Culture: Why Emotion Matters

When people talk about company culture, they’re typically referring to cognitive culture: how people think and behave at work.

The problem is, this is just half of the puzzle. An area often overlooked amongst leaders is emotional culture: how we feel & don’t feel.

Despite decades of research on how emotional culture influences employee satisfaction, burnout & teamwork, emotional culture is rarely managed as deliberately as cognitive culture.

With a lack of focus on emotional culture, the following is more likely to occur:

• Negative outcomes and emotions felt in work
• Poor performing teams
• High turnover of people

Today, we’re only having half the conversation on culture.

Most organisations don’t pay enough attention to how people are or should be feeling. They underestimate how central emotions are to building the right culture and employee experience.

When we recognise emotions in the workplace, we can better connect with and motivate our people.

It’s time we started talking about how we want our people to feel.

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” — Maya Angelou.

At a leadership level, be intentional about how you want to approach your emotional culture. Start by thinking about:

• If the business is to be successful, how do you want your people to feel at work?
• How do you not want your people to feel at work?
• What’s will you do to support your people feel a particular way?
• What signals will you look out for amongst your people?
• What habits do you want to change or introduce?

Emotional culture is shaped by how all employees show up each day & contribute.

At a time of great change in how we work and with people stepping out like never before, it’s time to have the full conversation on company culture.