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Who knew that talking about pessimism could be so much fun... even if most of the laughter is self-deprecating. In today's episode, hosts Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti talk about what happens when we let our "inner pessimist" come through. For more information, visit www.managementcafepodcast.com
The new series on Manager Mindsets starts with a discussion of comparison.
Comparison is unavoidable, especially in the age of social media. It can feed difficult and unpleasant emotions like doubt, jealousy and imposter syndrome. Indeed, someone once said “Comparison is the thief of joy”. And if we aren’t careful comparison can even tempt us into mindlessly copying others, which takes us away from our own unique path.
But in many aspects comparison can be helpful. It can be wonderfully motivating. It can show us what can be improved and help us understand what we value. It can even expand our concept of what is possible.
The challenge for managers is how to have a healthy relationship with comparison and what can we do to combat it’s less helpful manifestations…
02:30 Tim describes how he struggles with comparison, especially the contrast between his own struggles versus the dazzling successes that his peers post online.
3:45 Pilar and Tim share strategies for how they manage comparison and envy.
6:15 It’s important to view other’s achievements in context. We often underestimate the other person’s effort or how their circumstances are different to ours.
8:00 Comparison is somewhat unavoidable and can also be very healthy.
13:15 We should avoid using comparison as in order to mindlessly copy what others are doing? Can we avoid putting ourselves above or below what we’re comparing against? Can we use comparison as a helpful tool for curiosity and learning?
13:50 It can take quite a lot of mental effort to let go of comparison and feel comfortable that your journey is the best pathway for you.
15:00 In the era of social media and LinkedIn, it’s very hard to avoid comparison because it gets pushed at you.
16:40 Comparison can fuel competitiveness.
17:30 If we can detach our judgement from comparison then it can teach us things that we want but don’t have. And it can help us work out if we want to change.
10:00 Pilar shares an excellent story from her theatre days of how comparison without awareness can threaten our individuality.
19:00 As managers, we can really help our team when we see them struggling with comparison. Helping somebody explore why they’re comparing and finding out what’s helpful or unhelpful to them about those comparisons can be huge.
20:45 Tim shares how comparison had positive impacts on his development. There have been individuals, managers and companies that he admired and wanted to emulate. Comparison was helpful in showing a desired end state and also what needed to change in order to get there.
21:45 There can also be a danger of complacency or arrogance when we compare ourselves against others who we think are below our level.
23:45 Our hosts end the episode excited about their next topic for discussion… pessimism!
What about you, dear listener? Do you find comparison mostly helpful or harmful in your management practice? We’d love to hear from you!
Compare your stories to ours: get in touch through www.managementcafepodcast.com/contact
As co-hosts Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti wrap up the Manager Emotions series, they explain why they're moving onto mindset, and how this is different from cognitivie tendencies (and why they might well be mixing the two up!). Plus, some feedback on our episode on Emotional Contagion, and Pilar shares an episode from Workplace Geeks where one of her connections talks about living with long-covid and how this affects her work life. https://www.audiem.io/podcasts/work-life-and-long-covid Get in touch with Pilar and Tim through the https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/
Our hosts Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti talk about the many times they've been confused, the difficulties in feeling the emotion as individual and manager, and what happens when a team member becomes confused.
For the sixth episode of our series on manager emotions, Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti talk about Compassion.
Good leaders don't just remove obstacles and show their people the way forward. People also need to know that their leaders will support them in the hard times. And importantly, they need leaders to demonstrate compassion when they are in difficulty. This is distinct from sympathy - where the leader might acknowledge someone is suffering but not do anything to help or even really align with their emotions. Empathy is closer - it helps when leaders can demonstrate that they understand and relate to their employee's feelings. But compassion is, in effect, a more active form of empathy. It requires the further step of wanting to reduce the other person's suffering.
This can be very nuanced for managers. It does not necessarily require them to solve the problem, support can manifest in many different forms. It might be stepping in and solving the problem. Or coaching the person through it. Or even just offering companionship.
Compassion is not just something for managers to demonstrate to others. It's also important to be compassionate to ourselves.
The Management Café often talks of the isolation that manager's experience. Our hosts are grateful that their management journey was made easier by the support and care of compassionate people within their teams.
01:30 mins We open with a definition of Compassion from Greater Good:
"Compassion literally means 'to suffer together.' Among emotion researchers, it is defined as the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another's suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering. Compassion is not the same as empathy or altruism, though the concepts are related. While empathy refers more generally to our ability to take the perspective of and feel the emotions of another person, compassion is when those feelings and thoughts include the desire to help. Altruism, in turn, is the kind, selfless behaviour often prompted by feelings of compassion, though one can feel compassion without acting on it, and altruism isn’t always motivated by compassion."
2:30 Sympathy expresses caring for the other person but it also maintains some separation from the person and their emotion. Empathy means we share the other person's emotion. Compassion means we see from the person's perspective but also adds another element, we want to help them. Compassion and sympathy are tied to the other person's suffering or discomfort, whereas empathy is not.
4:00 Compassion is an important attribute for leaders who want to build trust. People want to know that their leader will support and help them during hard times.
5:30 Compassion is not offering solution after solution. It is saying "This is hard. I know how you are feeling. What do you need? How can I help? I'm here for you."
7:00 This requires a high level of self-awareness and knowledge of our team members so that attempted compassion doesn't backfire and lead to helplessness.
7:30 If a solution is offered without empathy it can actually just demonstrate how little the manager understands about the situation and the other person's emotions.
8:00 We also need to be careful that we're solving their problem instead of our problem - where we offer help just so we don't have to deal with their suffering anymore.
8:45 Tim experiences this often, especially early in his leadership journey, where he gets into problem solving mode and tries to fix issues as quickly as possible. Often before the person has really had a chance to share their experience and needs. When he doesn't act with compassion and jumps to solutions, the other person becomes defensive and closes down. Tim is not creating the sort of safe space the other person needs in order to open up and receive support.
9:50 When managers demonstrate compassion it helps people to be honest about what's happening and how they are feeling and what they need. And this environment of psychological safety encourages better performance.
10:45 Empathy is companionship without support. Compassion is companionship with support.
11:00 We need to also show compassion to ourselves. If we are compassionate to ourselves it helps us be compassionate to others and also to receive compassion from others. How can we expect people to be compassionate towards us if we're not even compassionate to ourselves?
12:15 It is important how we talk to ourselves and how we frame our internal dialogue. If we have a compassionate mindset internally it will naturally extend into our way of being and how we express ourselves.
13:30 Management can be lonely. But having a compassionate team around you can be an enormous benefit. Compassion doesn't require them to take on your problem or even experience the exact emotional state that you're in. But it does mean that they care and they try to help. Tim and Pilar have been blessed to work with some very compassionate people and it helped enormously.
What about you, dear listener? Do you think compassion is an important attribute for good leadership? We'd love to hear from you! Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/
Welcome to the fifth episode of our series on manager emotions, where hosts Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti talk about Pride.
We want to see good work, both in ourselves as managers and also in the teams that we lead. Pride creates a virtuous cycle that rewards and encourages healthy achievement.
Do a good thing -> share this achievement with others -> receive recognition -> feel proud -> do more good things.
But pride can be a tricky emotion in the workplace. Excessive displays of pride can turn people off. Pride can also clash with other attributes, most notably humility. Humility is a much valued characteristic which dictates that we don't draw attention to our own achievements.
Pride can even become arrogance if we use our achievements to assert superiority over others. And to make it even more complex, we must be conscious that people might misinterpret or devalue our emotions. Many of us have had the jarring experience of expressing pride only to have our accomplishment criticised or be accused of self-importance.
How then do we navigate pride at work? As leaders when can we express pride in a safe and helpful way? And how do we encourage this in those we manage? Join Pilar and Tim for coffee in the Management Café...
00:45 mins Pride is the feeling that you've done something good which you want to share with others and receive recognition. It can sometimes be confused with arrogance, but arrogance is about dominance. Arrogance says "I know more" or "I did better" and that makes me superior to you. It's the difference between wanting to share vs wanting to dominate.
1:45 When someone wants to "Blow their own trumpet" are they trying to share beautiful music or blast their horn in our ears?
2:45 Claude AI shared this definition of pride: "Pride is a complex emotion that can be defined as a feeling of deep pleasure, satisfaction, or self-respect derived from one's own achievements, qualities, or possessions, or those of someone with whom one is closely associated. Pride is often accompanied by a sense of accomplishment, confidence, and self-worth."
3:30 Tim used to deflect or downplay on the odd occasion people said something nice to him. But to receive recognition and feel proud... it feels amazing. It is very motivating. So he's tried to become more comfortable accepting compliments. But perhaps you, dear reader, could help him practice by sending a little love to https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/ ?
4:30 Pride is a sharing emotion. And it tells others what we value.
5:30 We can be proud and not share it. There is a difference between feeling proud and expressing our pride to others, they don't have to be done together. And this distinction is especially important in the workplace.
7:00 It is generally safe for managers to express pride in the achievements of their team or the individuals that they manage. This means those individuals don't have to go seeking recognition and their manager is giving them license to be proud of themselves.
8:30 When a manager feels proud in their own work how do they express it? Tim thinks this is better to do amongst peers or up the organisational chart.
10:00 It is good to role model healthy pride to those we manage.
11:30 Humility is generally a more socially acceptable emotion than pride. When we feel pride but express humility there is a disconnect.
13:20 Praising others gives them license to express pride in their work. Similarly we are safer to express pride with people that have given us praise.
14:20 Expressing pride to the wrong audience can be risky. Tim shares a time when he was left totally deflated by someone's response.
16:20 Pilar poses the question: what to do when someone is proud of something that wasn't actually that good? Tim proposes serving up the much maligned feedback sandwich.
18:30 Pilar points out that we can acknowledge their pride now and give the feedback about some aspects of the work later. It's critical that we don't squash their pride in the moment. Their pride comes with vulnerability because they are showing what they care about and they are seeking validation or affirmation. We should also be mindful of the fact that when someone shares their pride with us. they are signalling that they view us as a person who will treat their pride appropriately.
What about you, dear listener? How do you feel and express pride at work? We'd love to hear from you! Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/
For the fourth episode of our series on manager emotions we talk about Emotional Contagion, as it's something that keeps coming up.
Emotional Contagion describes how one person's emotions can induce similar emotions in others. This is often happening at an unconscious level, for example, we mimic someone's facial expression and start to feel the same emotion.
Managers should be especially mindful of this phenomenon and its potential impacts. When a leader gets angry or happy or sad, everyone around them also feels a bit of that same emotion. Leaders are a focal point of interaction meaning they are more susceptible to emotional contagion than followers.
This brings both challenges and opportunities. Whilst emotional contagion often operates at a subconscious level, leaders can take deliberate steps to guide the emotional state of themselves and those around them.
00:20 mins Emotional contagion is an important concept for managers to understand - that your emotions impact those around you and vice versa.
1:20 Tim shares an example (possibly an urban myth): your co-workers become less happy if your partner has a bad boss. Even though the workplaces are separate, the bad boss means your partner is less happy. And this means you are less happy. And this unhappiness spreads to your co-workers.
2:00 As per the example above, the effects of emotional contagion spread beyond the workplace. Tim became conscious of this when running Shield GEO where many of the employees worked from home. What are the emotions and influences that a digital workplace brings into the sanctity of someone's home?
4:00 Pilar references a 2002 study by Sigal G. Barsade of the University of Pennsylvania titled "The Ripple Effect: Emotional Contagion and Its Influence on Group Behavior". It talks about emotional contagion as the transfer of emotion between individuals.
5:20 Tim shares an embarrassing story of grumbling about his workplace being negative, only for a co-worker to point out that maybe it was Tim's own negativity that was infecting the workplace! This valuable feedback helped him better understand his role in creating the work environment that he wanted.
6:50 Sometimes emotional contagion happens unconsciously. But other times we can deliberately spread an certain emotion. Going back to the Barsade paper it talks about moods as compared to emotions, making the point that these are easily influenced transient states. Our emotions change with time and different environmental stimuli.
8:45 If we are mindful of emotional contagion when going through challenging events like layoffs, it can change our behaviour. e.g. Perhaps we take steps to reduce anxiety.
9:40 Pilar points out that we don't just influence a group's emotions by interacting directly with the whole group. We can also work at a one-to-one level with individual members who will spread those emotions back through the group.
10:20 Emotional contagion gives a powerful argument for managers to moderate their emotional responses. When managers express emotions like anger it doesn't just impact the people they interact directly with. The effects ripple out. This also means there are wonderful opportunities for the manager to model helpful emotional behaviour and reactions.
11:55 Barsade's research showed that the spread starts with mimicking. People spontaneously mimicking each other's facial expressions, body language, speech patterns and verbal tones. And the mimicking triggers people to feel the emotions. Perhaps an argument for cameras off on some video calls?
13:30 Pilar shares that people who have had Botox injections in their face are perceived as less empathetic because they don't mimic, and so, their body doesn't prompt them to feel others' emotions.
15:00 There is also a conscious level of emotional contagion where we compare our mood to those around us and adjust accordingly. Am I the only one who is angry or happy in this group?
16:30 Tim found the ripple effect of emotions to be a helpful guide. When you treat someone with kindness or care, it doesn't end there. They carry that with them and spread it further.
17:45 Pilar points out that this is a good reminder that even small actions have an impact. And even if we don't see an immediate impact our efforts will be making some difference.
18:45 Interestingly the research found that negative emotions don't spread any faster than positive emotions. And in fact sometimes strong positive emotions can be too much. Tim speculates that this is a British attitude but alas, he's quite wrong, the paper came from the University of Pennsylvania.
20:40 Perhaps negative emotions are more inward focussed and therefore less likely to spread. But positive emotions are generally outward focussed.
22:30 The paper showed that most people were unaware of emotional contagion. Both unaware they were impacted by other's emotions and unaware they were impacting other's emotions.
23:15 Our hosts speculate on what to do when they see emotional contagion at work. It starts with awareness and bringing it into the open. Most of us have experienced the opposite - environments where certain emotions, generally "negative" ones, were not able to be expressed. And it can just lead to these forbidden emotions thriving and spreading behind the scenes.
25:00 Leaders also can't be the only ones responsible for the emotional state of the group. Some research has suggested that leaders are actually more susceptible to emotional contagion than "followers".
26:00 Pilar shares that some of her work in the pandemic left her soaking up the emotions of the group.
27:00 Tim has a shocking realisation. When he sold Shield GEO he tried to talk to all the employees about the transition. These 70 odd conversations left him exhausted, which he thought was due to many of the people feeling anxious and afraid. But he now wonders if he was actually the person spreading anxiety and fear through the group...
28:00 Pilar, as always, reframes this learning into a positive light.
29:30 Emotional contagion isn't just a face to face, real-time experience. All our behaviour is underpinned by emotion. So even in a distributed, primarily digital workplace emotions are still spreading.
30:30 We need self awareness about the impacts of our behaviour, both individually and in groups.
What about you, dear listener? Do you think about emotional contagion and how you are impacted by the feelings of those around you? We'd love to hear from you! Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/
Many thanks to Catherine Nicholson from Virtual Training Team for sharing her thoughts on emotions at work and anger, after listening to the first episode of the manager emotions series. We share her comments directly from her LinkedIn posts, and expand on them. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pilarorti_we-kick-off-our-series-on-management-emotions-activity-7211065541115953152-75df If you have any feedback, we'd love to hear from you! https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/
00:30 mins Our hosts discuss the most popular episode of the “manager emotions” series: episode #81 on Anger. They speculate on why it resonated.
1:45 Pilar shares some great feedback that came in from Catherine Nicholson of Virtual Training Team. She shares that emotional regulation has been a recurring theme in her recent manager workshops.
2:15 Catherine poses the question, is it ok to show frustration at work? And talks about the “delicate connection between having an emotion, recognizing that emotion and then knowing what to do with it.”
3:35 She also talks about the balance between anger and passion. Tim reflects that it took him a long time to understand that sometimes people show frustration when it’s something they care deeply about.
4:30 Tim (badly) paraphrases Stephen M R Covey’s famous quote from The Speed of Trust “…we judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior…”.
5:15 Pilar points out that it is more acceptable to show passion than anger. Someone once tried (incorrectly) to reframe her anger as passion.
6:15 Pilar also thanks the wonderful Theresa Sigillito Hollema for recommending the Management Cafe to the listeners of the 21st Century Work Life podcast. And also a shoutout to Pilar’s mum who enjoyed the episode on anger!
What about you, dear listener? Do you have any feedback or thoughts you’d like to share? We’d love to hear from you! Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/
We continue with our Manager Emotions series.
So much of our work culture is about productivity. Traits like productivity, positivity, drive and a strong work ethic are idolised. We are often expected to overcome obstacles through pure hard work or "grit". This doesn't leave much space for hopelessness!
Hopelessness is a difficult emotion for us to experience directly or be exposed to. It's a draining, demotivating state that can spread quickly. This is especially difficult for managers who are limited in how, when and where they can safely express their own feelings of despair at work.
It's also tough to manage someone who feels hopeless. We should acknowledge people's feelings and be supportive. Within the context of work we can help people shift perspective or even guide them back to a sense of control. But there are limits to what we can do. Managers are not therapists.
01:20 mins We open with a gentle reminder that there are limits to what managers can deal with in a work context, some things are best dealt with by a mental health professional. In this conversation we'll stay within the context of what can be done at work.
2:00 With the help of Claude AI we define hopelessness as "a state of mind characterised by a lack of hope, optimism or belief that one's situation can improve. It is often accompanied by feelings of despair, helplessness, and a sense that the future holds no positive prospects. When experiencing hopelessness, an individual may feel overwhelmed by their circumstances, believing that their efforts to change or improve their situation are futile. This mindset can lead to a loss of motivation, decreased problem-solving abilities, and a general sense of negativity."
2:45 Even talking about hopelessness causes Tim to tense up and try to wriggle away. It's a very uncomfortable feeling. Pilar reminds us that our "body is a barometer" - bodily sensations can help us understand our emotional state.
3:40 Hopelessness can be pernicious, sneaking up on us and becoming all-consuming.
4:00 So much of our work culture is about doing and being productive. The feeling of hopelessness is not something we're meant to feel at work. It can be discombobulating. And it's a very difficult emotion to express in the workplace.
4:30 Managers in particular are expected to be in control. But hopelessness shows things are out of our control. And what about emotional contagion? Hopelessness is a particularly troubling emotion for a manager to spread to the people they are managing!
6:00 Going back to part of the definition of hopelessness, that a person might believe "their efforts to change or improve their situation are futile", this can be a real risk in hierarchical organisational structures. Individual contributors and middle managers might not have the power, authority or influence to change their circumstances.
7:00 Tim shares a story about a large group of IT workers at a British bank who had a deep sense of despair about their work.
9:00 One way we can limit or shift our experience of hopelessness is by shifting our perspective. Looking at things from a different perspective, changing our priorities or even moving towards other tasks.
10:25 Back in episode #65 we talked about building a support network outside of work. And this is a great example of when that external support can be really important. It can give us a way to get perspective and discuss our feelings of hopelessness outside our immediate work context.
11:00 Tim views hopelessness as an emotion that must be kept under control at work. He needs to limit where, when and how it shows up for him.
11:50 The manager potentially has greater exposure to hopelessness. Firstly they have two lenses, what is happening for them as an individual and what is happening with their team. Secondly their role requires them, to an extent, to plan for bad outcomes (as well as good).
12:30 Tim definitely felt overwhelmed by the challenges of running Shield GEO. But he found it to be a temporary reaction to adversity that diminished over time.
14:30 Tim talks about the setbacks he experienced whilst building a technology platform and how he felt unable to solve the problem. As Pilar points out, we can sometimes make bad decisions just to avoid this feeling of overwhelm.
18:00 When we feel hopeless we lose access to our creative problem-solving abilities. Which in turn heightens the sense of hopelessness and makes it harder to get back on track.
18:30 Warning signs for managers to look out for include negativity and the inability to see a positive future outcome. It is difficult to watch the people we manage suffer in this way.
19:45 Managers can help by finding out what is getting in the way. Perhaps giving the person more context or reframing their perspective can help them get unstuck.
20:30 Tim digs himself into a hole whilst giving an analogy about people in a hole.
21:50 We shouldn't deny people's feelings or experience. But we can set boundaries around how much hopelessness people express in a work context.
24:30 Tim shares how one of his friends sets boundaries with her husband.
25:30 Pilar reminds us that we can have a valuable role in guiding people out of their hopelessness. They need to climb out of their hole, but we can help them see the way out. This can give the person their sense of control back.
27:30 Pilar remembers a regular situation in where actors feel like they can't control their destiny, but a slight change in mindset can reveal that they can.
29:20 Sometimes a person feels hopelessness from their circumstances outside work and this comes into their work. But this is not really something that a manager can affect at work - it requires outside help.
What about you, dear listener? What is your experience of hopelessness at work and in your management practice? We'd love to hear from you! Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/
We continue with our Manager Emotions series. Today’s episode is all about joy. We remind ourselves of what it feels like, but we also wonder whether it’s always ok to express it.
Join Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti for coffee - or tea!
In our last coffee we talked about how anger can signal that something is wrong. Joy, on the other hand, signals that something is very right and motivates us to celebrate this feeling with those around us. For managers these can be milestone moments where all the hard work and difficulty can be forgotten for a moment of pure positivity and happiness.
But joy is not a simple emotion. It carries some risk and can require bravery to be vulnerable. Expressing joy can expose us to hurt if others don't share in our joy. There is also the concept of foreboding joy which limits our experience of joy in the present in order to protect us from disappointments in the future. Lastly, maybe not all joy comes from a good place, for example schadenfreude, the joy that comes from the pain of others. Is that still joy or something else?
There are many benefits for managers and their teams that can experience joy at work. Joy is very energising and these celebrations can reinforce when and how the team gets to good outcomes. In fact counter to the notion of foreboding joy, it might be that healthy experience of joy and the resulting memories are better suited to carry people through inevitable hard times and disappointment.
01:00 mins Joy is a very pleasurable emotion, generally more intense and temporary than happiness. Joy motivates us to connect with others and celebrate something wonderful. It brings us a heightened sense of energy, enthusiasm and optimism.
3:00 Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Jesuit priest, said that "It is not joy that makes us grateful, it is gratitude that makes us joyful."
4:00 Tim wants people to "save a mental record" when they feel joy so they can recreate some of that state in the future.
5:00 Pilar tends to remember bad moments more than joyful moments. And this is a common trait, we are wired to remember things that protect us and warn us. But it's also good to remember good experiences.
5:45 Dr Brené Brown talks about foreboding joy in her audio series "The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings on Authenticity, Connection, and Courage". We have a fear that just when things are good, they will be snatched away from us. And so we try protect ourselves from disappointment by not letting ourselves feel too much joy.
7:00 Joy can hinder us in a few ways. Firstly it can be euphoric and disconnect us from day to day reality. But it can also hinder us if we don't allow ourselves to properly experience it. And it can lead us unawares into a sense of fearlessness, which can be tricky.
9:00 Tim talks about times when he's been in a state of joy and gone to share it with his manager, who has not shared his enthusiasm. This can be extremely deflating and it highlights how vulnerability is linked to joy, because when we share joy we run the risk of being hurt.
10:30 Pilar introduces the concept of schadenfreude, the feeling of joy that comes from someone else's misfortune. This is something which we might feel at work but be cautious about expressing. It comes from a darker place than pure joy.
12:30 Our hosts have a rare disagreement about whether schadenfreude is really joy or something else.
13:00 We move on to freudenfreude, the feeling of joy that comes from someone else's happiness. Tim talks about "energy multipliers" as having a natural affinity for this, people who you can go to when you feel joy because you know they will be happy and excited for you.
14:00 It's very important that people are allowed to feel joy at work when good things happen. The positive energy and atmosphere lasts a long time. And it is part of creating that space for people to feel heard and seen. This takes some work because not everyone is comfortable with joy in the workplace.
15:40 Tim reflects on the joy Shield GEO felt when coming together at their company retreat. This shared expression of joy replenished the energy of the whole group for a long time afterwards.
16:30 Managers need to be careful of trying to control joy in the people we manage. There can be a risk of people being carried away by joy and you might wish to keep them focussed on the tasks required. But if you squash someone's joy then you really damage your relationship with them.
17:45 Pilar can't remember any occasions when she experienced joy as a manager. Tim, on the other hand, has many. And for him the high points like joy make the low points more bearable.
19:00 There can be times where the manager cannot share their joy. For example, your team might be going through a difficult time. When Tim sold Shield GEO he could only really celebrate with one person from work, his co-founder Duncan. And there was an element of foreboding to it because he knew that there were difficult times and hard conversations coming up.
21:30 The experience of joy and how we celebrate it can be very contextual. Tim shares another example where he helped someone change their behaviour but couldn't really share it in a work context. Luckily his kids, even without the background, are normally happy to share in their parent's happiness.
23:30 If we, as managers, limit our expression of joy then not only do we miss out on the pleasurable emotions. We are also missing the opportunity to reinforce a positive experience and create the "muscle memory" to lead us to similar experiences in the future.
25:00 Joy is linked to gratitude and being appreciative when we experience something good.
25:50 A little outtake for those who want to go further down the rabbit hole. Can bad people experience joy when they do bad things?
What about you, dear listener? What is your experience of joy at work and in your management practice? We'd love to hear from you! Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/
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