66. Using the F Word at Work: Feelings and How to Create an Emotional Culture with Lorissa Garcia and Prina Shah

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello and welcome to this episode of Ways to Change the Workplace with myself, Bruno Shah. I love what I do. I'm a global leadership coach, a consultant, a trainer, a keynote speaker, a podcaster. I help you to develop your leaders, your teams, and I help you to optimize your organizational cultures. I'm here to help you find ways to change your workplace. Why? Because we spend more time in our waking day at work than we do with our loved ones. It has to be a good place to be. So in this podcast, you can expect a mix of interviews with amazing thought leaders and then some solo episodes from myself as well. Get ready.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Now, I'm doing a bit of an intro, breathy intro, because the podcast drops out a little bit for just a couple of seconds. Work with it because the information that Larissa shares with you is gold. You're gonna need a pen and a paper. Now, the other reason I'm doing a bit of an intro to the intro is yes, we talk about emotions in the workplace and we're talking about positivity. I also need to give you the caveat the clause of toxic positivity within the workplace and the fact that we need to delineate between the two. Now, if you haven't heard the episode by Dr. Mikey Neehouse on episode number 47 titled Cheer Up Is Toxic Positivity Ruining Your Culture? Listen to that after you've listened to this episode because they go hand in hand so well. Hello and welcome to this episode of Ways to Change Your Workplace with myself Preenasha, and I'm very excited to introduce to you today my friend Larissa Garcia, who is all the way from Melbourne. Larissa, welcome.

SPEAKER_03 2:22

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Oh, my absolute pleasure, Larissa. I have a bit of an introduction to you, so if I may. Go ahead. Okay. So the wonderful Larissa is from Melbourne, and she owns an organization called Assembly Culture, which I really want to talk to you about today. Larissa specializes as a coach and facilitator in the space of leadership and culture. Larissa partners with leaders and organizations and teams, provoking thought and action for small shifts, behavioral shifts that make a big difference. Larissa is a certified specialist in the emotional culture deck and works with organizations to uncover emotions, values, stories, practices, habits, rituals that enable healthy emotional cultures. And as most of you know, my background, I studied a degree in sociology and social psychology, and all of this talks to cultures and subcultures and all sorts related to that. And today I want to talk to Larissa about the concept of emotional cultures at work versus cognitive cultures. I really want to unpack that for our audience, Larissa, because people don't know really what it is. And you are talking a lot about it in the work that you're doing in supporting forward-thinking organizations. So Larissa, welcome. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Larissa, so I want to begin with asking you a first big and open question. Your organization is called assembly culture. What's that about and why did you call it that? And then can you tell us a little bit about the kind of work you're doing at the moment, please?

SPEAKER_03 4:10

Yeah, absolutely. So assembly culture was brought together. I guess I do a lot around leadership and a lot around culture. And I wanted to bring that culture off to the side to spotlight culture in itself. Now, the reason for the assembly culture name, um, the definition of assembly is to gather for a common purpose. And I thought that just encapsulates culture so well. And I just thought when we assemble, we get things done and we have, you know, these uh different mindsets and beliefs and people and personalities and characters coming together, and that's what culture is really about. So assembly culture kind of fit the bill. Um, in terms of the type of work that I do, so I do uh anything from a single workshop where we'd be exploring uh culture for an organization or a s or a team, which is a subculture, right through to culture journeys where we'd be going through and unpacking, looking at um the cognitive culture and the emotional culture, which we'll talk about shortly, and unpacking, you know, what's the current culture, what's the current landscape, what's the desired culture, where do people want to be, and how do we fill that gap? So it could range from a single workshop to a couple of workshops, uh, to some one-on-one coaching, coaching circles. So depending on what sort of journey and how long that journey needs to be, uh, it would be bespoke design for each individual organization that I work with. Um, so all focused around bringing more emotion, more F-words, feelings to the workplace. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

F-words, yes. And I love the fact that you said it's bespoke because every single culture and every single microcosm of a subculture, even, is so different with every organization.

SPEAKER_03 5:44

Absolutely. So subcultures used to be a bit of a dirty word. I think in my time, subculture was something that uh that maybe hindered the performance of the organization because it was, you know, siloed or broken off into separate pillars. But actually, subculture has a lot of power. So within small teams and functional teams, there is subcultures within there that make that team or that function work really well. And so we should be honoring that and pulling that out and having people articulate what that is uh so that we're able to, you know, allow people to belong in those organizations within the team that they're in or within the function that they're in.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Beautiful. And it completely makes sense in every kind of societal aspect of sociology hat on again. Subcultures are a normal part of any society, whether it be from a religious perspective, we'll have a subculture within there. Families have subcultures. Come on, people, we can all relate to this, yeah. And of course, this relates to the workplace as well. Yeah, yeah, brilliant and fascinating. I love you know assembly culture. So assembly is to gather for a purpose. In um the Indian language, uh, there's there's a word which is a beautiful word, Larissa, and I always try to bring it into the workplace, but I haven't found a way to uh officially bring it into the workplace yet. There's a word called satsang, and that is uh to be in good company, and it's gathering to be in good company. So hello, we are talking the same language.

SPEAKER_02 7:08

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Brilliant. Um, okay, Larissa, I really want to get into this. So before we delve into emotional culture, cognitive culture, for our audience who are potentially new to all things culture and culture optimization. Can you high-level describe what an organizational culture is, please?

SPEAKER_03 7:30

Yeah, sure. So often when we talk about organizational culture, we we kind of have this shorthand that talks about it's the way that we do things around here. So it's often anchored in values. So we have a set of values that anchor the culture. And it's about the practices, the behaviors, the beliefs that each individual brings to the organization, uh the mindsets, whether that be individual or collective, the systems and the infrastructure within that organization. Uh, so cognitive culture has been studied for years and it takes into account the collective um kind of things that are coming together as a collective, often very prescribed. Um it's it's about the organization telling us how we should be in the workplace. Um, very observable through things like dress, any practices, um, uh, you know, structures, behaviors, verbal cues, those are the sorts of things that sort of, you know, give us an indication into the cognitive culture. Whereas when we, so values and behaviors, for instance, would be a piece of a cognitive culture because it's telling us how to be. Whereas when we look at emotional culture, it takes into account how people feel, it looks at the influencers and the influencers, so the things and the people, uh, around, you know, what are how are those things influencing how we show up in the workplace, how we go about our day, what are our habits, habits, what are our rituals, what are the actions and behaviors that are outwardly being shown. So in an emotional culture where there's uh joy and fun and playfulness, you'll see a lot of laughter and, you know, a lot of joking around the office and and activities which encourage that sort of play. Whereas in a culture where there's perhaps fear or aggressive, an aggressive nature, you will see behavior that reflects that, lots of closed doors in offices, you know, maybe some shouting or some uh behavior that's aggressive, uh, even in microactions, even in facial expressions, those sorts of things.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Okay. So I'm gonna step back a bit. Organizational culture is the DNA of how we be do belong here. Yeah, yeah. At that basic level. Yeah, okay. Um, and then I've been looking at your work, Larissa. So, Larissa, for anyone who uh is listening in, I'm gonna put Larissa's details in the show notes, and you have to read what she writes about it. It I geek out on it. So this is Larissa's work. So Larissa talks about a cognitive culture, so absolutely role modeling the values. So there'll be, you know, a code of conduct that we all have to sign when we start start a new job, you know. Yes, we will comply. So that's that cognitive kind of culture, and that cognitive culture, therefore, then tells us how to behave appropriately according to the code of conduct. Um, it tells us how to make decisions according to the organization's way. Um, it shows us how to demonstrate leadership according to their cognitive culture. Um and basically it's telling us how to it's telling us to play nicely, which is you know, your words I remember reading. And I love that, but it's telling. It's very, like you said, it's very directive, it's very prescriptive. I say you do, kind of like a command-control uh culture, let's say. Yeah. Um, and that's what we're we're very much all used to, that kind of culture. That's the norm at the moment.

SPEAKER_03 10:51

It is, it is, it's what we've been brought up with. Yes. As we've gone through our work lives, the cognitive culture has been the thing that's been, you know, telling us what to do, when to do it, how to do it, you know, why to do it. Uh, and so when you start thinking about emotions, we think about the emotion that we're feeling in the workplace causes us to behave in certain ways. So emotion drives behavior.

SPEAKER_04 11:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 11:13

And so when I talked about values being that anchor for culture earlier, you know, we looked at values being, if we were looking at a hierarchy, values at the top, a set of behaviors goes behind those values as a framework to say, this is what we will do, this is what we won't do, this is what we'll tolerate, this is what we won't accept. And so when it starts, when we start to dig down into emotional culture, we go one level deeper than that. And we look at what are the emotions that the organization is enabling for our people, and what are the behaviors that are coming as a result of those emotions? And so you start to pick up themes of the actual behaviours and the actual values of an organization as opposed to something that's written on the wall or in a corporate document.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

This is a massive missing piece, Larissa. And can I ask you, from your own personal opinion or all of the research, I know Larissa does a lot of research, all of the research that you've done, how on earth has this come about, the whole concept of an emotional culture? What's your thinking?

SPEAKER_03 12:08

Yeah, so interestingly, you said, you know, most people haven't heard of cognitive culture until I started looking at it into emotional culture about four years ago now. I had never heard of the differences of cognitive versus emotional culture. And there's some really interesting work from uh two academics, Sigal Barsaid and Olivia O'Neill. And they sort of have championed this work around emotional culture. But I guess the turning point for me was tripping over a tool from a company called Riders and Elephants called the Emotional Culture Deck. And I saw it and straight away it got my attention, emotional culture deck. Like I'm a I'm a big fan of any tool anyway, cards and you know, tools in the workplace I love because it provides this, you know, a vehicle to have a conversation in another way. But as I started to go down the path of emotional culture, I realized that it's not just a card game, it is massive out there in the academic world around emotions and how they drive behavior, you know, in society, but in organizations specifically.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Yes, but we haven't applied it to the workplace properly still, I don't feel. And that's why you're doing all of this wonderful work. So um emotional culture within the workplace. I'm just thinking uh a practical uh application for our audience, Larissa, then okay, we've got high-level values that might be trust, respect, care, whatever else. High-level statements, they mean nothing to you and I unless we've got the descriptors of tell me more, the behaviors, the emotions. How do you work with an organization? So you've got high-level values, which are just out, you know, high in this sky out there. Yeah, how do we make them more meaningful with the work that you've done? I know you've done lots of values work as well, haven't you?

SPEAKER_03 13:53

Yeah, so I guess there's two ways that I would work with a client. Uh, one, if they've already got their values and they're set in stone, then we would work from a values perspective and look at um uh what their values are, do they fit the current landscape? I think when we, you know, as you said, they're words, but they also can be very subjective. Yes, you know, people put a different meaning to them. And so your behavioral framework provides the clarity for people. What I often do though is work with organizations who have maybe got a set of values or are not sure if their values are right and work from bottom up. So we will go through the emotions in the organization to map the current emotions, what's happening in the organization at the moment, what are people feeling, why are they feeling that? You know, are they feeling disempowered, disillusioned? You know, are they feeling um as though they're, you know, they're uh not able to have courage to speak up? And so we'd be looking at the things that were enabling that type of behavior from an unpleasant perspective, if you like. Um and then look at the things that are enabling pleasant um behaviors and pleasant emotions to be felt. So if people are feeling empowered and positive and brave and courageous, then that's going to be reflective. And so with the emotions piece, we'll start there. I also do some other activities. One of my favorites, um, which I'm going to give away here because I really love it, um, is to ask the organization if you met this organization at a party, who would they be? And you start to get a really good indicator of the words and the types of things that are coming up around care or inclusion or safety or um risk, you know, taking risks or innovation, whatever that might be. And so you start to basically get a bit of a picture of what people are saying, not just leadership. So I would always start with the organization's people co-creating. What does it look like to work here? What does it feel like to work here? And so getting a really good picture to really test, stress test those values if they've already got a set of values. If they haven't got the values, great, that's a great blank canvas to start from. And you would do that similar type um process going through with that, you know, a similar type activity of at a party. If you were to meet an organization at a party, who would they be? Um, and doing really thinking around the emotions of what people feel, why they're feeling it, what's hindering, what's helping, what's, you know, what could be we be doing that's different, and getting that desired culture and starting to move towards setting up practices and rituals that will move towards more of that desired culture, as opposed to getting stuck in the way we've already done things before, which is not providing that emotional, healthy emotional culture.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Yep. And okay, Larissa, another missing piece is I don't feel this is my personal opinion, from my experience so far, I don't feel that organizations have placed enough value on that desired culture aspect. Like, where are we heading? What's our vision? So, yes, you know, an organization will have a vision statement, mission statement, strategic plan, whatever. Your strategic plan means nothing unless you've got the desired culture to suit that whatever achievements you want to make, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:03

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Um, yeah, so if you've got the desired culture, you're constantly thinking about um the micro moments that you talked about, the rituals, the elements that you want to create to get you to that place, because it's not going to happen overnight as well, I imagine, is it?

SPEAKER_03 17:20

It's not. And I guess organizations these days, I think we're becoming better at communicating that strategy piece, yeah. That bigger picture piece. And I think, you know, as leaders start to um work with their subcultures around uh creating that, you know, healthy culture within the sub-teams, I think it's important to link back to the big picture. Otherwise, it's just a destination that, you know, is doing the, you know, doing the work of a silo. Yeah, absolutely. So you have to have a destination in the GPS, otherwise, you'll just go on a nice meandering scenic path and and not actually make it to your destination at all.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Love that analogy. Um, so I've read um Larissa's work on what an emotional culture is, and Larissa, I'm gonna paraphrase your words here. So, an emotional culture is in the micro moments, it's in facial expressions, it's in the body language, it's even in the decor of your surroundings, it's the environment that you're in, and like you said, it's the rituals and routines. Now, when we're talking about facial expressions and body language, that's a human uh aspect, and I own my behavior, I own my emotions. However, sometimes I don't because things can go astray and life takes over, right? And then there's an aspect of emotional contagion which happens at work that people don't talk about. So, can you firstly describe what emotional contagion is? And then can we just can we discuss what that is in the workplace, please, Larissa?

SPEAKER_03 18:47

Yeah, sure. So emotional contagion is almost like, you know, similar to the pandemic. We catch emotion from other people. We catch a vibe, we catch the the mood, the feeling that's going around. And there was a study done out of the University of Sydney that uh is it's featured in a book called The Culture uh Culture Code, actually. Um, and it's one of my favorites uh from a you know culture perspective, one of my favorite books. And this study from the University of Sydney uh planted people, planted one person to play a different role in a, I think it was an IT um company who was starting a new project and played the role of slack. You know, making that person behave as a slacker, a jerk, and a downer in different settings and testing how long it took for that emotion to catch on. And it was as little as seven minutes that that emotional contagion took over the rest of the group. And so, you know, the downer who was negative and low energy and slumping all over the desk, within seven minutes, people were starting to mirror that behavior and catch that emotion. And so emotional contagion from a workplace perspective can be so powerful. You know, it's uh it's driven by an individual or a group of individuals who are feeding off of each other. Uh, and you know, it can actually bring down the whole team, the you know, a whole meeting within seven minutes, as little as seven minutes, which is fascinating, fascinating stuff.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Isn't it just? And again, I liken this emotional contagion to let's say a family, you know. Um, when I was young, you know, if mom's having a bad day, you feel it, you feel it, and you take it on as well. Um and then again, you know, like if it's your manager having a crappy day, I will give you a practical example. So I when I worked in my corporate days, um, I used to work with a manager who had up and down moods, and my team would, before I even came into work, they'd text me good mood or bad mood beforehand, and they'd say to me, Okay, you can say good morning today, don't say anything this morning. People are on edge.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

You sense it, you feel it. Even if I haven't verbalized how I'm feeling, we are such uh connected, beautiful creatures that we feel we can sense how another person's feeling emotionally, and we take it on.

SPEAKER_03 21:10

Absolutely, absolutely. And uh, you know, so it reminds me of a quote from uh Dr. Mark Brackett. He wrote a book called Permission to Feel. It talks about emotions in children, but I took so much away from that as, you know, from a leadership perspective, from a team member, from a from a parent's perspective. And it talks about the fact that you are constantly sending signals as a as a you know, in terms of the mood or the emotions that you're feeling. And your signals are approach or avoid. So your signals are sending out the vibe of approach or avoid. And so if you're a leader or a manager or even a contributor in an organization who's constantly sending that avoid, avoid, avoid signal through whatever body language that is, facial expression, tone of voice, you know, the way that you the walk around the office, that's going to be detrimental to the culture eventually. That is people are going to catch on to that pretty quickly. And you will be the person that will, you know, be the person to avoid. It will, it will. Be is you know something that uh yeah really impacts your personal brand, impacts the team around you, impacts you know the culture of the team and uh the organization.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

100%. I'm gonna be crude and say shit sticks, and that's really true, Larissa, because uh the professional brand of a leader, oh my gosh, people are gonna remember how you make them feel. There's a Maya Angelou quote, something along the lines of people are gonna remember how you make them feel.

SPEAKER_03 22:29

Yes, yeah, they won't remember what you do, but they'll remember what you're how you feel. Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Which leads me nicely to a revolutionary thing that you did when you launched your business. Can you, I'm not gonna steal your thunder. Can you tell me about the posters?

SPEAKER_03 22:45

Yes, so cognitive culture, uh cognitive and emotional culture was something that I've been studying for some time. And one of the things that I recognized was that contagion can have the biggest impact on how we set up an emotional culture to be, you know, successful or how it might be undone. And so this contagion uh happens in workplaces and we're often not aware even aware of it. And so, you know, even you said before, you can have a boss who is, you know, coming into work, slamming doors, grunting at people, and you know, and uh that signal of avoid. I think that can catch on quite quickly. And so I designed posters that sort of you know call out behavior to say, hey, are you the person, are you this person, are you this person that's spreading, you know, some bad vibes around the office? Um here's a you know, five-minute uh mindfulness exercise to take a step back and have a have a debrief. And, you know, we don't want to avoid feeling unpleasant emotion. We don't want to tell people not to feel unpleasant emotion. I think that's really important when it comes to emotional culture. We're not suppressing that. We don't want to push people into this toxic positivity all the time. Um but what we want to do is for people to take the pause and understand what the impact of that is on other people. Uh and so went out with the posters, uh, it kind of went a little bit viral, which I didn't intend it to do. Um which, yeah, which was good. It got a lot of, it got a lot of uh a lot of attention, which is amazing. And so that, you know, that kind of contagion has become something that assembly culture is known for.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

It's beautiful. And I've seen um photos of organizations putting it on their meeting doors, you know. Yeah, check in on your emotions before you walk in in this meeting. Yes, Larissa, you are creating a revolution.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

I hope so.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

It might be a simple thing to consider beforehand, but my gosh, the effect of this of us checking in on our emotions before we actually go and lead a team meeting or whatever kind of meeting, it's huge, it's massive.

SPEAKER_03 24:41

Absolutely. And it's and you know, it's not just in a corporate environment, hospitals, aged care units, yoga studios, your hairdresser, you know, as you're walking into those people, what's I always sort of ask, what's the weather you're bringing today? What, you know, what's the what's the atmosphere around you that you're bringing and potentially impacting other others with?

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Yeah, and thank you so much. You made a really good point about toxic positivity as well. So we don't want to ignore our emotions, we don't want to, because emotions are data, you know, they tell us that something's up. Well, we need to listen to ourselves as well. Um, yes, very good point. And I spoke to Dr. Mikey Nihouse uh about you know toxic posity on another podcast, so not to denote any emotions, don't ignore your emotions, but check in on yourself. And it's you know, it's self-reflection, which is a huge aspect for all of us. Uh, we often in a workplace as well, Larissa, we go from meeting to meeting to meeting on autopilot. We often don't get that chance to check in on ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 25:43

Yes, yeah. It's just taking the pause in between those meetings because you're picking up the energy of other people around you. So, you know, what are you what are you bringing, but also what are you picking up and taking alongside, you know, alongside you? And then taking home at the end of the day to debrief over the over the dinner table.

SPEAKER_04 25:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:57

You know, that's that's the I guess the you know, the indicator into healthy uh emotional cultures is what's the dinner table conversation you're having? What's the conversation you're having about work with your friends? You know, what's the barbecue chat that you're having around your workplace? Yeah because that will give you insight into whether you've got a healthy emotional culture.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

Completely. And, you know, the really important aspect of this for organizations to really focus on their emotional culture is to enhance the psychological safety of everybody in the workplace and you know, psychosocial hazards and all of this uh new lingo that's the latest, especially in Australia at the moment. Larissa, can you talk to psychological safety or psychosocial hazards in relation to this uh emotional culture uh topic?

SPEAKER_03 26:43

Yeah. So look, I think, you know, I I get asked, I reckon at least once a week, I get asked from people within, you know, uh my sort of circles or connections around using emotions in workplaces. Is it safe to do it in in teams that are, you know, not psychological, safe psychologically safe? And so I think there's a there's a real role for facilitators to play in that and HR people and the people that are going in to do this work around emotions. I think that there needs to be a safe space for people to talk about their emotions. And as facilitators, we need to be able to set that up. I think there needs to be a place where you can recognize that debriefing with a group of 20 people probably is not going to be a safe environment for anyone, neverone in a group that's not psychologically safe. And so, you know, doing some little breakouts to do one-on-one debriefing and talk about that one-on-one, or start to just introduce the emotion as a language, as opposed to what do you want to feel today? What have you felt in the last month? What do you want to feel in the next week? I think it's, you know, starting to introduce emotions as a safe language to use. And so, you know, bringing in some emotional conversations of uh, you know, using some check-in activities in a meeting, how are you feeling, or how do you want to feel at the end of this meeting, and start to get emotional literacy. I think often when it comes to emotions and talking about emotions in workplaces, we don't have the literacy to talk about it. We don't have that language. And so when you've got a tool that you can use to almost externally validate that from yourself, you've got a tool that is normalizing some of these emotions that people feel. Um, it becomes easier for people to pick up a card or, you know, out of this tool and say, I'm feeling disempowered today, and this is why. Or I'm feeling disempowered, and that's all I want to say. And that's okay. We can honor that people don't want to share. We need to honor that, you know, people uh, you know, some people have experienced trauma. Emotions can trigger that trauma to come up again. And so we would encourage people to play. We say lean into the play. We I I call, you know, I call talking about emotions a full contact sport. We encourage you to lean in, but lean into your edge. Don't be on that window of your edge. Uh, talk where you're comfortable. We won't ask everyone to share. So I never go around the room and say, okay, you go next, and then you go next, and then you go next. I invite people to share and then it starts a conversation and starts to build the trust in the team that there's some people that are being vulnerable. Um, it works a treat when the leader goes first. When the leader goes first and shows some vulnerability, it suddenly opens up the rest of the team to go, this is a safe environment for me to be vulnerable to. And so it's that opportunity for people to really um, you know, talk about what they're feeling, why they're feeling it, what they want to feel. Um, and you know, I've I've found that probably it builds psychological safety as opposed to undoes that psychological safety.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

Yeah, yeah. And thank you so much for making the point about the emotional literacy and that we're all on a different, you know, spectrum of emotional literacy as well. And that's completely fine and completely normal. Um, Larissa has lots of resources on her website, and then another wonderful resource. I don't know if you have it on your website, if I saw it there or somewhere else, there's a whole list of emotions that you can even download by Googling. Yeah. Um just having that on your desk even. Yeah, so handy to check in on yourself. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 30:12

Yeah. So there's a couple of resources that I would um recommend. The Feeling Wheel by the Gottman Institute is I've got it on my desk actually, it's just over here. And it's it's uh it's a wheel that looks at you know the different aspects and then gets down to more granularity around emotion. So it's not just happy, sad, mad, angry, you know, it's ghost into a lot more detail. So that's a really good resource to have. And I've got it right there that I look at, you know, pretty much every day. Um, the emotional culture deck is the other tool that I use, and you can go online and get a free download. So there's, you know, you can download that as a free resource, print it out, and you've got a deck of your own cards basically to play with and have some, you know, insights into emotional literacy there.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Beautiful. Because Larissa, I I feel, and I know, this isn't only just organizational culture change, we're changing individuals as well within a workplace. So it truly is revolutionary when workplaces take this on and do it in a psychologically safe way. Yeah. That's the big element. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:09

I think when it comes to that individual work, you know, is so important. I think when we talk about transformation and change and things happening in organizations, organizations don't transform, individuals do. And that's a quote from uh a book called Mastering Leadership. And they talk about the fact that it's individual mindsets that change. You know, you have to work with the individuals within an organization to see a change process. Going at it, you know, and you'd have you'd know this from the from your change experience and and and expertise. It's that individual work is so powerful. And it's also really, you know, valued and appreciated. Uh, I did a session last week with a group and we worked on the emotional culture deck individually. I will always work from an individual perspective first. We always do that individual activity of what you want to feel in the workplace and what you don't want to feel but might from time to time. And as we were debriefing that process, someone said, I've never been in an organization that's come to us with an individual activity. It's always been about the organization and the strategy and the planning and the goals and you know the direction. But this individual work is so important. And I absolutely agree, wholeheartedly agree with her.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

Amazing. Um, I delivered uh an executive coaching session yesterday, and it's you know linked to transformation and change, and I pitched lots of stuff. But one of the things I said that in our uh executive coaching, we're going to be working on three elements me, we, and that's us as an executive team, and then us, the whole organizational perspective. And I loved it less yesterday, Larissa. So when people were responding, and you know, we were having a wonderful conversation, they were saying, This is from a me perspective, this is from a beautiful perspective, this is from an us perspective. So I thought, yes, we're starting something different now. And it's simple as that, just a shift in your language shifts your thinking, then as a result, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:02

Yeah, absolutely. And that's development, right? That's where you get the gold. Yeah, that's where the transformation comes from.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

100%. Now, if we still have naysayers, Larissa, if people are still saying, what on earth is this emotional culture stuff about I don't still believe it, what are the pros of an emotional culture? And are there any cons?

SPEAKER_03 33:22

Yeah, look, so the pros, let's start with the pros. So I think, you know, things like um from an individual level, employee satisfaction and engagement goes up, uh, you know, your trust and psychological safety. Um, so that trust around actually people care for me, but my manager cares for me, let's, you know, they've given us the time to do this. So trust and psychological safety. Um, it also can uh sort of start to impact things like um financial drivers, financial measures, things like absenteeism. When we start to think about uh mental health, uh mental and physical health, you know, you start to look at the links between emotional um expression. Um, you know, being able to just name and talk about an unpleasant emotion can immediately take away the power from that. And so from an individual perspective, that can, you know, that can really lead to some great outcomes. Um, when it comes to um uh you know things like burnout, there's also, you know, uh some studies from Sakal Basid and uh Livy and O'Neill that talk about the measures around burnout and preventing burnout because people are able to talk about, catch their emotions, name it, name it to tame it, they talk about, you know, so um that's a Dan Siegel uh sort of philosophy around naming to tame. So things like creativity and innovation, you know, those are the sorts of things that organizations can see an uplift in when they start to introduce emotional cultures which allow people to be more emotional, to talk about emotions, to experience some of those tough or tricky emotions and be given space to do that and be given space to have a conversation around that. Um, so I'm just working on uh a little bit of research now around how emotions can um impact decision making. So that's another, yeah, so that's another area. And there was a study done in uh permission to feel around teachers marking uh students' assessments. Um, and so they set them up in in sort of groups and gave them videos to watch which were unpleasant or made them angry or upset or, you know, give them kind of feelings of uh what we might class as undesirable feelings. And then a group of teachers went through a different process of feelings that were, you know, much more desirable. And the outcomes around their marking were so fascinating. So it does actually, yeah. So the decision-making process is massively impacted by our emotions and how we're feeling.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

Any cons?

SPEAKER_03 35:49

Yeah, look, so I did run through a few of them before around, you know, you need to provide the space for people, the safe space for people to talk about their emotions, understand that that you know, trauma may come up. And so being able to offer some support around that, wrap that support, you know, around any trauma or anything that comes up that triggers people. Um what we don't want to do is force people to uh feel a certain way. So, you know, as an organization, we want to feel uh inspired, and so everyone around us must feel inspired. We don't tell people how to we just provide the the the environment, the atmosphere for people to feel more pleasant emotions. Uh, and so you know, we want we want to make sure that that um that's dealt with. We also want to be able to um, I guess, uh find ways for people to, you know, deal with the tricky emotions that they're coming up with. So, you know, be able to say, hey, I'm feeling just a bit down today or I'm feeling a bit off today. Um, and you know, for the people around them to know what they need to be able to deal with and you know, work through their tricky emotions.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

This just makes us connect better as humans as well, Larissa.

SPEAKER_03 37:02

Absolutely, absolutely. A lot of the work that I'm getting called in to do at the moment, and I think it's you know, just on the back of lockdowns and COVID and lots of organizations going through a lot of change. Um, so I'm being called in to do connections work. We want to reconnect, we need to bring our people back together, we want to have conversations that are on a deeper level. And so this, you know, these conversations around emotions fit beautifully into that.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

Amazing. Um, I love the fact that you said, and a really important fact for organizations to remember you cannot force emotions upon people. Larissa, I worked at an organization once which had a value of upbeat.

SPEAKER_02 37:39

Was it a startup? No. No. Sounds like a startup.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

It went down like a lead balloon. Uh people did not accept it. And people said, Do not tell me how to feel. So people, you know, like organizations need to be very careful about their values as well, and the values not being so prescriptive from an emotional perspective. So there's a fine balance, which is why they work with people like yourselves and me, because it's it's it's still nuanced because every organization, and I love the fact at the beginning you said you tailor your work to suit every organization, because there's different levels of maturity, there's different stuff happening beneath the iceberg that you first need to uncover and tailor it to suit that level of emotional maturity from an organizational and an individual perspective.

SPEAKER_03 38:28

Yeah, yeah. Look, I think you know, the upbeats one's an interesting one. I think if you want your people to feel upbeat, then what are the practices and the habits and the rituals that you're building to help people feel upbeat as an outcome? I wouldn't be using it as a directive, I'd be using it as a that's an outcome that we want people to feel.

SPEAKER_04 38:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:45

Um, and building, you know, building the rituals and the and the practices around uh around that.

SPEAKER_01 38:51

Completely. Larissa, I could talk to you forever, but I have one final question.

SPEAKER_02 38:55

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

My final question is Larissa, if I was to hand you a magic wand, what is one way you would change the way of the workplace?

SPEAKER_03 39:05

I I have thought about this question, and it's a pretty simplified answer, I think, Prina. And it's about making these types of conversations more mainstream. You know, the psychological safety conversation and and philosophy is becoming normalized now. I'd love to see organizations using, you know, some of this emotional literacy work, being able to have conversations about emotions and what the organization is enabling for people on a more regular basis, using emotions to set up change, using emotions to set up, you know, a project team, you know, um, being able to debrief or do a retrospective around, you know, what did we feel and and what were the milestones here? And, you know, those are the sorts of conversations I'd love to see go more mainstream.

SPEAKER_01 39:48

Beautiful. Larissa, um, I'm gonna finish with one more line. I I can talk to you forever, Larissa. So, from an organizational perspective, we know, you know, I know, that the one of the hardest things that happens for leaders, especially, is the difficult conversation aspect. Now, you've just talked about, I wish that there were more emotional and psychological conversations within the workplace. If that happened, you wouldn't have to have as many difficult conversations. So Larissa, drop the mic there. Wonderful, wonderful. Thank you so much for today. It has been a brilliant chat, as always, Larissa. If you like this episode, check out the show notes and sign up to my newsletter. That will help your workplace to be less shitty. It's full of novel ideas, good food for thought. And if you like this episode, pass it on to at least two people who will benefit. That's your good deed done for the day. Also, remember to subscribe to the Ways to Change Your Workplace Podcast via your podcast provider. And I will see you in the next episode.