Emotional expression is foundational to strong workplace relationships, whether between co-workers or between manager and employee. When two people can connect emotionally, they can build trust and support each other.
“If you think about the best people you ever worked with, the manager that you love, that you would work for again in a heartbeat, you probably had some kind of emotional connection with them,” says Liz Fosslien, workplace expert and the co-author of “Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay.”
In this episode of Making the Ideal Real, Ryan Goulart and Liz discuss the importance of emotional expression and vulnerability at work, leadership self-awareness and AI’s impact on emotional intelligence.
Fostering an Environment of Emotional Expression
Emotional expression as the process of communicating and expressing your feelings, thoughts, or needs in a healthy, productive and intentional way. In the workplace, it’s the responsibility of leaders to create a safe environment for emotional expression and model behaviors, such as expressing vulnerability.
“We usually don’t want to follow a leader where we feel like we have no idea what they’re thinking. They’ve never shown an ounce of vulnerability. It’s just a little unnerving,” Liz says.
At the same time, you don’t need to be best friends with your reports or co-workers. Instead, by being emotionally available, you form a level of mutual respect that makes people increasingly want to collaborate with and support each other
Vulnerability isn’t easy. Some people fear that they’ll say the wrong thing, burden colleagues or destabilize the team. “I’m certainly not saying you should be a feelings fire hose, but it is useful to acknowledge what people are going through, make them feel like they’re not alone,” Liz says. “Flag where they might have concerns, how they can reach out to you about that, but then provide that path forward.”
Embracing Empathy and Self-Awareness In Leadership
“Being professional” is sometimes defined as being detached, never fussing and showing no emotions in the workplace. But this definition is unattainable. Everyone has emotions and needs to acknowledge them in healthy ways.
“When it comes to these really hard things that leaders need to work through or even communicate,” Liz says, “it’s checking in with your emotions, thinking about, if you are in the other person’s shoes, how might they feel if you communicate the message?”
That kind of empathy can improve countless workplace conversations. At the same time, empathy doesn’t mean a lack of accountability for performance.
“Leading with empathy is leading with performance — calming people down, making them feel heard, ensuring that you also understand what they’re going through is how you’re going to set them up to be really productive,” she says.
Preparing for AI’s Impact On Emotional Intelligence
While artificial intelligence is an evolving technology that could radically change the structure of work, we don’t quite know what’s actually going to happen and what jobs will look like. That said, Liz and her co-author, Mollie West Duffy, have long believed that emotional intelligence will remain a crucial skill.
“It’s only going to become more and more important to understand how to bridge communication gaps, especially if you’re working with a more global team, different cultures of different emotion norms,” she says.
If AI does end up automating many of the more routine and mundane tasks, much of what is left will require human creativity and interaction. And that means figuring out how to connect with each other and express thoughts and feelings productively.
“Mollie and I always say the future of work is emotional,” Liz shares. “And we were saying that four years ago before ChatGPT was ever a thing that anyone thought about, and I think that’s even more true today.”
People in This Episode
Liz Fosslien: LinkedIn
Ryan Goulart: LinkedIn
Transcript
Liz Fosslien:
A lot of research shows that some emotional expression is necessary for earning trust, and so if you think about the best people you ever worked with, the manager that you love, that you would work for again in a heartbeat, you probably had some kind of emotional connection with them. But you don’t have to be best friends. They don’t have to be someone you talk to every day, but there was probably some trust that was built because they were vulnerable, because they supported you when things got hard, because they invested in your growth, they took the time to get to know you, and they also opened up a little bit themselves.
Ryan Goulart:
That’s Liz Fosslien, author of “Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay. I’m Ryan Goulart,” and you are Making the Ideal Real.
I have with me today Liz Fosslien, author of “Big Feelings.” Liz, welcome to Making the Ideal Real.
Liz Fosslien:
Thanks so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here.
Ryan Goulart:
I was telling you earlier, and for the think2Performers who listen to this, we’ve been doing a book review of your book, you’re speaking at our conference in October. You’re a legend already, so how does that feel? How does it feel to be a legend at a small business like think2Perform? Because you talk about a lot of great things, and a lot of things that pertain to our conversation today about making the ideal real.
So I know I already had told you that there’s another question coming that’s the first question, but I just wanted to just let you know that you’re a legend here at think2Perform, so it’s fun to talk to you.
Liz Fosslien:
Yeah. Well, it’s very cool to hear. It’s funny because — basically both books, especially the second one, came out during pandemic times, I think, Mollie and I didn’t do a book tour. We didn’t really meet that many people in person, and so I think it still feels a little abstract for us. So when people come up and they say, “Oh, we’re reading your book in our book club,” still, it’s a little jarring. So I’m like, “Oh, whoa, people are reading it.” But it’s very cool to hear, so hopefully everyone’s enjoying it.
Ryan Goulart:
You know how I became familiar with you and Mollie is through your images and your illustrations, and I think just before we even jump in and people are like, “Oh, who’s Ryan talking to, Liz Fosslien?” And then you look at your images and then ,all of a sudden, what you just said about how you take something abstract and digest it into something very easy to understand visually, it’s such a skill. I mean, it’s such a really cool skill, and I know I’ve often been curious, and I’m sure some of our listeners are, as well — how did you stumble upon this idea of taking emotions, taking behavior and habits and making it feel way more accessible than just talking about emotional intelligence like, “Hey, Ryan, you have emotional intelligence.” What is that like? It’s just not an easy conversation to have.
Liz Fosslien:
Yeah. So I studied math and economics in college, and one of the big things that I encountered — I love both of them, I think they just give you such a useful way to look at the world. I think there’s a lot of creativity involved in each one. And what I would notice is when I would tell people that, it would be instant eyes glazing over like, “Oh gosh, could you pick two more boring topics to be interested in?”
And I have just always really wanted to meet people where they are and get them excited about the things that I’m excited about and also not make it feel so heavy, so that early example that I have of this is a typical math textbook where it’s like, “Yeah. Of course, nobody likes this topic. This is a horrible design. It’s just long, it’s just formulas. There’s usually not many real-world examples or pictures or things to get people engaged.”
And so I brought that similar mentality to conversations around emotions where, I think it is, people instantly clam up where there’s a lot of fear around it. It feels heavy. It’s like, “If we open the door, it’s Pandora’s box, all these feelings are going to come out and we can never go back, and we’ll have ruined our relationship.” I think that’s just because we don’t know how to have productive conversations around feelings, how to flag them early on before they festered and turned into something bigger. And so really, at the heart of the illustrations, is wanting to show that because they’re very simple, they can resonate with a wide audience. So it’s like this is just something that we can all relate to.
And sometimes they’re funny, so it doesn’t have to be heavy. We can start with levity. We can start in a place that feels a little more comfortable and then ease our way into more difficult conversations. But I think it catches people off guard and helps them just relax a little bit — especially, I would say, among leaders or older generations. Gen Z is very emotionally intelligent, maybe a little too emotional at some points, but I say that as an older person. But I think it’s just a nice starting place so it diffuses, potentially, people getting really clammed up or nervous about where the conversation’s going to go.
Ryan Goulart:
Awesome. And I have a lot of questions already in my head that I want to ask you, but I need to ask you our first question that we always ask guests on this before we dive into all of what you just said. So, what does making the ideal real mean to you?
Liz Fosslien:
Yeah. I love this question. To me, it comes down to never underestimating the enormous power of a small step. And so I think, often we set ourselves these really lofty goals, or we have huge aspirations. The ideal is something that’s achievable in five, 10 years, and then it’s easy to get deflated along the way because you haven’t put many milestones in place. You’re not actually celebrating what you’re doing every day, every hour. They’re sometimes really hard choices that you have to make in a moment, and so giving yourself credit for those and also seeing the impact that those are having over time. So to me, it really comes down to just the small things that you can do.
Ryan Goulart:
Awesome. And that relates so well to our conversation today, because I think as one pursues ideal — where in our language here at think2Perform, and for the listeners that are listening to this, is about values, and it’s about goals, and it’s about behavior. And on the behavioral side, it’s often hard to understand how emotions and the positive and negative emotions come into play. Because they can be an obstacle — both sides — of pursuing what you just shared of trying to build those small wins and understanding that it’s a long road to be your ideal self more frequently. How does the role of vulnerability come in? Because in many ways, emotions are what ties us all together. And as a leader or an influencer of others, it’s in my best interest to learn more about you, and in order to do that, I might need to understand a little bit more about your emotions, but you might feel like that’s being too vulnerable or might feel guarded. What’s your take on vulnerability?
Liz Fosslien:
Yeah. So I think especially in the workplace, a lot of research shows that some emotional expression is necessary for earning trust, and so if you think about the best people you ever worked with, the manager that you love, that you would work for, again in a heartbeat, you probably had some emotional connection with them. But you don’t have to be best friends. They don’t have to be someone you talk to every day, but there was probably some trust that was built because they were vulnerable, because they supported you when things got hard, because they invested in your growth, they took the time to get to know you, and they also opened up a little bit themselves.
We usually don’t want to follow a leader where we feel like we have no idea what they’re thinking. They’ve never shown an ounce of vulnerability. It’s just a little unnerving because that’s — there’s stressful days, especially if you’re a leader. And I think it’s, again, it makes you feel like you’re their confidant, you understand what’s happening if they even say to you something like, “It’s been a really long day, priorities have shifted, change can be hard, we’re going to get through it, but I’m just flagging that.” I think that’s the leader we want to follow, and so there’s definitely a balance.
So leaders also, it’s great to come in and say, “We’re going to have to rethink our road map, and that is difficult. I know we put a lot of time into the other one,” and so acknowledging that. Versus coming in and being like, “I was up all night, starting to cry, I don’t know how we’re going to do this. We just made this road map, now we have to make another one. This is ridiculous. This always happens.”
That might be what you’re feeling in that moment, and the other person might actually resonate a lot with it, but it undermines your authority because they’re not going to believe that you’re a leader who can guide them through this, who can create stability for them. And I think a lot of times when people hear about opening up or being vulnerable in leadership, they’re scared that they’re going to overburden their people or they’re going to destabilize their team, or they’re going to reveal something they shouldn’t. And I’m certainly not saying you should be a feelings fire hose.
Ryan Goulart:
Exactly.
Liz Fosslien:
But it is useful to acknowledge what people are going through, make them feel like they’re not alone, flag where they might have concerns, how they can reach out to you about that, but then provide that path forward.
So it’s, “We’re changing the road map. I know this is difficult. I know we put a lot of time into the other one. I totally get that this is frustrating. Let’s work together to make sure that work isn’t lost. How can we adapt some of what we’ve been working on to fit this new goal that we have? If you have questions or concerns, please let me know. And what I need from you is to let me know what’s not working, what is working.”
So it’s again, openness, acknowledging the emotions in the room, path forward, to show that you can lead them through this challenging time.
Ryan Goulart:
I think there’s sometimes the word vulnerability. I think people immediately think about, “I don’t want to stand out there in front of everyone and feel like I’m naked. Like all of a sudden just everyone’s looking at me and that feels jarring.”
When what you’re describing is not that at all, but it also requires the leader to understand how to communicate in an open and friendly and empathetic way. What role does empathy play? And also maybe self-awareness for the leader to be able to make that connection to changing priorities or cutting resources, or what many are experiencing, layoffs or crunching of numbers on their income. I mean, there’s so many different uncertainties as you often talk about out there that leaders have to be aware of, too.
Liz Fosslien:
Yeah, enormous. So it definitely starts with giving yourself permission to have emotions. I think that’s the first step. That is an important step for a lot of people. A lot of people were raised or socialized to believe that to be professional is to never fuss, never fail and never feel, and all of those are incorrect. You probably shouldn’t fuss that much, but you’re going to have some failures along the way. You’re going to have feelings every day of your life. So, yeah. I think first, it’s acknowledging that you have emotions, understanding what those emotions are, and then figuring out the need driving the emotion, and that’s the really crucial part. That’s the self-awareness part. So an example of that is — and often the answer, once you figured out the need, is not to say anything to your team. It’s nothing to do with work.
So if I haven’t slept well, and I wake up in the morning, and I feel horrible and I’m very irritated with everyone around me, it’s useful for me to know that and to identify the need behind those emotions as a good night because otherwise, if I pretend like it’s not happening, I’m going to go into the workplace, and I’m going to treat everyone like they’re suddenly irritating, and I’m going to wake up the next day and have ruined a lot of relationships or caused a lot of unnecessary stress and problems in the workplace. So in that case, it’s like, “OK, maybe I just need to flag, today I didn’t sleep well, so if I seem a little off, it has nothing to do with you.” And also check, be a little more mindful of how I’m treating people so that I’m not letting that emotion stick as tentacles into every interaction.
So when it comes to these really hard things that leaders need to work through or even communicate, I think it’s checking in with your emotions, thinking about, if you are in the other person’s shoes, how might they feel if you communicate the message? So often I see leaders, they have — everything is focused on, “What is the message that I want to share,” without pulling in that empathetic piece and saying, “Well, how would I feel if I were hearing this news and how can I address that? How can I support people?” And so a lot of work internally to be done, a lot of emotional intelligence.
And the last thing that I really want to emphasize is I hear the question often, “Should I prioritize, as a leader, empathy or performance? Should I support people and take that time, or should I instead focus on goal setting?” And to me, it’s a false dichotomy because people who are stressed, people who don’t trust you, people who are really unclear about the future, who just feel like you’re pulling them one direction and then in another without any thought about their emotions, they’re not going to perform. They might perform for a couple of weeks or a couple of months, but then they’re going to try to find a different job. And so leading with empathy is leading with performance, calming people down, making them feel heard, ensuring that you also understand what they’re going through is how you’re going to set them up to be really productive.
Ryan Goulart:
Hey, listeners, Ryan here. Liz had some actual insights on how to navigate emotional cultures at work. You want more? Attend our Evolve conference, visit our website, and click the Resource tab to learn more.
Ryan Goulart:
Do you think that has to do with — I mean, I think that this is more of a Socratic question, but do you think that has to do with their own perception of prioritizing performance over empathy, that one is better than the other, what you’re sharing is actually the reverse or maybe the combination?
Liz Fosslien:
Yeah. I think it comes back to this idea that people have had for centuries that you have emotions on one side of a spectrum and then you have rationality, and performance and all the professionalism, whatever on the other side. And that’s just inherently flawed thinking, because you have emotions if you’re in the shower, walking around the block at work. You just never stop having emotions unless you’re a sociopath. And so it’s so important to understand that and understand the enormous effect that they have on any metric a business leader would care about: retention, productivity, performance, morale, engagement.
Someone who is healthy, who is mentally well, who is excited to work for you is going to go above and beyond and perform way better than someone that you’ve never checked in with, that you just keep throwing assignments out without ever thinking about how they’re doing. They might be productive for a couple of months. In the short term, you can probably churn through a lot of people, but in the long run, it’s a really bad business strategy.
Ryan Goulart:
No, I’d be curious of your thoughts, too, just where we operate in quite frequently as financial services. And from what I’ve learned about you, you also have some purview into that, as well as tech as well. And oftentimes the story I hear is that it’s not that emotions are discounted, but it’s just almost as if, if I were to talk to a product team of engineers or software engineers, that emotions wouldn’t be an accessible conversation starter for them. Even though the workflow of a software engineer — the insight that emotions play in their performance — would be valuable, it’s just not seen as something that’s part of their performance package. They get paid to get code done in an efficient and an effective way. What are some of your thoughts in that land or financial services too? You can pick two, pick your own adventure, of what has come out there.
Liz Fosslien:
Yeah. So it’s very fair to point out that different teams, different organizations, different industries have different emotional cultures. And so this is a fairly new concept in the academic research around — yeah, it’s different from a corporate culture which is, “Move fast and break things, put the customer first,” that sort of telling you how to act and how to prioritize. Emotional cultures are usually unwritten. It’s the seemingly small gestures that dictate how we feel we can act, what we feel we can share, how we feel we can show up.
And so, classic example, is in a hospital, nurses will behave really differently around patients than they might in a break room with other nurses. One, it’s very caring, not so much focused on themselves. In a break room, they might vent, they might joke around. It’s very different. And so within every organization or every industry, every team, there’s different emotional cultures.
And so when I talk about emotions at work, it’s never a one-size-fits-all — everyone should just stand up in the meeting and bear their soul. First of all, vulnerability needs to be earned. So you really need to first be in an environment and then understand the emotional culture. Are people doing that? If they’re not, it’s not going to go over well for you to put a ball pit in the office and say, “Let’s all get in and talk about our feelings.” But it’s still really valuable to be in touch with your emotions. In some cases you might just have to start with the need behind them. So what I mean by that is, in some environments where you’re really close with your manager, it’s totally fine to say, “I’m really anxious about this project, can you help me?” And that’s a conversation they’ll be open to having.
In other scenarios, you might have to say, “Hey, I’m unsure that the team is going to hit this deadline that we’ve set for ourselves on Friday. Can we quickly go through priorities to make sure I’m working on the right things? Can we check in with everyone to see if we need to clear some meetings to give each other heads-down time?”
And that’s the same conversation, just a different starting point. You’ve done the additional work up front of, “I’m feeling anxious, why am I feeling anxious? I don’t know that we’re going to hit this deadline, and I’m going to bring that to the manager.”
You’re doing the same work, you’re just starting the conversation at a different point through where you’re doing that work. And so again, a leader who wants to be vulnerable, that might be really different if they’re among other leaders they’ve known for 20 years versus if they’re among a team that they just started managing. If you are not aware of the emotional culture, if you’re not aware of where people are, you can’t meet them where they are and then slowly pull them down whatever path you want. But you need to start in a place that’s going to resonate with people speaking the language that’s going to be meaningful to them.
Ryan Goulart:
I love that answer. And I hadn’t considered the other side of the culture conversation, even though it’s something we talk about. I haven’t heard it framed up that well. Do you think there’s a significance then placed more so on an onboarding process. If you’re bringing a new employee into the company, that there should be greater emphasis placed on helping them intentionally understand some of the culture needs emotionally within an organization?
Liz Fosslien:
Totally, yes. Some cool practices I’ve seen. One, is often assigning someone a culture buddy. So this is ideally someone that’s not on your team that you don’t work with directly, and you again, ideally are connected with them a week in advance of your start date. And this is just the person you can ask all those little questions. And there’s less risk than — you’re not going to ask your manager, “How many emojis can I put in my email?” All these, again, seemingly small things.
Ryan Goulart:
How many exclamation points are part of the culture here?
Liz Fosslien:
Totally. “Like if someone asks about my day, how much detail should I go into?” And that’s what you can ask this buddy, and so that’s why it’s, again, so important that it’s not directly connected to your line of reporting or people you’re going to work with every day. The other thing that comes out of the organizational design firm, IDEO, where my co-author Mollie used to work, they do something called an enterview, which is a combination of enter and interview. And so, normally the way that you’re onboarded to an organization is you get to your first day and you have to set up your laptop, and you have to pick your health insurance and all these things that are usually not suited to the skills you were hired for. And so you’re just like, “I’m not talking to anyone. I haven’t done anything. This feels like a not great first day.”
And so what they did is every single person that interviewed you throughout the process, they have them write out three things. One, the skills that really impressed them during the interview. Two, the skills that you’re bringing to the company or the team that the team really needs. And three, conversation starters — so, something they want to get to know more about you. And then they compile all that into a physical card or virtual doc, whatever makes sense, and give that to the person on their first day. And what I love about that is the conversation starters will give you a window into what kind of conversations are people having at work.
It’s a good way if you then meet them for a one-on-one, you can start there. It’s an easy way to have a discussion or get to know someone. And then it’s also cementing on day one, “This is why we hired you, and please lean into these skills. You do not have to feel imposter syndrome. You do not have to question whether or not you belong. We need these skills, and so please speak up in meetings.”
I think it’s so crucial that organizations think more about onboarding, especially that first day, because I feel like just so many people I speak with, it’s like, “Oh, the first day is just a wash. You’re not really going to do anything. You’re just going to sit around and wait for stuff to get logged in,” and that’s true, but it’s also a huge missed opportunity to bring that person into the organization in a certain way.
Ryan Goulart:
Yeah. I love that idea. It’s such an invitation almost to feel like you’re a part of something already and people know what to talk to you about, so it’s very cool. This has been some part of the conversation for some time now. Maybe spotlighted even more due to recent technology advances. I don’t want to talk specifically about the technology itself, but more so about the emotional component. And that is, of course — everyone’s talking about it, why not us — about artificial intelligence. And the emotional component is what I care about. I know it’s what you care about. How do you perceive the role humans play in the future? Very open-ended question, but I think it will get us to the point where I think we’ll have some cool dialogue here. I mean, there’s some fear, there’s some greed happening, also, on the AI front. What role do humans play?
Liz Fosslien:
This just always makes this story pop into my head. I was speaking to someone who’s an AI expert — very much in that field, and very far on the spectrum of “AI is going to take over everything,” so this is not my opinion, this is not everyone’s opinion. And I remember he was asking, “What’s your expertise?” I said, “Emotions at work.” And then I was like, “What do you see as the role of emotions at work?” And he just looked at me and he said, “I don’t think humans belong at work.”
Ryan Goulart:
Wow.
Liz Fosslien:
I was like, “OK.”
Ryan Goulart:
All right. That was quite the statement.
Liz Fosslien:
Yeah, really quite the statement. I was just like, “OK, that’s super-interesting. Tell me more about that.” I don’t know what to say, I just go, “That’s super-interesting. Tell me more.” But I think that’s again, an extreme response, but it does seem like we’re moving towards a place where administrative tasks, the organizing the folder, the stuff that — it’s work about work, as some people call it. It’s not actually doing the deep thinking. It’s more all the little stuff that you have to get done in between deep thinking moments. It seems like that is more and more being automated.
And so it does seem like the trend is towards humans doing work that is more creative, that is more collaborative, that basically is going to really require a lot more emotional intelligence than before. And so I think it’s only going to become more and more important to understand how to bridge communication gaps, especially if you’re working with a more global team, different cultures of different emotion norms. People might not all have English as their first language, so there’s just a lot of opportunity for miscommunication.
And if you don’t know how to have those conversations, especially early on, in a way that’s not combative, in a way that’s still empathetic, it’s going to make your job a lot harder. So Mollie and I always say the future of work is emotional, and we were saying that four years ago before ChatGPT was ever a thing that anyone thought about, and I think that’s even more true today. And if humans are never at work, then it’s all going to be emotional. It’s like, “What do you do all day?” I don’t know, so it seems like it’s only going to be as or more important.
Ryan Goulart:
Yeah. I mean, naturally, I wholeheartedly agree with you because it’s just — how do you take the human element out completely? And I think that’s also the extreme, too, of what people perceive AI to be able to do. When in fact, in many ways, we’ve been working with AI for some time already, and here we are still using emotions at work. So what, I guess, is just more of some thoughts of, what would you suggest to people that as they get more ready for that future of using emotions at work, what can they start to do today that can help better position them to be a better leader tomorrow?
Liz Fosslien:
Yeah. Well, it’s self-serving: Read the books.
Ryan Goulart:
Yeah. There you go.
Liz Fosslien:
But I think it starts with building the muscle of checking in with yourself, understanding what those emotions that you’re having are, what you might need to do with them. There’s something called the emotions wheel that I highly recommend everyone check out. You can just Google “emotions wheel,” I did not come up with this. But it’s a wheel that helps you essentially practice emotional granularity, so that’s getting really specific about what you’re feeling. And research shows, people who have this ability to get to pinpoint exactly what emotion they’re experiencing are much better able to address that emotion, to move forward with it, to talk about it.
And so this wheel essentially in the center, it’s like, “Do you feel good or do you feel bad?” And then it spikes out from that. It’s like, “OK, you don’t feel good. Do you feel excited? Do you feel at peace? Do you feel like all these different things?” And then it’s a flow chart essentially that helps you figure out exactly what you’re feeling.
So I think getting familiar with things like that, just becoming more in touch with yourself, is going to be a great foundation for when you do need to have a conversation, when you are feeling something. I would say that’s a starting point, and it might seem like a simple starting point, but we’ve just all been conditioned for many years of our lives to not think about emotions at work, and so I do think that’s actually a really valuable place to start.
Ryan Goulart:
I love that answer. Thank you so much for coming on and making the ideal real for others. I mean, I’ve learned some stuff. I know some others have learned some stuff, as well. So I mean, our live audience over here, they’re learning stuff over here.
Liz Fosslien:
Great.
Ryan Goulart:
Thank you again for coming on, and thank you.
Liz Fosslien:
Yeah. Thanks for a great conversation.
Ryan Goulart:
As we wrap this episode, we’re committed to helping you make the ideal real. If you found this program helpful, share it and help someone else make their ideal real, too. Until next time, for think2Perform, I’m Ryan Goulart. Take care.
