I’ve been reading Liz and Mollie’s No Hard Feelings and it’s been pretty easy and nice reading especially delving into different psychology of anxiety, stress and other emotions at work. Given the richness of our work life these days, we all have some kind of love-hate relationship with it. The key challenge really is the emotional management involved in work.
There’s often pent-up anger, resentment when there’s misalignment, when there’s the feeling that it is unprofessional to share negative stuff at work. And it is tiring to have to try appear positive, to always be subjugating one’s true emotions to the need to appear professional. The book encourages us to embrace it, to understand, process and use the emotions at work.
Because emotions, and genuine sharing can build trust. And at work, we need that trust and psychological safety to thrive. One of the key things they taught about dealing with our emotions is to recognise the relevant and the irrelevant emotions to the decisions we are making. And learn to draw upon our relevant emotions to make decisions. It means not doing just what we feel like doing but to question whether what we ‘feel like’, is relevant to the decision at hand.
Definitely worth more pondering.