Management practices have advanced enormously over the past few decades. Yet, one area that remains hidden from public view is the emotional undercurrent that accompanies communication, which can be negative and destructive to performance. There is a long history of corporate culture to overcome, which has worked to keep negative emotions from seeing the light of day.
While pure expression of anger, sadness, hurt and fear is of little constructive value, leaders need to be aware of how emotions get in the way of creativity and identifying solutions to challenging problems.
One important issue to understand is that the meaning extracted from one person communicating with another does not come in the message content. Meaning is ascribed by the receiver of communication based on that individual’s life experience, spanning all the way back to childhood.
We each have a bank of memories that has led us to draw conclusions about ourselves and the world we live in, including the corporation. And these conclusions have crystalized into beliefs (e.g., I am creative and smart, I am not good enough, the world is a safe place, I have no control of these situations, I am defective, I have to try harder than others). The beliefs we hold act as filters for the information we take in, and sometimes an interaction in the present triggers an old experience, and we become angry or frightened, for example, for reasons we may not even be consciously aware of. Conversely, the memory banks of employees contain a wealth of positive, solution-oriented material that can be tapped for creativity and innovation.
Leaders who understand that each employee has their own mental map of the world through which they interpret communication and events can use this knowledge to improve outcomes in meetings, enable groups to generate more creative solutions and, overall, enable employees to feel comfortable enough to make use of their total self. Each and every employee has been solving problems throughout life and effective leaders know how to tap into the creativity of all.
So there are tremendous individual differences between the mental maps of employees, which serve to filter all of the data they take in through their five senses (i.e., vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell). That’s one critical level. But another is the commonalities. When employees gather in problem-solving groups, there is a natural tendency for members to habitually find the flaws in ideas shared by others (e.g., We tried that before and it didn’t work; That won’t work because…, etc.). And when an idea is shot down, the team member who share it definitely has an emotional reaction. That person is likely to feel defensive, angry or frustrated, resulting in a high likelihood that he or she will shut down. And do you think they are likely to listen to the next idea raised by the person who shut their idea down? Probably not.
Even very self-confident people come into meetings with a need to be heard, and to have their ideas received with ‘open-ears.’ Without training in areas of listening and constructive response, companies all over the world are shutting down creative, original thinking before germs of great ideas can be built, through teamwork, into great innovations and solutions to problems.
One easy place to start is to build in a communication process that shapes team behavior to give positive feedback to an idea that has been expressed before citing concerns or perceived limitations (e.g., What I like about that idea is…,I like that idea because…). And when constructive criticism is given, it can be followed with a question about how the team could work to resolve the challenge (e.g., Can we work together to find a solution to this obstacle?) Training people to build on the ideas of others—instead of reverting to what is frequently the old habit of picking out the holes or flaws first—is smart business. Over time, employees will engage in more risk taking around sharing their ideas and experience greater work satisfaction. And the company will benefit from greatly enhanced creativity.