phrase “Schedule shutdown, complete.”
I might not saying that kind of phrase as a ritual. But, the ritual reminds me the about the idea of switching modes as one of the tips from Buddhist monk Shunmyo Masuno. We need to create some kind of gates in our mind to be able to switch between our work self and private self.
Important takeaways from Health chapter:
- Take the break you can, whether it’s a vacation, a day off or a minibreak.
- Make time to be rigorously unproductive, see friends and family, and step away from your email and phone.
- Stop feeling bad about feeling bad. Reframe your stress as motivation or excitement.
- Prevent rumination by viewing your thoughts as simply thoughts, not as inevitable truths. Stay in the present and take care of the things within your control.
My next favorite chapter is Communication. I think this is where my most homework are as well personally. Especially, it’s not easy to have difficult conversations at work. The book provides important notes on handling difficult conversation. It’s important to understand that confronting a problem without a plan makes the other person feel attacked or have a meltdown.
Some situations to be prepared:
- Label our feelings.
- Understand where those feelings are coming from.
- Feel calm enough to hear the other person out.
And remember, this process take time.
There is also important tips about apologizing. There are three steps shared in the book to construct a great apology:
- Admit our mistake. Take responsibility for what we did.
- Say “I’m sorry”.
- Explain how it won’t happen again.
Related to communication, the importance of self-awareness is also highlighted. Because our awareness of our own self is a crucial aspect of communication. The book also shared that understanding others is equally important. We also need to understand that these days we work with multiple group trends. Liz and Mollie provide relevant and important resources to learn to talk in relation to gender, race, age, multicultural diversity, and also extroverts and introverts.
Other interesting tips for introverts is to avoid sending extroverts excessively long emails. Extroverts, who often prefer to discuss issues or ideas in person, might skim through only the first paragraphs.
The chapter also dig deeper on how to give and accept feedback. This is also something that I still need to improve. The book guides through three rules for giving feedback that makes the receiver feel good (or at least less bad):
- focus on specific behavior,
- make it about bridging the gap,
- remember: how you say it matters
Those are truly not an easy tasks to do, especially in the middle of hectic works where we tend to be more emotional.
Specific feedback makes it harder to take personally and gives the recipient a clear directive on how to improve. Bridging the gap means we also give suggestion to do things differently and how it will benefit the recipient. The new things that I learn that related to feedback we can’t treat others how we want to be tretaed. Instead, we need to treat others how they want to be treated.
Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor said:
Whether your advice comes from a place of caring is not measured at your mouth but at the other person’s ear.
I also like the COINS framework shared by Mollie. The feedback framework keeps feedback specific. COINS: Context, Observation, Impact, Next, Stay.
Employees are encouraged to start on an emotional level and provide context for the conversation, share a factual observation of their behavior, explain the impact of their behavior, and then suggest ideas how to handle similar situation differently in the future.
Example: “Context: I know you want to move into a more senior position this year, and I want that for you too. Observation: You’ve been late to several key meetings. Impact: This makes your fellow colleagues feel like you don’t respect their time. Next: Can you commit to being on time to meetings in the future? Stay: Does that make sense to you? I’m happy to continue to work with you on this.”
And then, how to ask for feedback?
- Remind our self that we need critical feedback to improve.
- Ask someone who knows what they’re talking about.
- Use the word what instead of any.
- Remind our self that the person is giving you advice to help you.
- Keep a smile file (or folder).
- Remember feedback is never objective.
The chapter also gives me important lessons on digital communication. Some DOs and DON’Ts for work-related digital communication:
- DO add emoji (but proceed with caution).
- DO realize typos send a message.
- DO emotionally proofread our message.
- DON’T panic. When you do reply, reread your draft through the other person’s eyes. It’s better to leave the “To:” field blank until you’re ready to hit Send.
- DON’T use email when you need a yes.
- DON’T send email during off-hours if it’s not urgent. Try saving the email to your draft folder or schedule it to send later.
So much lessons on Communication. :)
Important takeaways from Communication chapter:
- During difficult conversation, calmly address your feelings without making assumptions.
- Be aware of communication tendencies to better understand the intention behind someone’s words.
- Make criticism specific and actionable. Ask the recipient how they prefer to receive feedback.
- Emotionally proofread what you write before hitting Send.
The last chapter I’d like to highlight is Leadership.
I like this part shared by Julie Zhuo (VP of Design at Facebook):
Anyone can exhibit leadership regardless of their specific role. Think of a store clerk calmly directing shoppers to safety when the screeching tornado bell goes off in a mall.
Or think of an individual contributor who surfaces important customer complaints and then coordinates solutions across multiple teams.
No matter your official job title, you’re almost certainly a leader in some way.
Another great bits on the chapter:
The best managers are good shit umbrellas. When the shits hits the fan, they do what they can to protect their team from the emotional fallout.
Conclusion
Excerpt from the book:
It’s not always easy to accept and discuss emotion at work. But when you do, you’ll find that feelings stop getting in the way and instead become signposts to guide you on your career path.
After all, anticipation and regret let us narrow down our set of choices and make better decisions. Envy can be an internal compass that reveals what we value. Gratitude and a sense of purpose give us the willpower to come into the office on dreary Monday mornings.
Overall, this book is a good starter to understand better how we manage emotion at work. Some of the topics might not be deep enough for anyone interested to dig deeper. However, the practical tips are helpful to be implemented.
Liz and Mollie also provide us with accessible assessment to understand better our emotional tendencies here:
I hope this book notes can be helpful for all professionals out there.
