Work With Feelings is unabashed in saying that feelings absolutely belong in the workplace. Even if you think feelings are not allowed at work, we guarantee they are present and impacting your organization every day.
No matter how much we have been trained to view work experiences as “just business,” the thoughts, feelings, values, and emotions of the people in organizations directly drive behaviors and decisions.
We write job descriptions to capture skills and ability gaps in our organization. But we hire people to fill those gaps.
At Work With Feelings, we hypothesize that the future of work will be led by organizations who understand the complexity of individual needs and experiences, while leading toward a shared outcome with an inspiring purpose.
This does not imply that all organizations must have an altruistic intent or nature. Rather, the traditional managerial tools of incentives and consequences for individuals will be consumed by the desire and appreciation for workplaces that deliver nourishing experiences, honoring the individual and organization simultaneously.
Although many of the perspectives at Work With Feelings have been formed around the needs of knowledge workers and creative, collaborative teams, the fundamental needs of feeling seen, heard, and welcome apply to everyone.
This goes beyond building Emotional Intelligence in key members of the organization. Our vision for an evolved workplace demands that all leaders (and interested participants) engage in a personal development journey to learn about themselves, others, and the ways we can support each other as we navigate challenges in our lives.
We have found that most people, leaders and contributors, feel the tension of underdeveloped emotional literacy and behavioral science in workplaces, yet they might not be able to identify it. The language and perspectives of these areas have historically been limited to social workers, psychologists, empaths, and human resources employees, to name a few.
But, we can’t have it stop there. And we can’t deliver the growth needed in our workplaces by mandatory training or well-intentioned modules in a work-sponsored learning management system.
We need to integrate these worlds.
We are each on a life-long developmental journey. Some of us will stall, for many reasons. Some of us will engage, for other reasons. The workplaces that will thrive in the next 20 years will integrate the practices and perspectives of trades that support humans. Those workplaces will need to work with feelings.
As much as some of us, or just parts of us, want to hold on to definitions of professionalism and work-appropriateness demanding a certain polite rigidity and compliance, we are simply beyond that.
We want to see feelings in workplaces everywhere, supported by leaders and colleagues who have developed the skills to welcome the truth of humanity to the work experience.
So, what do you say? Are you ready to Work With Feelings? We think so.
