Go e-motion

"It's business, don't take it personally." This seems to be the predominant view of professional life, where you can ignore your feelings and focus on the "rational" facts. Decisions are subjected to the higher purpose of shareholder value and how people are affected by this is "just business."
This view is made a lot easier to sustain when people are referred to as "human resources," or even better, the mythical FTE's (full time equivalents).

Rational, predictable, and flexible in their ability to be deployed. That makes the machine of business run a true course. The captains of industry can steer the strategic course as simply as a captain steers a ship, because the ship responds perfectly to a firm hand on the tiller. But nature is messy, and people suffering from alienation are not productive, inventive or resilient to stress. Innovation and new ideas come from being unpredictable. Organisational resilience comes from individuals responding to new and unexpected threats in novel ways. Business is an organic process, not a mechanical one. It is chemistry, biology and energy all bundled into the messy murky world of emotions.

It is amazing that business practise has for so long been able to promote a non-emotional view to one of our core human activities. Most probably it felt safe being able to ignore our emotions when so many of us feel threatened and confused by our own feelings. When they are mentioned, it is usually in the context of the positive. Good leadership instills pride and motivation. Happiness has made a huge comeback as a metric for success. Emotions, like human beings however are not one dimensional. Let's take a look at that.

Two years ago I set the challenge of writing one post a day on a 42 day journey. The inspiration would come from the experiences I encountered along the way. The Tao of inspiration. This year I am embarking on a similar journey: Austria, Berlin, London, Lisbon, Seattle, Portland, Johannesburg, Cape Town. Rather than looking at random incidents however, the 42 days will be devoted to exploring the impact of emotions on our professional selves and the human interactions we call business.

To navigate this journey I'll use Robert Plutchik's "wheel of emotions" as a map. Finding the "positive motion"  we experience from integrating all our emotions in making a meaningful contribution to the flow of economic exchange. Because business is very personal. Most adults dedicate a large chunk of their existence to make business work. The reward to our own identity and sense of self needs to be in balance if we want to prosper in a post growth environment. After all, the core of the word "emotion" is "motion." That which moves us.