Emotions in Business
Why do we need to talk about emotions and emotional intelligence in the business world?
Historical
One of my least favourite pieces of business advice is that you should keep emotions out of your business. It’s advice that has historically been shared but I can’t help but feel it’s both bad advice and actually not doable.
I don’t think that anyone starts a business without emotion. Emotion is a drive to push us to do something different. Someone makes a discovery and they are excited to share it and make money from it. You’re worried about money and so you launch a product in the hopes that you fix that money problem. A person has a negative experience and wants to change it for people in the future with a new service or product. Passion, fear, love, and excitement are likely the drive behind new businesses, products or services.
Why small businesses can’t ignore
One of the hardest things about business is that it involves humans and humans are emotional beings. I think we default to thinking of emotions as negative and therefore having negative impacts on us and business but emotions are both positive and negative. A happy mood can impact decisions and attitudes. Bad sales will change your expectations and interactions. Negative or positive past interactions will impact the relationships you build in your business. As a small business owner, whether intentional or not, your emotions are going to play a part in your business. Bearing this in mind, it’s so important that you address emotions in business actively instead of trying to ignore them and keeping them out of business.
Emotional intelligence
I believe that understanding and learning about emotional intelligence is potentially one of the most important and powerful things you can do for your business. Emotional intelligence is your ability to recognise, manage, and influence your own emotions. It can also help you with understanding other people's emotions.
The more you practice emotional intelligence, the stronger your relationships will be and the better you will be at handling stressful situations.
And the joy of emotional intelligence is that it can be learned and developed. It requires effort, but as I said, it is as important as learning about marketing and accounting for your business success.
Forming relationships
In business, you will work with people, it’s the only way you will ever make money. It could be a team you create with employees, the clients that you work with as a service based business, or the customers who buy from you.
There is no avoiding emotions in any of these relationships. As a leader of the team, you want to be able to connect with your people and sell them your vision for your business. It’s how you’re going to make sure that your team is consistent and excellent. Emotional Intelligence will help you to understand the people on your team and their strengths and weaknesses as well as helping you understand how people are responding to you. Whilst the phrase “people don’t leave jobs, they leave bad leaders” is not totally proven, it does play a large role in a lot of people’s decisions.
I’m sure that emotional intelligence when dealing with a client will help you to connect with them in the first place so that they become your client and then stay your client. Working closely with a client requires the ability to read their emotions so that you can understand them and build them up.
Customer service is filled with emotions. You want your customers to feel valued and like you understand their needs. Emotional intelligence will help you to respond to them in every step of the selling process. It matters because someone who feels understood or helped is far more likely to purchase from you.
Responding to a customer email with empathy makes them far more likely to return to you and recommend you to others. It’s harder when it’s a negative interaction but seeing someone's emotion and dealing with them with empathy will make your business stand out to the customer.
Decision making
Ever had to make a decision in business and felt happy? Or maybe fear? Perhaps you’ve felt cautious or excited about it? They are all business related emotions and it is important to understand where those feelings are coming from.
Understanding your emotions would have you feeling the feelings and questioning them, making sure you consider the full picture so that you don’t plough ahead or miss out because of a lack of emotional intelligence. Feeling fear is good but doesn’t mean that it isn’t a positive decision. Feeling excited doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t check the terms and conditions to make sure something is fair. You can use your emotions as a positive guide to thinking through your choices.
Owners’ well-being
You are your business.
As a small business owner, if you are emotionally overwhelmed or unstable, your business will suffer. Whilst occasionally overwhelm is a sudden onset, it is more likely that overwhelm comes from ignoring small emotions over and over again. Our emotions give us pointers, so listening to them AND taking actions will guide making wise and informed decisions about our work, our rest, our relationships, and our needs within our business.
Emotional intelligence is something that we can learn and develop, and I’ll be exploring how in a future blog. (Coming soon)
So why do need to talk about emotions in business?
Emotions are not something that need to be feared in business. They can be a really important tool in almost every aspect of business. Whilst the traditional approach would be to take emotion out of business as a small business owner, there is real value in honing your emotional intelligence. That value leads to a stronger, more adaptable, more enduring business to last the tests of all the things that you will experience in personal life, business life, and global events.
Do not fear emotions. Use them as your strength.
If you wanted to work with me pop me an email and we can talk