The key to emotional self-expression is the Goldilocks rule: not too much, not too little, just right.
Too little emotional self-expression can make you seem weak, and too much can make you feel oppressive, aggressive, or unacceptable. Learning how to express your emotions in just the right way helps unlock your power to increase motivation and engagement.
Emotional self-expression is the ability to express yourself in ways that build relationships without offending or demeaning others. It helps you use your feelings to inform how you communicate without letting the emotion get in the way of a positive interaction.
Being positive and encouraging may be easy enough when things are going well. But what are we supposed to do when we feel disappointed in someone else’s work? Or frustrated by obstacles that keep us from getting the results we want? Or threatened by someone who is dominating discussion? Being able to express yourself strategically even when things are going wrong can be a huge advantage and help you avoid saying or doing something you’ll later regret.
Emotional self-expression is a key skill for creating high performance within a team. Managers who can express themselves just right according to the situation are able to tap into employees’ innate desire to be valued members of a group. As social beings, our desire to belong and contribute is a powerful driver of human behavior. If you let people know they are respected and appreciated as team members, their motivation and performance will go up and so will your results.
Of course, the opposite is also true. If you signal to people that they are not important or valued, their contribution level and motivation go down. Your results will follow.
Emotions are Not the Problem
By themselves, emotions are not inherently good or bad. Our desire to belong is an emotion that gives us the energy and the information we need to work successfully with others. Even so-called negative emotions are useful if we know what the emotion is telling us. If we feel bad about missing a deadline, that feeling can motivate us to buckle down and get things done.
While emotions themselves are not the problem, how we express our emotions can create problems. Frustration, for example, is not a problem per se, but expressing your frustration can make others feel bad and thereby decrease their motivation.
Expressing emotions in their raw state is rarely productive. People who do this habitually may be labelled in a workplace as unfiltered, as having anger management issues, or downright scary.
If you are good at emotional self-expression, you use emotions as information to help others do their job better. It’s not about expressing your emotion, but about using emotional information to find ways to communicate that get people engaged in learning and doing better.
Too Much Emotional Self-Expression Can Lead to Poor Performance
Letting your emotion drive the conversation can lead to myriad problems. Imagine, for example, that you are the head of a department, and someone has failed to turn in a report that you have asked for twice. You have tried being nice, and now, in your frustration, you have decided that being nice is not working. So, you decide to come in strong.
You call in the direct report, express your disappointment and frustration, and in no uncertain terms, demand they get the report into you by the next day.
You may feel better having let off some steam. You may also feel like you are setting clear expectations. After all, if you let them get away with not doing their work, they and others might start getting lazy.
While you might feel better, are you being effective? Consider the goal: Are you trying to make yourself feel better? Or are you trying to get the report you need?
Look at it from the point of view of the direct report. The direct report wants to please you, but there is something in the way. Maybe they don’t have the time or don’t know how to do what you are asking. Now, after you have expressed your unhappiness with their work, they are likely to feel you are implying that they are lazy or incompetent. They may even feel unfairly reprimanded.
Now the problem for them is not the work they didn’t do. Their problem is a boss who treated them badly.
Asserting your authority may project strength or control, which may make you feel good. However, it makes you feel big by making others feel small. It has the effect of eroding loyalty and engagement, resulting in a negative effect on performance. It can even lead to even bigger problems like high turnover, which can be expensive.
Too Little Emotional Self-Expression Can Lead to Ineffectiveness
Let’s imagine another approach. It’s the same situation, you’ve asked for a report twice, but you still have not received the requested document. In this situation, aware that being too harsh may backfire, you decide to come in soft. You don’t want to ruffle any feathers.
So instead, after asking nicely, you may decide to run the report yourself. Chances are, you don’t have time to do their work. But you stay late one day in order to avoid conflict in the office.
If this happens enough, you are going to end up doing the work of several of your direct reports, which will lead to burn out. It’s not your job to do their work for them. It’s your job to help them be successful in doing the work themselves.
Not only does taking on others’ work make your job more stressful, it’s also not good for your direct report. They sense your stress. They hear the frustration when you ask them for something, but because you are doing it, they don’t think it’s their responsibility. They may feel unvalued, unappreciated, and stuck in a dead-end job.
A Manager’s Job is to Get Work Done Through Others
Being too strong or too weak is not going to be effective. So how do you get it just right?
Instead of expressing your emotions in their raw state, or repressing them entirely, work to figure out why you aren’t getting the results you have asked for. You can’t help them learn to perform better until you understand what’s in their way.
Let’s go back to the situation at hand, asking for work twice without results. This time, instead of confronting the person or avoiding them, you decide to be curious about what the obstacle might be.
- Do they have the resources (time, equipment, data or IT, finances, etc.) they need to do the job?
- Do they know how to do this task?
- What else might be in the way of their success?
Use questions like these to open an honest, non-judgmental discussion about the goal and what is getting in the way. The key is to bring a collaborative, non-judgmental spirit to identifying and overcoming the obstacles for getting the work done. If together you can figure out how to help them come up to expectations, that’s a win-win for you and them.
Getting Emotional Intelligence Right When Things Go Wrong
Controlling emotions may be easy most of the time, but what about epic failures? Is it appropriate to set people straight when really bad things happen?
Showing compassion and empathy during someone’s worst moments is a strong predictor of high performance. Time after time in every study, trust and loyalty increase performance, whereas anger and authoritative outbursts compound feelings of self-doubt and lead to decreased efforts.
Your job as a manager is not to make them feel bad about whatever is going on. Your job is to support them as they set it right. Remember that they know they have messed up. Give them a chance to work through their own emotions and let them know you believe in them to do better next time.
To be sure, not every employee is going to double down and start performing better. Some people are just in the wrong job or have something else in the way of their work. But opening an honest discussion about the goal is the first place to start.
That’s how you get employees who become highly competent contributors with the skills and confidence to achieve even ambitious goals.
Five Ways to Get Emotional Self-Expression Just Right
To engage in conversations that are effective in motivating work and developing employees, try using these five emotional intelligence approaches:
- Be Non-Judgmental: My ideal for being non-judgmental is my dog. For my dog, there are no good smells and no bad smells. There are just smells and the point is to understand them. Try to have the same open mindedness about people. There are no good people, and no bad people. Being non-judgmental means not judging them but understanding them. Then you can help them grow and be more effective.
- Avoid the word “should.” Many people are unaware of the subtle ways they judge people. Judgment happens any time we say or imply that someone is right or wrong, good or bad. Whenever someone says someone else should do something, they are implying that the person being spoken to is doing something wrong, and the person speaking has the right way to get something done.
- Be curious: Try to replace your impulse to judge with curiosity. Instead of telling someone what they should do, try being curious about what they are doing. You might be surprised how people open up if you simply ask how they feel about doing something. If you have a better way to get something done, you can ask if they are open to learning another way to do it. Asking their permission demonstrates respect and helps them learn without demeaning the way they are doing it now.
- Be empathetic: Before you have a difficult discussion with a direct report, spend some time putting yourself in their shoes. Remember that people learn most when they get out of their comfort zone and have a one-half to two-thirds chance of failure. It’s tough to ask someone to do something they might fail at, so let them know you are there to help them succeed while they learn and grow.
- Feed-Forward: They can’t do anything about the past except feel bad about it. Instead, think about feedforward and focus on what they can do to improve.
Getting emotional self-expression right is a delicate balance. It’s not easy, but with practice, it gets easier and you will get better results to show for it.