Since we've got a minute, I thought we could make the most of it.
Real quick, drop your shoulders, loosen your stomach, relax your eyebrows,
and drop the tongue from the roof of your mouth just for now.
Now I'm not sure what you just scrolled past, or what you're going to scroll on to, or what
you've just been through, or what you're about to go through. But what I do know for sure is that
right now, as you and I sit here, everything is okay. This is one of my favorite TikTokers
I think you refer to him as the Dreadful Bird. Every time he scrolls on um into my feed I just
I'm forced to take a second take a breath and relax and I love the way he says that everything
is going to be okay. I really appreciate the both mental exercise of that the most
mental reminder and also the physical reminders that our body and our mind are controlling us
and the decisions that we make. The things that we do are ruled by our emotions we make decisions
based on our emotions there's been lots of studies both on marketing and on business that show that
we don't make decisions based off of logic very often. Don't get me wrong, we'll use data,
we'll use our context to inform how we make our decisions, but when we go to finally make the
decision to decide what to work on next to decide how to move forward to decide
how we're going to act in this next moment. It's an emotional one it's an emotional response I've
learned over the last 12 years of running Crema how to do a lot of things. How to design apps,
how to run a strategy session, how to have a business partner, how to hire employees, and
build up a team. I always come back to this. This common theme and the reality is is that
I'm in the business of people we just happen to build and design apps. And human beings, people
are emotional creatures and we want our teams to get more done we want them to be more efficient
we want them to work better together but working better together requires trust. It's hard to know
how to trust each other if we can't recognize how we're making decisions,
how we're feeling at any given moment. There's a quote from Henry Ford that says that why is it
every time I ask for a pair of hands a human brain comes with it and I think the modern version of
that statement is why is it when I want to hire a brain a heart comes with it? Leaders try to
use a lot of things to both connect the head and the heart to motivate people to inspire people
they might use incentives they might use a speech or maybe they just disappear hoping
that the team will figure it out. And I gotta be honest, I've used all of those tricks myself.
But the reality is that we ignore the emotions that are driving our decisions. we ignore the
feelings of the people around us and we end up getting frustrated over time. my business partner
and i used to joke about the fact that every nine months or so we would just kind of slowly build-up
to the point where we just needed to have a good fight where we just needed to punch each other
and then we would hug it out and we'd be fine, but it was that build-up of lots of little things and
lots of little moments and lots of emotions that finally would get to this moment of a blow-up.
and I know you've experienced something like that on your team. you didn't address something
you let it build up and it got to the point where it finally blew up, but if we were checking in
on those emotions more frequently more often maybe we wouldn't get to these blow-up points.
maybe we would actually create some trust with each other and work well together. we
found a really simple tool to help us do this on a very regular basis across all of our teams and
it's called the feelings wheel. the feelings wheel is over a hundred different emotions describing
lots of different words of how we might feel and really all it is a tool to give us some words. I
don't care if somebody picks a word that's not on the feelings wheel the goal is to say "what are
you feeling right now?" For a lot of people, this might feel uncomfortable. They don't like talking
about their emotions. but I would suggest if you lean into the discomfort just a little bit and
actually challenge each other to say "this is how I'm feeling" you'll unlock this potential of being
able to trust each other more and do great work together. Now, here are a few tips when you're
using the feelings wheel. First off, ask what are you feeling instead of just like "how's it going."
Give them a very specific task. Describe the word, actually suggest that maybe they use more than one
word because oftentimes we're feeling more than one thing at any given time. Then, follow up with
"why" or "what's making you feel that way?" When I first used the feelings wheel with my
one-on-ones and my direct reports, the team that I worked with most of the time I asked what are
you feeling, and they said I'm feeling anxious and I'm feeling excited. And what was interesting is
they all said the exact same thing, anxious and excited. "why are you feeling anxious?" I asked.
"Well, I'm a little anxious because we've got some big goals we've got some big things that
we're trying to do and I'm not exactly sure if we're capable of pulling those things off."
Totally. get it, I understand. why are you excited then? "Because we've committed to doing this and I
think that if we pull it off it'll be amazing." they were excited for the opportunity and the
fact that they all felt the same emotions was a bit of a surprise to me but I've learned that
just like anything else in life we really pick up on the people that we're around the most
so we start sharing our emotions, we start sharing our feelings with each other. so if you have that
one person in the group that's going through something and is not feeling great that emotion
will get shared with the team. and the last thing I'll say is don't use the feelings wheel once.
don't just do it once and go that was uncomfortable that was awkward I don't
want to do it again. I would suggest that it takes doing it at least three times to lean in and say
I'm gonna commit to doing it at least three times with my team. Once they get to understand that
you're gonna ask it again you're gonna ask them what their feelings are again they'll slowly start
to be willing to open up a little bit more if it doesn't work scrap it doesn't use it anymore,
I'm okay with that. if it does work I hope you'll see how it unlocks the potential of your team.
Now I mentioned that my business partner and I would have that nine-month kind of like
build-up to punch it out. what we started doing instead was we said let's meet every
Friday. let's just sit down and have a cup of coffee together and as we met every Friday we
were able to check in on each other with how we're feeling what are we going through both
personally and professionally and that more frequent check-in gave us the discipline to
say we don't need to build up our emotions to the point where we can't work together. we can't be
effective together instead we addressed it more quickly so how am I feeling right now?
I would say that I'm excited and I'm hopeful for you. I'm excited I'm hopeful that this tool,
this simple tool of a feelings wheel that just gives you some words to use will unlock your
team to do incredible work together. let me know how it goes, drop a comment below and tell me
how your team started using the feelings wheel and if it worked I'd love to hear from you.