Leading Feelings During One-On-Ones
Leading feelings begins with setting intentions. How will people feel after their one-on-one with you? Focus on two areas. How will they feel about themselves and their work?
Influence not coercion:
You can’t make people feel something. Leading feelings is designing conversations that make specific emotions likely. Craft environments where positive energy feels natural. Leading feelings require influence, not coercion.
Leading feelings:
How do you want people to feel about themselves? Focus on four emotions.
- Valued.
- Challenged.
- Supported.
- Energized.
People feel valued when you respect them. Describe their contribution as you see it. How do they add value to their colleagues and team? Share your observations with openness.
You challenge people when you focus on things they’re not doing. Reflect on potential not current performance. Ask, “What would you like to do that you aren’t currently doing?” or “What would you like to do more of?”
People feel challenged when you see more in them.
Support people by saying, “How can I help?” or “What do you need from me?” But don’t do someone’s job for them. Try asking, “Who might I connect you with?”
Identify energizing activities to fuel vitality. Ask, “What parts of your job give you energy?” Follow up with, “What about that gives you energy?”
Send an email:
Use parts of this post to craft an email. Send it the day before your one-on-one. Include statements like:
- I look forward to our conversation.
- Along with the topics you bring up, I plan to ask the following questions.
Tip: One of two things may be true when people can’t answer these questions—they may lack self-awareness, or they may not trust you. In either case, plan to focus on one of those concerns in future meetings. Be optimistic and forward-facing.
This post lists 4 emotional states that a leader might intend to foster – valued, challenged, supported, and energized. What would you add to this list?
What does leading feelings mean to you?
A Simple Reusable One-On-One Plan – Leadership Freak
Make the Most of Your One-on-One Meetings (hbr.org)
Dan in your third sentence you state, “Focus on two areas: How will they feel about themselves and their work?
I think you should include how the person will feel about you their leader.
This post lists 4 emotional states that a leader might intend to foster – valued, challenged, supported, and energized. I would add confident and prepared.
The process starts with how you–the leader–feel about the employee. How do you feel about the person’s performance and potential. How do you feel about the person’s skills and motivation. Start by clarifying your feelings before you have the 1-on-1 meeting.
Funny you bring up how they feel about you their leader. It was on my list! I’m glad you added it here. I cut it to hit 300 words.
I wonder how many emotional states we could add to the 4 I listed. I’m also curious about the core emotions that are foundational to others. I find it interesting that only one of the 7 core emotions is positive – happiness. The others are anger, fear, guilt, shame, sadness, and disgust.
One of the enjoyable things about leaving things unsaid is learning from smart people.
Leading feelings could also be the employee feeling like it’s okay to express feeling overwhelmed, intimidated by tasks or others, insecure about their role. If and when this happens, it’s up to us as the leader to provide that safe space and ask how we can help to alleviate these thoughts/feelings. We can use our observations to help by building on what’s going right while also discussing opportunities for improvement.
Thanks for adding your insights, Danielle. When trust is high, the types of topics you mention can come up. It’s powerful. One thing to add, don’t assume responsibility for other people’s emotions. I find it easy to want to fix everything. That’s a bad spot to be in. It leans toward the painful idea that our team members are helpless.
It’s true that workloads might need to shift. Which is an import point to keep in mind. When people feel overwhelmed, we could work to equip them to carry the load, give them others to help carry the load, or remove the load completely.
Having said all that. It’s powerful to have a place where we can share our feelings, especially when we are overwhelmed by something at work.
Thank you so much for your insight. You’re correct, we can’t take responsibility for others’ emotions. We can’t fix but we can listen, suggest, and recommend. The rest is up to the individual what to do with our response.
Dan, your post today is focused on 1-1 communication. I modified your ideas for team discussions. To that end I crafted this personal goal for my team meetings: To provide direction and information in a way that leaves everyone Valued, Challenged, Supported, Energized, and Confident (borrowing from Paul’s comment). I further noted that to do this requires: Trust, Respect, Open Communication.
Do you (or others) have ideas or recommendations for me as I experiment with this approach?
Dan,
Great post – I would add empowered that represents the sum of the emotions.