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Why it's Important to Leave Personal Feelings Aside in Business · Business for Humans

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Welcome to Business for Humans. I'm Jamie Gennaro, business coach,
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consultant, and founder of Practica Consulting.
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In today's episode, I discuss how leaders show up at work and manage that delicate
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balance between personal emotions and business objectives.
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I explore the challenges CEOs face in managing teams, navigating emotional roadblocks,
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and fostering a culture of collaboration.
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I emphasize the importance of doing that personal work to lead effectively and
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reflect on how our emotions might impact our teams. Enjoy.
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Well, here we are again, talking about how we show up at work,
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how we show up for ourselves, how we show up for our teams.
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And I am in a very unique position as a consultant.
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So if you're a consultant, you can use this for helping yourself move forward
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through some of these things that come up.
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I walk a fine line between how to move a business forward, what the business
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as its own entity needs to move forward.
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And then there's a team driving that business. And then there's usually a leader. later.
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Who is creating the vision that everyone is moving towards.
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And then the hope is that those things all collate and there's a nice kumbaya of workflow.
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And then we get to the end of, this is what we hoped for the business.
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The business is moving in this direction.
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I am a conduit working on all three of those pieces simultaneously.
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This is what consultants have to do. I'm an outside perspective looking at an
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organization and where all these puzzle pieces meet and where some of the gaps
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are and then working towards creating flow and momentum and recommendations
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around how to fill those gaps.
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As a CEO, you have to do that as well. But for me, I don't have any emotional connection.
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And depending on a CEO and what they bring into to the organization,
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so if they're hired into the CEO position or if they've grown the business internally,
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there is emotion attached to being a leader. Period.
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Period. Our job as a leader is to disconnect from that emotion and keep it professional.
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That's why I sit in a coaching position because that is hard.
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It's hard work to continually disconnect from that emotional reaction or that
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emotional place to make decisions from a place that's really serving the business, serving the team,
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serving that vision and that movement forward. But it's lonely.
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Being a leader, depending on the setup of the business.
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But if you are a sole entrepreneur or you're a CEO, kind of sitting in that
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seat without a leadership team at your level, you're a CEO and then the closest
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level to you is maybe like a VP level or a director level.
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If you don't have a board of directors or you don't have a C-level team,
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you don't have that thought partnership with a group of people, right?
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You have people that are doing the work, but you don't have a lot of support on the business.
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So this is where I sit with a lot of my clients, right?
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I kind of have two tiers of clients, but I sit in this consulting space with a lot of my clients.
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And that fine line between understanding what's important for the business,
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what's important for the team, and what's important to keep the CEO's vision
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moving forward, the more there's emotional.
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Upheaval in any one of those spaces, the harder it is to get to that outcome
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that everybody's poised and in solidarity to meet those objectives.
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And this is why people don't like managing, right? Because you're not just managing
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people and the work and the productivity, you're managing people and their emotions.
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I mean, this is just a fact that we like to pretend isn't true,
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but there's just a level of emotional involvement that people bring to their
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work because they're passionate about the work. It's not bad.
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But we have to unravel the emotional piece because that emotional piece is a
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roadblock to the vision, to the collaboration,
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to the teamwork, to the flow, to the joy at work.
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Those emotions come from so many places and they're so unique to every person.
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But the reason I'm bringing it up is because when we talk about company culture,
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what we forget about is that the culture is grown from the juncture of these three pieces,
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the vision, the business objectives, and the team and the way the team can work
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towards those objectives.
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The culture is in the middle. It's the juncture of all those things coming together.
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I talk about company culture a lot. I think the first time I really did a public
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article about company culture was maybe 15 years ago.
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And I was working in agency land and there was so much emphasis on we're going
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to have ping pong and we're going to have a bowling team and we're We're going
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to have all these special events at the office.
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We're going to work hard. We're going to play hard.
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There was an open bar at some agencies.
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Sometimes there was lots of games and activities.
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And that is not...
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Going to create a company culture. That has nothing to do with culture.
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If we think about culture as a people,
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I'm American and I come from this type of culture, or I'm from Bolivia and this
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is the culture that's important to us, or I come from Italy and this is the
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foundation of the culture.
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Culture comes from your nuclear family.
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It comes from your extended family. It comes from from your community.
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It comes from a group of people living together in one sort of set of rules and ideas.
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Culture comes from these organic seeds, and it's really about people living
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together in these spaces and finding a way to live together,
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finding common ground in that way of living together.
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Companies are no different. A company is a microcosm of a community.
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I don't want to say it's a family. I think that's an unhealthy place to lean.
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We don't need to feel like we're creating a family unit here.
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It's just that we're in a space where we need to figure out how to work together,
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how to collaborate together, how to move things forward, how to do it in a way
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with the least amount of pain and the most amount of ease and simplicity.
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And how are we going to make impact? And let's set priorities.
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And how's everyone going to be heard?
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Culture comes from the work and how we do the work.
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It doesn't come from how we do the play. It's great to celebrate.
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I love that. I love people celebrating accomplishments.
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I think there's nothing wrong with that. But if our work is all triggering and
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emotional and weighted and hard to understand what the objectives are,
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if we can't get that work part right, there's no point in spending money or
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time trying to cultivate a culture that's outside of the work.
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Because what happens when you get into a flow with your colleagues,
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when you start solving problems together, when there's ease and flow in the work itself.
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You start to bond and make connections and feel really good about that collaborative
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process and that you solved a problem together. other.
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When we wait with all of this personal, emotional, triggering pieces,
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it's hard to get to that point of we're focused on the work.
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And I know there's a lot of emphasis right now about,
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making sure that there's space for people to be people and for people to be human.
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And I don't want to sound like I'm discounting that, but if we paired that back
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a little bit, if we worked on our own stuff on our own time, right?
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The things we know we're kind of bringing to the table, the boundaries we need
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to set for ourselves, the cup we need to fill for ourselves,
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the work work we need to do on our own.
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If we show up at work having done all that, if we show up in a space where we're
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like, I'm clean, I'm emotionally clean.
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I might have some stuff going on and I need to talk to people about that. That's fine.
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But I want to know that I'm taking responsibility for that work,
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for the personal growth work.
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That's my work to do. I don't want to bring that into the workplace and force
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the workplace to solve those issues for me. This is why I coach people and I consult.
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This is why I coach CEOs on the emotional side of change management.
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There's a lot of emotion that will come up, especially if it's your business
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and you're going through a massive change in your business.
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There are going to be emotions that come up. I'm not pretending like there aren't.
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I don't want you to forget about them.
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There's going to be an impact to you and the team if you're trying to just shove them down.
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There's a place for those emotions, but it's not weighted inside the work.
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Those things that come up, the fear, the insecurity, all the things that come
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up for all of us, like work triggers, all of that, we need to find a place to
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work through that that's not within the work itself.
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It's too much pressure on the work that we're doing, the work we're trying to
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move forward as a team, if we're weighting it with all of our personal emotional baggage.
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It's your responsibility as a leader, it's your responsibility as the part of
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a team to do that work and then to come to the table.
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And if you're seeing that weight of emotion that someone else is bringing,
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it's your responsibility to have that conversation, to say, hey,
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can I take you to the side?
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Remembering that we have to have that space for people to have that emotion,
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but we need to try to really distance it from the work itself.
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Let's not try to resolve our personal issues inside of a work project.
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Let's find time and space for it. Let's not ignore it, but let's put it in the appropriate place.
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Let's not force our managers to set boundaries for us. That's not their job.
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And as a leader, if you're feeling an emotional weight, it's your responsibility
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to work on it. Work on that before you bring it to the team.
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What are the things you have control of that you can change?
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And what are the things that you can't change? Both about yourself.
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And about the work, about the business objectives and the team objectives and the vision?
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What are the things within that where there's flex and you can start to shift
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it? And what are the things you can't shift?
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What are the things about yourself that you need to be clear about that are
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not going to change? For example, I used to be a project manager.
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And early in my career, I was a phenomenal project manager.
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I was very organized, very process forward, word, great at morale boosting,
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understanding the client needs, keeping things in budget. I was phenomenal.
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If you try to put me in a project management position right now, I will fail.
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I need to know confidently within myself that it doesn't mean anything about
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me, that I can't do that work anymore.
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If I weight that with insecurity and fear and people pleasing,
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I will try to do a job that I am really bad at.
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I need to know that. I don't need to prove that I could do it because I used to do it.
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What I need to do is feel really confident in the place where I am now, which is strategic.
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I am a strategic thinker. I'm a visionary. I see the pieces really clearly. I can boost morale.
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It's from a different place now. It's not from the weeds.
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And it's not that I'm above it or that I'm better than anyone.
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It's that I did that work for a long time. And then I incrementally moved into
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these more strategic roles and I'm too far from it now.
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And if I went into roles with this level of insecurity, like I need to prove something to myself.
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I need to prove that I can do it. I don't want to feel like a failure.
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I'm going to to do a job that's weighted with emotion.
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I'm not in it to do the work. I'm in it to prove something and work out some
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emotional thing that is on me to work out.
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We don't always know what these things are. This is the tricky part. I've done a lot of work.
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I've worked with a lot of coaches. I'm a coach. I coach myself.
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I try as hard as I might.
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I'm not successful all the time in understanding what my blind spots are,
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obviously, but I do try to lean on people to provide me the insight of what my blind spots might be.
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I've never stopped working with a coach since I started running my business
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because I need someone to say, hey, you've got a blind spot.
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You got to work through that. That's yours.
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Because I can go into a coaching session and vent and bitch all I want.
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It's great to have that space, but it's not going to help get me to the next place.
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You need to have a safe space to bring all those things. But I don't want someone
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just coming to the table to tell me you're doing all these things.
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Well, I'm all about growth mindset.
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What are my blind spots? What do I need to work on? We don't all feel super
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comfortable in that space all the time, and it's fine.
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But ask yourself the question when you're going into any type of work situation,
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am I coming to the table with any emotion?
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Do I have an expectation here of someone making me feel a certain way?
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Sometimes CEOs go into meetings and they're like, I need to feel X.
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I need to feel supported.
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I need to feel happy with the work. I need to feel like you guys have this.
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And what I will encourage leaders to do is take the feelings out of it.
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And then what do you need? It becomes so much more clear to your team when you
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take the emotion out of it because interpreting people's emotions is impossible.
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It's hard unless you're trained.
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Now, how do you describe what you need to see from the work that has nothing
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to do with changing an emotion in you?
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That's a lot of pressure to put on the work. I hear this a lot too.
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We need to make the clients happy.
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Nobody knows what that means. And also, we have no control over their happiness.
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We just don't. People have control over their own happiness.
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Different situations make different people feel different emotions.
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We can't control their emotions. We can't control the emotions of our boss.
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They can't control our emotions.
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We just need to be really clear about that. It's not your boss's fault.
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It's not the team's fault. It's not the client's fault about how you feel, your feelings.
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Take the emotion out of it, then what? Instead of, I need to feel supported after this meeting,
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the outcome I want from this meeting is to have three clear objectives that
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we can move towards. What are those three objectives?
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Email me afterwards. Give it some thought. Email me afterwards.
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Then we shift it. Then maybe support is the result of getting those three objectives
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clearly defined, but that's not where we start when we're at work.
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We can't start with an emotional place because it muddies the water.
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And when things are weighted with emotion, the culture becomes weighted with emotion.
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There becomes a place where people don't trust each other because things aren't
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being communicated clearly.
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People run around trying to please each other and make each other happy rather
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than focusing on the objectives, which will probably result in making them happy
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if they solve the problems together.
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There will be a joy and a happiness on the other end of that.
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But the focus is the work and what we bring to the work.
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And if you're in a highly emotional state, take a break, right?
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If I'm saying all this and you're like, but I need to do this and I need to
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push and I need to push and I need to do this and I need to do that because
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you don't understand, Jamie.
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I'm feeling overwhelmed and I need to get through that. And I'm going to only
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be able to do that by doing this project and that project and that project.
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It's time to take a break. If you're coming to work in a highly emotional state,
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and that means highly stressed,
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highly frustrated, highly upset or worried or triggered by something, take a break.
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If you're feeling that much emotion when you're coming to work, please take a break.
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Because what you don't realize is that those emotional states will change the way you work.
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They'll change the way you show up. We need to do the work so that when we show
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up, we're clean of those things. Not always.
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This podcast is literally called Business for Humans.
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We need to understand the human part, but we also need to stop putting the weight
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of our personal emotions on our people at work.
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I love colleague friendships.
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I love the friendships that develop at work. And it's okay outside of work to
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lean on those people and vent and have an emotional resource.
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If the business is a ship and we're manually making that ship go forward, we have to be aligned.
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We have to be in sync. We have to be doing this together because the boat won't
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move or the boat will turn the wrong way if only half of the team is pumping the oars.
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So if we're trying to collectively move this ship forward, we can sing.
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We can all be singing and doing it in rhythm and having fun,
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or we can do it all pissed off at each other and then it's going to be disjointed
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and it's never going to move forward. It's just going to stay still.
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If you're a consultant and you're walking the fine line between these three
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entities and you're seeing a weighted emotion, find a way to get some support in navigating that.
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Maybe you have a mediated conversation between this group or maybe this team
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needs to have a a little bit more support so that we can get to the real crux of the issue here.
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So we're not denying the fact that people are having emotions,
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but we're finding an alternate space to work through them so that the culture
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of the work is the let's sing and row and all be in sync.
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Let's create that kind of culture. Let's have joy while we're trying to push
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this thing forward. forward, let's make it as fun as we can,
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rather than bringing all of our personal emotions and frustrations and worries and insecurities.
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And then we're never going to find that place where we feel good about what
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we're doing. We're just going to always be angry.
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It's your fault. We're not moving forward because it's your fault.
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You're not strong enough. You're not fast enough.
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You're not doing it right. That's not going to get us anywhere.
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So if you're starting to be in a place where you're resentful or you're blaming
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the people around you, your managers and everybody, I'm not saying that they're
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not to blame for something.
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There are toxic work environments, 100%, and I'm not trying to deny that,
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but just do your work before you decide that it's everybody else's fault.
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And if you're consulting with a team where you're seeing this dynamic play out,
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take that step back, help them do that work.
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Because no amount of workshopping culture.
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Or having parties is going to solve for that part of creating a culture.
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What is the culture we're trying to foster here? Are we trying to foster collaboration
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and open communication?
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Well, if we're all bringing emotions and blaming each other, that's not the culture.
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And if we have really fun parties, but our workflow is broken,
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that's not a healthy culture.
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People love to commiserate.
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And that might be a bond. In agency land, we all have trauma bonds.
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And that might be a way that you're bonding. But if you're bringing that into
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the work and you're commiserating all the time,
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it's just not the type of emotion that's going to propel anyone forward in a
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way that's really truly feeling aligned with the reason you're working and your
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passions and your impact and all the things we want from work to feel more fulfilled
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and to feel like we're doing something and to feel recognized and to feel heard.
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We're not creating those types of cultures when we're ignoring that emotional
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weighted internal workflow breakdown while we're planning parties.
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It's just never going to solve that internal true cultural problem,
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quote unquote problem challenge that we're facing as a team.
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As a leader, you need to hold the responsibility you have to keep the vision
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moving forward and And to keep your emotions, have a place to put them.
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Have a place to work through them.
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Find your support network so you're not waiting it on the team.
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If you're a member of the team and you're waiting your work with emotions or
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you're feeling burned out or you're feeling resentful, take a step back.
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Do the work. Get some support.
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Before you decide you need to escape or this is the wrong fit or all the things, take a step back.
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Work through those emotions. And then come back.
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Re-energized, re-engaged, re-motivated, and see what's possible with your team.
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And if you don't feel like you want to be a member of that team, that's okay.
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But don't decide that when you're in the middle of this emotionally weighted place. Take that step.
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It's worth it. It's worth not making decisions from a really,
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really, truly emotional state.
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Take that step back. And if If you're a consultant, it's important to offer
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recommendations, but when people are in heightened levels of emotion, you have to be careful.
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You have to be gentle, but you also have to make sure that the work is getting done.
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This is the crux of my work as a coach. I'm not always just going to say all
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the things you want to hear.
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I am going to encourage you and I am going to make you feel good and recognized and seen,
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but I'm also going to show you where your blind spots are Because if I don't,
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you're going to keep going into spaces where you have these blind spots that
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no one's pointed out to you.
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And they're going to keep coming back and coming back.
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And that's when we start to see patterns of how you show up at work and all
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the things that you're dealing with at work and how you keep seeing some of the same themes.
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I'm not saying it's all on you, but if you don't do that work,
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they're going to keep showing up in every environment, with every manager,
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with every kind of business that you're entering.
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These things are going to come up. These patterns are going to show themselves.
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So it's always good just to know what's mine, be clear on what's yours.
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And it's not like shifting blame or, oh, okay, but then this person's not being
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held accountable or responsible for their part.
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No, that's not true. We will hold them accountable. But I like to just start with you.
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If you're managing people and they're going off into some rabbit hole and you're
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like, I thought I was clear.
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I don't know why they're going in that direction.
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I always tell people, start with making sure your side of the street is clean
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before you decide they're doing it wrong or there's something wrong with them,
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pull them back, reset expectations,
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make sure that you've done your
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due diligence, everything you can possibly do to make it really clear.
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Let them go for a while, check in.
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Get that moment of clarity. Do you feel clear?
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Let them go for a little while and then check in one more time.
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And then that's where you build trust in each other. They start to trust you
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that you're going to be clear, that you're going to circle back with them and
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you're not going to micromanage, but you are going to not just leave them on
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their own and then come back two months later and go, you're doing it wrong.
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They can trust that you will tell them, you will give them the feedback they
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need so they know where they stand.
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They start trusting you. You trust them because you've pulled,
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you've reined it back in, you've set new expectations, you've checked in,
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you know they've got it, and then you can let them go.
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As long as you know that you've done the work to take the responsibility on
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to say, okay, maybe I didn't set clear expectations. I'm going to do this again.
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That's you doing the due diligence and the work instead of emotionally attaching
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yourself to what the outcome is over here without having done the work that
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you need to do, you're placing blame.
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Oh, that person can't do the work. They don't know how to do the work.
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They can't do the work. They can't do the work. Well, have they been set up for success?
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Let's just clean that part up first. Whether you're on a team that's trying
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to move a business or a project forward, are we detaching ourselves from the emotional part?
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Are we making sure we're showing up at work clean?
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Are we doing that due diligence for ourselves, for our own well-being,
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for the the well-being of our teams, the people we're working with,
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the people we're trying to row with, are we doing that due diligence for them to support them?
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And are we aligned and moving this business forward in a way that's easier,
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moving roadblocks out of our way and doing it together in a collaborative way?
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These are really fundamental questions and so much of it is about this emotional piece.
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This is where so much burnout and workaholism sits because we use work as a
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buffer to move away from emotions we don't want to feel.
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And then we want the work to fill those emotional gaps for us that we're not
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willing to look at outside of work.
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And then we're surprised that when we try to rest, we don't know how to because
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we've been spinning and spinning and spinning on all these things at work.
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And when it's time to rest, we don't know how to stop using work as our emotional filler.
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So take that step back and remember that this is where culture starts.
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The way we show up at work, the way we show up for our people,
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the way we work together with them in collaboration, this is the culture.
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Let's stop pretending like it's about parties and team building events outside
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of work and all these external things that we think are going to fix the problem.
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It's about the way we work together.
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So, when you're looking at external support or ways to get help,
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just look at that piece first.
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Is there an emotional weight that's being placed on these things?
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Do we need to work through that first before we go into the other problems that
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we're trying to solve? It's a good place to start.
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Sometimes, of course, we all just want to be like, I don't want to have to do
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this work anymore. It's an obligation when we're in a community.
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That we're doing this work. When we're in a family, that we're doing this work.
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No one's looking for perfection here.
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We're not looking for the nirvana of we've done all the work and now it's done.
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It's an evolution. And if you are committed to a growth mindset and to learning
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and to the bliss that comes from those moments where you're all rowing together.
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If you've ever been in that flow with a team or with your family or with your friends,
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feeling that flow, that is the
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joy and if we can just get closer to those moments
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even if they're fleeting even if we're only in them for a moment that moment
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is so invigorating it's worth all the other bullshit and wading through all
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the other seas to get to that one moment of just pure flow it's worth the work.
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It's 100% worth the work. When you feel into that space, it is pure joy.
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So it's worth it. And when you're in that and you're your best self and you
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are operating in your zone of genius and you are delighted by your job,
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this moment right here, this feels good. This feels amazing.
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It could be any job on earth and all the work you do to get there is worth it.
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So I'm going to leave it at that. Good luck, everybody.
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And I am working on this too, so don't think I have it all figured out.
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But as I learn and as I'm in these moments where I know it's an evolution for
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me and I know it's a learning for me and I know that I have work to do,
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I want to be able to share it with you because I'm on this journey too.
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I am on the journey with you. I don't have it all figured out either.
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There's a joy in the figuring it out. That's why I'm here. I have joy in sharing
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the learnings. Just let it sink in.
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Think about the emotions that you might be pulling into things where it's hurting
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you more than serving you, and then find that support.
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I'm here. There's a whole slew of coaches out there that can help.
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Therapists can help. Partners can help.
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Find your people. find your your network and be willing to put in the work because
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it is worth it I promise and I will talk to you next week.
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Music.
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Measuring by. And for me, it's like, no, it's a little bit more personal than that.
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And not that we want to pull all the personal stuff into work,
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but this business for me is very personal.
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And so when I'm making decisions, life or business, I needed something that
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was a little bit more tied to my values and what's important to me.
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And that's how I make decisions in general. I'm a very heart forward person,
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but I also want to make sure I'm making decisions that are grounded.
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And this is really helping me. It doesn't mean that I'm going to make every
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decision and it's going to be easy, but at least I know what I want and I know
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what I need and I know what I don't want and I know what I don't need.
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And that's really helpful in me being honest with myself about what this decision is going to mean.
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So again, on this theme of focus, I hope this helps you understand what should be the next focus.
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What's your next priority?
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What's the next thing you want to really be diving into?
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And is it aligned within these quadrants? Does it make sense for you?
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And sometimes what makes sense for you and what makes sense for the business
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might be a little bit off too.
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So you can even do this exercise for the business. I like to think Think of
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businesses as, I hate the word avatar,
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but as a living, breathing organism of its own with its own set of needs and wants.
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You can do this exercise side by side.
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If you're running a business or leading a business, you can also do it side by side.
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It's important to know what's important to you versus what's important to the company.
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This is what we do as managers. managers, right? We want to know what's important
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to our teams, what's going to help them grow personally and professionally,
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and how does that align to the business and the business needs,
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right? That's like the exercise we do all the time.
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So if you're a small business owner, you can do this side by side.
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What does my business need, but what do I need?
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And hopefully that will help you at least get to the place where you can be
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really honest with yourself about what that decision is going to mean for you
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and then what actions you're going to take from that and what next things are
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going to be your primary focus.
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So I hope that's helpful. As always, you can always reach out to me,
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leave a comment, leave a note, send me an email. All of those are options.
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Love to hear from you, see how I can support you, but I'm going to leave it
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at that. Talk to you next week.