Get emotional with your people

I've just been away from home on business for a couple of nights. On Tuesday night I was in a hotel in London - more about my customer experience there tomorrow, but one issue was that the television in my room didn't work, so I read a little and had lots of time to think. I was reflecting on Valentines day and the reasons why I love my wife (awwww). I concluded that it's both rational and emotional. It's because we have a rapport, we have similar interests and views and we often think in a similar way (although we do sometimes disagree and argue!) - reasons that are all rational and logical. AND there are other reasons that are nothing to do with logic, they're emotional and I find it difficult to explain them clearly, it's just how I feel, it's all about
my emotions.

There is a parallel there with the relationship employees have with their employer. It's partly driven by conscious and rational thoughts about what they see, hear and feel about their work environment and experience i.e. the more tangible stuff, and it's also emotional i.e intangible. An employee may not without help even be able to articulate why they feel how they do, but those feelings are real nevertheless.

This presents two problems in organisations or more specifically, for its leaders and managers:

1. The balance between logical thinking and emotion is out of kilter in some
   organisations. It's important to have both but when one dominates, it's usually
   logic. In extreme cases emotion and intuition can even be seen as a sign of
   weakness. Consequently whilst employee engagement might be considered important
   the approach to it is flawed because it fails to engage people emotionally. This
   can be seen in some organisations where there is no understanding or reference
   to the emotions the organisation wants to evoke as part of the employee
   experience. It just doesn't appear on the radar of the organisational culture.
2. It requires leaders to be emotionally intelligent. Because our emotions are
   individual and because the way in which they form is driven by our values and
   beliefs and our previous experiences they are unique to each one of us. When a
   leader believes that anothers emotions are 'wrong', because they're different
   from their own, there's a problem. Engaging people is about acknowledging
   different emotions and recognising them by adopting different approaches to
   stimulate the right employee experience emotions. My view is that Diversity is
   actually more about acknowledging different thoughts and emotions as valid than
   it is meeting legal requirements. And it isn't a moral imperative, it's about
   efficient and effective business performance - but that's perhaps for a future
   blog.
   

Employee engagement programmes must connect rationally and emotionally. Does
yours?

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/timhadfield
Blog: http://everythingengagement.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @accordengage