In this clip he shares with us what he did to bring together a team that was feeling a lot of negative emotions around a situation.
Leaders managing big emotions within a team.
When emotions turn into frustration and anger towards other team members, as leaders, we can see how that create divisions within a team. There becomes an “us vs them” mentality that slows down productivity and raises tensions within a team.
People want to shut down, work in silos and end up feeling unsafe because of the negative tension. But just because there are big emotions, doesn’t mean it has to create divisiveness.
Navigating a lot of emotions within a team can feel overwhelming and create uncertainty within a leader. Especially if there are things staff wants to know but leadership cannot share. But we can see it as an opportunity to create cohesion if we know how to manage it properly.
I was fortunate enough to interview my friend Brendan Simon who is the Artistic Director of Theatre First in Berkeley California and the Learning and Development Lead for Kaiser Permanente Educational Theatre in Northern California.
As a business consultant who helps develop team cultures, I’ve gotten to work with Brendan and his people. His purposefulness and kindness for his team showed me he is a true leader.
In this clip he shares with us what he did to bring together a team that was feeling a lot of negative emotions around a situation.
Transcription
What do you think were the secondary effects on the people, like what were the kind of positive outcomes from that?
I think naming. So something that we talked about in one of the workshops that we do and your question reminded me of this quote from Dr. Dan Siegel, which is you have to name it to tame it. And so one of the things that naming something can do is tame the emotion around it. When you're able to name what you can and cannot discuss when you're able to name that this may be a difficult or courageous conversation that we're having when you're able to name that people may be feeling X Y or Z.
What you start to do is tame these really big emotions that people are feeling around the issue. And so that everybody can so that so that we can sort of bring the temperature down a little bit and just start to see hear understand and appreciate each other and the situation itself as as empowering and that we can control what we can control.
Know what we know share what we share and communicate what we can communicate and at the same time. It's also something that allows us to be comfortable with the unknown and with and be comfortable with what we cannot share and what we cannot. cannot know and just having planting the seeds on that fertile ground of understanding is something that I think always serves an organization and powerful and impactful way.
So beautifully said and I am finding that like right now with a two different organizations. I'm working with they're both having challenges around. Decision-making and just through the process of opening up the conversation and pointing out. Hey, the team doesn't know who makes what decision when the decisions are made how the decisions are made when we started opening up the conversation to that you could just see a big relief from people and now they were you know over time getting to work on.
Okay. What is this actually look like now we have this kind of Of amorphous blob thing and they can start they started making a shape of what it could be together. Yeah, after one of the workshops they had the leadership meeting the next day and the day after that. I talked to the CEO who's been CEO of the organization for over 20 years and said that was the best leadership meeting. They ever had.
That's awesome. And again, it's because that speaking to that unknown and helping create clarity on it. I think that's something that's extremely valuable and I love that quote of you have to name it to tame it. I'm going to steal that one.