How Leaders Balance Emotions and Business Objectives

Episode Transcript

Here we are again. Talking about how we show up at work. How we show up for ourselves, how we show up for our teams. And I am in a very unique position as a consultant. So if you're a consultant, you can use this for helping yourself move forward through some of these things that come up. 

I walk a fine line between how to move a business forward, what the business as its own entity needs to move forward. And then there's a team driving that business, right? 

And then there's usually a leader who is creating the vision that everyone is moving towards. And then the hope is that those things all collate and there's a nice kumbaya of workflow. And then we get to the end of this is what we hoped for the business. 

The business is moving in this direction, right? So I am a conduit working on all three of those pieces simultaneously. This is what consultants have to do, right? I'm an outside perspective looking at an organization and where all these puzzle pieces meet and where some of the gaps are and then working towards, you know, creating flow and momentum and recommendations around how to fill those gaps. 

As a CEO, you have to do that as well. But for me, I don't have any emotional connection, right? And depending on a CEO and what they bring into the organization. So if they're hired into the CEO position or if they've grown the business internally, There's emotion attached to being a leader, period, period. 

Our job as a leader is to disconnect from that emotion and keep it professional, right? Like that's why I say in a coaching position because that is hard, it's hard work to continually disconnect from that emotional reaction or that emotional place to make decisions from a place that's really serving the business, serving the team, serving that vision and that movement forward, right? 

But it's lonely being a leader depending on the setup of the business. But if you are a sole entrepreneur or you're a CEO kind of sitting in that seat without a leadership team at your level. If you don't have a board of directors or you don't have a C -level team, you don't have that thought partnership with a group of people. 

You have people that are doing the work but you don't have a lot of support on the business. So this is where I sit with a lot of my clients, right? I kind of have two tiers of clients but I sit in this consulting space with a lot of my clients and that fine line between understanding what's important for the business, what's important for the team and what's important to keep the CEO's vision moving forward.

The more there's emotional upheaval in any one of those spaces, the harder it is to get to that outcome that everybody's poised and in solidarity to meet those objectives, right? And this is why people don't like managing, right? 

Because you're not just managing people and the work and the productivity, you're managing people and their emotions. I mean, this is just a fact that we like to pretend isn't true but there's just a level of emotional involvement that people bring to their work because they're passionate about the work. 

It's not bad. But we have to unravel the emotional piece because that emotional piece is a roadblock to the vision, to the collaboration, to the teamwork, to the flow, to the joy at work. And those emotions come from so many places and they're so unique to every person. 

But the reason I'm bringing it up is because when we talk about company culture, right, what we forget about is that that the culture is grown from the juncture of these three pieces, the vision, the business objectives, and the team, and the way the team can work towards those objectives. 

The culture is in the middle. It's the juncture of all those things coming together. I talk about company culture a lot. I think the first time I really did a public article about company culture was maybe 15 years ago. 

I was working in agency land and there was so much emphasis on we're going to have ping pong and we're going to have a bowling team and we're going to have all these special events at the office and all of these things and agencies really push that. 

It's hard work. We're going to work hard. We're going to play hard. there was an open bar at some agencies, right? Like people are coming off of like the mad men sort of weird cultural shift. And, you know, sometimes there was an open bar, sometimes there was, you know, again, like lots of games and activities. 

And that is not going to create a company culture that has nothing to do with culture. If we think about culture as a people, and when we say like, I'm American, and I come from this type of culture, or I'm, you know, from Bolivia, and this is the culture that's important to us, or I come from, you know, Italy, and this is like the foundation of the culture, right? 

That culture comes from your family, right? Your nuclear family, it comes from your extended family, it comes from your community, it comes from, you know, a group of people living together in one sort of set of rules and ideas, right?

Culture comes from these organic seeds. And it's really about people living together in these spaces and finding a way to live together, right? And finding common ground in that way of living together.  Companies are no different. A company is a microcosm of a community, right? I don't want to say it's a family, I think that's an unhealthy place to lean, we don't need to feel like we're creating a family unit here. 

It's just that we're in a space where we need to figure out how to work together, how to collaborate together, how to move things forward, how to do it in a way with the least amount of pain, right? And the most amount of ease, right? And simplicity, and how are we going to make impact, and let's set priorities, and how's everyone going to be heard, right? So culture comes from the work, and how we It doesn't come from how we do the play. 

It's great to celebrate. I love that, right? I love people celebrating accomplishments. I think there's nothing wrong with that, but if our work is all triggering and emotional and weighted and hard to kind of understand what the objectives are, if we can't get that work part right, there's no point in spending money or time trying to cultivate a culture that's outside of the work.

Because what happens when you get into a flow with your colleagues, when you start solving problems together, when there is ease and flow in the work itself, you start to bond and make connections and feel really good about that collaborative process and that you solved a problem together. 

When we wait with all of this personal emotional triggering pieces. It's hard to get to that point of we're focused on the work, right? And and I know there's a lot of emphasis right now about making sure that there's space for people to be people and for people to be human. 

And I don't want to sound like I'm discounting that. But if we if we paired that back a little bit, if we if we worked on our own stuff on our own time, right? The things we know we're kind of bringing to the table, the boundaries we need to set for ourselves, the cup we need to fill for ourselves, the work we need to do on our own. 

If we show up at work, having done all that, if we show up in a space where we're like, I'm clean, like I'm emotionally clean, I may have some stuff going on and I may need to talk to people about that. 

That's fine. But I want to know that I'm taking responsibility for that work, for the personal growth work. That's my work to do. I don't want to bring that into the workplace and force the workplace to solve those issues for me. 

Right. This is why I coach people and I consult. This is why I coach CEOs on the on the emotional side of change management. There's a lot of emotion that will come up, especially if it's your business and you're going through a massive change in your business. 

There are going to be emotions that come up. I'm not pretending like there aren't. I don't want you to forget, like try to push them down or forget about them. There's going to be an impact to you and the team. 

If you're trying to just shove them down, there's a place for those emotions, but it's not weighted inside the work. Right. Those those things that come up, the fear, the insecurity, all the things that come up for all of us, like work triggers, all of that. 

We need to find a place to work through that. That's not within the work itself. It's too much pressure on the work that we're doing, the work we're trying to move forward as a team, if we're waiting it with all of our personal, emotional baggage, it's your responsibility as a leader. 

It's your responsibility as the part of a team to do that work. And then to come to the table. And if you're seeing that weight of emotion that someone else is bringing, it's your responsibility to have that conversation, right? 

To say, Hey, can I take you to the side? Like, can we, and to have empathy. And I think, you know, we could all, I, you know, we'll say that's a space where I want to work on too, is like remembering that we have to have that space for people to have that emotion, but we need to try to really distance it from the work itself. 

Like let's not try to resolve our personal issues inside of a work project. Let's find time and space for it. Let's not ignore it, but let's put it in the appropriate place. Let's not force our managers to set boundaries for us. 

Right? That's not their job. Honestly, it's not their job. And as a leader, if you're feeling really an emotional weight, it's your responsibility to work on it. Work on that before you bring it to the team, right? 

What are the things you have control of that you can change? And what are the things that you can't change? Both about yourself and about the work, about the business objectives and the team objectives and the vision. 

What are the things within that, where there's flex and you can start to shift it? And what are the things you can't shift? What are the things about yourself that you need to be clear about that are not going to change? 

For example, I used to be a project manager and early in my career, I was a phenomenal project manager. I was very organized, very process forward, great at morale boosting, understanding the client needs, understanding how to get the team to the finish line, keeping things in budget, very, very structured and processed to be able to get to these outcomes that usually had timelines and deadlines and budget restrictions and all the things. 

I was phenomenal. If you try to put me in a project management position right now, I will fail. So I need to know confidently within myself that it doesn't mean anything about me, that I can't do that work anymore, right? 

I don't, if I wait that with insecurity and fear and people pleasing, I will try to do a job that I am. really bad at, like, I need to know that. I don't need to prove that I could do it because I used to do it. 

What I need to do is feel really confident in the place where I am now, which is strategic. I am a strategic thinker. I'm a visionary. I see the pieces really clearly. I can boost morale. It's from a different place now. 

It's not from the weeds. And it's not that I'm above it or that I'm better than anyone. It's that I did that work for a long time. And then I incrementally moved into these more strategic roles and I'm too far from it now. 

And if I went into roles with this level of insecurity, like I need to prove something to myself. I need to prove that I can do it. I don't want to feel like a failure. I'm going to do a job that's weighted with emotion. 

That's not I'm not in it to do the work. I'm in it to prove something and work out some emotional thing that is on me to work out. We don't always know what these things are. This is the tricky part, right? 

I've done a lot of work, right? I've worked with a lot of coaches. I'm a coach. I coach myself. I try as hard as I might. And I don't I'm not successful all the time in understanding what my blind spots are, obviously. 

But I do try to lean on people to provide me the insight of what my blind spots might be, right? I've never stopped working with a coach since I started running my business because I need someone to say, hey, you've got a blind spot. 

You got to work through that. That's yours, right? Because I can go into a coaching session and vent and bitch all I want. It's great to have that space, but it's not going to help get me to the next place. 

I can I, you know, you need to have a safe space to bring all those things, but I don't want someone just coming to the table to tell me and pat on my pat me on the back. Like you're doing all these things. 

Well, like I'm I'm all about growth mindset. Like, what are my blind spots? What do I need to work on? We don't all feel super comfortable in that space all the time, and it's fine. But ask yourself the question when you're going into any type of work situation, like, am I coming to the table with any emotion? 

Do I have an expectation here of someone making me feel a certain way, right? Sometimes CEOs go into meetings and they're like, I need to feel X. Like, I need to feel supported. I need to feel happy with the work.

I need to feel like you guys have this. And what I will encourage leaders to do is take the feelings out of it. And then what do you need? It becomes so much more clearer to your, so much more clear to your team. 

When you take the emotion out of it, because interpreting people's emotions is impossible. It's hard unless you're trained. So take the emotion out. And then what do you need? Now, how do you describe what you need to see from the work that has nothing to do with that work changing an emotion in you, right? 

That's a lot of pressure to put on the work. We need to, I hear this a lot too. We need to make the clients happy. Nobody knows what that means. And also we have no control over their happiness. We just don't. 

People have control over their own happiness, different situations. make different people feel different emotions, right? The same situation makes people feel different emotions. We can't control their emotions. 

We can't control the emotions of our boss. They can't control our emotions. We just need to be really clear about that. It's not your boss's fault. It's not the team's fault. It's not the client's fault about how you feel your feelings, right? 

Take the emotion out of it, then what? So instead of, I need to feel supported after this meeting, it's like what the outcome I went from this meeting is to have three steps, three clear objectives that we can move towards. 

What are those three objectives? Email me afterwards. Give it some thought. Email me afterwards, right? Then we shift it. Then maybe support is the result of getting those three objectives clearly defined, but that's not where we start when we're at work. 

We can't start with an emotional place because it muddies the water. And when things are weighted with emotion, the culture becomes weighted with emotion. There becomes a place where people don't trust each other because things aren't being communicated clearly. 

People run around trying to please each other and make each other happy rather than focusing on the objectives, which will probably result in making them happy. If they solve the problems together, there will be a joy and a happiness on the other end of that. 

But the focus is the work and what we bring to the work. And if you're in a highly emotional state, take a break. If I'm saying all this and you're like, but I need to do this and I need to push and I need to push and I need to do this and I need to do that because you don't understand Jamie, like I am feeling overwhelmed and I need to get through that and I'm going to only be able to do that by doing this project and that project and that project. 

It's time to take a break. If you're coming to work in a highly emotional state and that means highly stressed, highly frustrated, highly upset or worried or triggered by something, take a break. If you're feeling that much emotion when you're coming to work, please take a break because what you don't realize is that those emotional states will change the way you work. 

They'll change the way you show up and we need to do the work so that when we show up, we're like, we're clean. We're clean of those things. Not always again. This podcast is literally called Business for Humans. 

We need to understand the human part, but we also need to stop putting the weight of our personal emotions on our people at work. I love colleague friendships. I love the friendships that develop at work. 

And it's okay outside of work to lean on those people, invent and have an emotional resource. But when we're at work, if we weight everything with an emotion, we're muddying the water. We're creating a culture of, we're creating a culture where there's not clarity and that we're trying to solve a problem about someone's emotion rather than solving a problem that's a team effort that we're working towards this common goal. 

That's for the business, right? The business is its own little entity, right? And we're operating within that entity. And we want to move that entity forward. And we have to do it with our, if the business is a ship and we're manually making that ship go forward, we have to be aligned. 

We have to be in sync. We have to be doing this together because the boat won't move or the boat will turn the wrong way if only half of the team is pumping the rows or the oars, right? So if we're trying to collectively move this ship forward, we can do it, we can sing, right? 

We can all be singing and doing it in rhythm and having fun, or we can do it all pissed off at each other and then it's gonna be disjointed and it's never gonna move forward. It's just gonna stay still. 

So if you're a consultant and you're walking the fine line between these three entities and you're seeing a weighted emotion, find a way to get involved. some support in navigating that. Like if you're not a trained coach and you're really in there as a consultant, get some coaching support to say, listen, I think what could help you all is, you know, maybe you have a mediated conversation between, 

This group or maybe this team needs to have a little bit more support so that we can get to the real crux of the issue here. So we're not denying the fact that people are having emotions, but we're finding an alternate space to work through them so that the culture of the work is like the let's sing and row and all be in sync. 

Let's create that kind of culture. Let's have joy while we're trying to like push this thing forward. Let's make it as fun as we can rather than bringing all of our personal emotions and frustrations and worries and insecurities. 

And then we're never going to find that place where we feel good about what we're doing. We're just going to always be angry. Like it's your fault. That's we're not moving forward because it's your fault. 

You're not strong enough. You're not fast enough. You're not doing it right. That's not going to get us anywhere. So if you're starting to be in a place where you're resentful or you're blaming the people around you, your managers and everybody, like just take a step back. 

I'm not saying it's I'm not saying that they're not to blame for something. There, there are toxic work environments, 100% and I'm not trying to deny that, but just do your work before you decide that it's everybody else's fault, right? 

Do that work. And if you're consulting with a team where you're seeing this dynamic play out, take that step back, like help them do that work because no amount of, you know, workshopping culture or having parties is going to solve for that part of creating a culture, right? 

Like what is the culture we're trying to foster here? Are we trying to foster collaboration and open communication? Well, if we're all bringing emotions and blaming each other, that's not the culture. 

And if we have really fun parties, but our workflow is broken, that's not a healthy culture. I mean, people love to commiserate and that might be a bond, right? We in agency land, we all have trauma bonds and that might be like a way that you're bonding. 

But if you're bringing that into the work and you're commiserating all the time, it's just not the type of emotion that's going to propel anyone forward in a way that's really truly feeling aligned with like the reason you're working and your passions and your impact and all the things we want from work, which is like to feel more fulfilled and to feel like we're doing something and to feel recognized and to feel heard. We're not creating those types of cultures when we're ignoring that emotional weighted kind of internal workflow breakdown while we're planning parties on the outside of that. It's just never going to solve that internal true cultural problem, quote unquote problem challenge that we're facing as a team

So as a leader, you need to hold the responsibility you have to keep the vision moving forward and to keep your emotions, have a place to put them, have a place to work through them, find your support network so you're not waiting it on the team. 

If you're a member of the team and you're waiting your work with emotions or you're feeling burned out or you're feeling resentful, take a step back, do the work, get some support.

Before you decide you need to escape or this is the wrong fit or all the things like take a step back work through those emotions and come back re -energized re -engaged re -motivated and see what's possible. When people are in heightened levels of emotion you have to be careful about pushing too hard. You know you have to be gentle but you also have to make sure that the work is getting done.

This is the crux of my work as a coach. I'm not always just going to say all the things you want to hear. I am going to encourage you and I am going to make you feel good and recognized and seen, but i'm also going to show you where your blind spots are because if I don't you're going to keep going into spaces where you have these blind spots that no one's pointed out to you and they're going to keep coming back.

That's when we start to see patterns of how you show up at work and and all the things that you're dealing with at work. I'm not saying it's all on you but if you don't do that personal work these patterns are going to keep showing up in every environment with every manager with every kind of business you're entering.

This is why it's always good just to know, what's mine. Be clear on what's yours. And it's not like shifting blame or, okay, but then this person's not being held accountable or responsible for their part. 

We will hold them accountable. But I like to just start with you. As a manager, you have to make sure that your side of the street is clean. 

So whether you're. a leader, a manager, a CEO, whether you're on a team that's trying to move a business or a project forward. As we watch the business entity and what the goals are of this business, are we detaching ourselves from the emotional part? 

Are we making sure we're showing up at work clean? Are we doing that due diligence for ourselves, for our own wellbeing, for the wellbeing of our teams, the people we're working with, the people we're trying to row with, right? 

Are we doing that due diligence for them to support them? And are we aligned and moving this business forward in a way that's easier, where we're moving roadblocks out of our way and doing it together in a collaborative way? 

These are... really fundamental questions and so much of it is about this emotional piece. Am I looking for this project to fill an emotional gap? Am I looking for this company to fill an emotional gap? 

Am I looking for my managers to fill an emotional gap? Is there some work I need to do here? Am I putting too much emotion on this and asking it to do too much work? This is where so much burnout and workaholism sits because we use work as a buffer to move away from emotions we don't want to feel and then we want the work to fill those emotional gaps for us that we're not willing to look at outside of work and then we're surprised that when we try to rest we don't know how to because we've been spinning and spinning and spinning on all these things at work and when it's time to rest we don't know how to stop using work as our emotional filler. 

So take that step back and remember that this is where culture starts. The way we show up at work, the way we show up for our people, the way we work together with them in collaboration, this is the culture.

Let's stop pretending like it's about parties and team building events outside of work and all these external things that we think are going to fix the problem. It's about the way we work together. So when you're looking at like external support or ways to get help just look at that piece first. 

Is there an emotional weight that's being placed on these things? Do we need to work through that first before we go into the other problems that we're trying to solve? It's a good place to start and I I try to do it a lot, right? 

I want to do this continuous reflection. It's exhausting. And sometimes of course we all just want to be like, I don't want to have to do this work anymore. But it's an obligation when we're in a community that we're doing this work, when we're in a family that we're doing this work. 

No one's looking for perfection here. We're not looking for the nirvana of we've done all the work and now it's done. It's an evolution. And if you are committed to a growth mindset and to learning and to like the bliss that comes from those moments where you're all rowing together, if you've ever been in that flow with a team or with your family or with your friends, like feeling that flow, that is the joy.

And if we can just get closer to those moments, even if they're fleeting, Even if we're only in them for a moment, that moment is so invigorating. It's worth it. It's worth all the other bullshit and wading through all the other seas to get to that one moment of just pure flow. 

It's worth it. It's worth the work. It's 100 percent worth the work. When you feel into that space, it is pure joy, so it's worth it. And when you're in that and you're your best self and you are operating in your zone of genius and you are delighted by your job. 

And I don't care what you do. I don't care what that job is. But in those moments where you're like this moment right here, this feels good. This feels amazing. This is like making me excited. It could be any job on Earth. 

You can feel that emotion at that job. And all the work you do to get there. Is worth it. So I'm going to leave it at that. Good luck, everybody. And I am working on this, too, so don't think I have it all figured out. 

But as I learn and as I'm in these moments where I know it's an evolution for me and I know it's a learning for me and I know that I have work to do, I want to be able to share it with you because I'm on this journey, too. 

I am on the journey with you. I am maybe like an incremental step in front of you because I'm sharing what I'm learning. But I am not I don't have it all figured out either. It's there's a joy in the figuring it out. 

That's why I'm here. I have joy in sharing the learnings. So. Just let it sink in. think about the emotions that you might be pulling into things where it's hurting you more than serving you and then find that support. 

I'm here. There's a whole slew of coaches out there that can help. Therapists can help. Partners can help. Like find your people, find your network and be willing to put in the work because it is worth it. 

I promise. And I will talk to you next week. 

Jaime Gennaro is a seasoned business consultant and coach with over 20 years of experience helping companies achieve sustainable growth and leadership success. She has held leadership roles in marketing and operational strategy across various industries, including tech startups and creative agencies. Jaime specializes in business coaching for entrepreneurs and guiding leaders in balancing personal and professional growth. She focuses on reducing burnout, achieving business clarity, and developing entrepreneurial leadership strategies for long-term success.

If you're ready to take the next step in your journey, I invite you to explore my 90-day private coaching package.