Emotion is an essential part of every good business

Being criticised as “too emotional” is an experience many people will have been through at work, where all too often data is everything and the head is meant to rule the heart.

I am here to tell you, from the bottom of my heart, that emotion is an essential part of every good business. Of course you need to understand the numbers, but if you can’t persuade people to buy your product, join your business or come on a journey with you, it is not going to work.

Emotion is a charged term, and one we do not discuss nearly enough. But the right level of emotion is fundamental for motivation at work. It’s the basis of pride, happiness and excitement, while encouraging teamwork and celebrating achievement.

For business leaders, it is a cognitive bias if you think you’re not emotional — an unconscious game we play because we are conditioned to think it is our job to be calm, clinical and logical. I know a chief executive who thinks he is absolutely not influenced by emotion on anything, that everything is driven by data. He refuses to accept the role of emotion and as a result he misses out on the best ways to communicate with his team. It is a more common problem than you would think.

In classical rhetoric the modes of persuasion are ethos, logos and pathos: the appeals to authority, reason and emotion. The best leaders in any field have the ability to blend all three, so why is so much of our approach to business framed as logical and head-first? As a curious chief executive, I am forever asking questions and am fascinated by information. Some of that can come from a spreadsheet but so much more is derived from people and different perspectives. Gilet-wearing finance types please take note.

At Gravita, we have completed several acquisitions over the past couple of years. As those negotiations progress, of course I look at the gross margins, profitability and growth projections. But I also pay attention to the chemistry and interaction between the people in the room at the time. How do they react to difficult questions? What are the silent people in the room saying through their body language? How does this change when things get tense? Ignore emotion and you reduce the information available, and risk making a big mistake.

Reading, understanding and influencing emotion at work is a vital skill for people at all levels. One common misconception is tears, especially among women. If you see a woman crying in a work context, much of the time it is not because she is upset, it is because she is angry. It’s an expression of injustice. It is easy to misconstrue tears as a sign of weakness when actually it is boiling rage. Ignore it at your peril.

What’s the best reaction if someone cries at work? The solution is often a glass of water and a ten-minute break, then resume. It’s a signal to pause, reset and return, rather than back off. There’s something really important in the emotion that should be explored. It is certainly not a thing to brush off or an indication of weakness.

As chief executive of an accountancy firm, it would be easy to fall into the trap of believing that the teams I work with are numbers-driven and therefore less receptive to pathos. While it is probably true that accountants are less willing to show emotion than people working in the often frenetic world of start-ups (where I began my career), that does not mean there should be a blanket approach. How people express themselves is very different but it’s no less important. Anyone who thinks everything comes down to numbers is only fooling themselves. In fact, in some industries, perhaps especially finance, people don’t harness emotion as much as they should, so deploying it properly can be a secret weapon.

Everywhere you look in business, there is an obsession with data and logic, which is powerful only with added human context. There have been too many failures of the machismo style of investment: focusing on the “hard data” but missing the glaringly obvious cultural gap. This leads to blind spots and, ultimately, institutional failure. Too much focus on the “what” makes it easy to completely mess up the “how”.

There is no doubt that emotion is more visible in business than it once was. Even things that we take for granted, such as the use of first names for senior people and open-plan offices, show how the world has changed. Less formality in professional settings has led to increased awareness of emotion — it’s time we got more comfortable with it. One of my favourite mantras is to consult widely and then own the decision. To have the best chance of doing that, you need to create safe spaces where opinions are respected and true emotions can be revealed.

Of course, toxic behaviours, angry shouting, even snidey keyboard warriors have no place in modern business. The old adage of taking a deep breath and counting to ten before you react to negative emotions remains sound advice.

I understand why business leaders are wary of emotion. You do not want to appear to be a soft touch, but a show of emotion can be incredibly powerful. And — congratulations — it shows you’re not a robot.

Caroline Plumb is a serial entrepreneur and chief executive of Gravita, a tax, accountancy and advisory firm

This post was originally published on here