What hidden forces really operate behind organisational decisions? Politics? Empire- building? Shareholder pressure? I would have to say “all and none of the above”. All of those are the evidence; the things that we see people doing. In reality, it’s the drivers of those things that we should be interested in: emotion. What we actually see are the disguises that people adopt to communicate their feelings about how things are going. We resort to political manoeuvring when they have run out of ideas for how to ask for something. We build empires when we are worried about getting lost in the machine and shareholders express their feelings by buying, selling and voting.

And all of these are proxies for proper emotional expression. But before I tell you about the more useful alternatives let me explain what I mean by ‘proper emotional expression’ because you may already be thinking: “oh-ho, getting emotional is ‘not me’ or at least it’s not done where I work.” I bet you’re right if we are talking about people putting on major displays of emotion (ranting, stomping about, going red in the face, bursting into tears, going quiet and moody etc.). What I am talking about is giving a clear, rational explanation of how I am feeling so that people know what is going on and can make an informed decision about what to do next.

Right, practical details next; how do you do it yourself or help others to do it if they are struggling? Three ways for you to experiment with:

Listen and mention – don’t just blunder on when you are talking with someone who is becoming unreasonable. Be brave – give them the chance to express how they are feeling – you don’t have to ask them outright – you don’t even need to mention the word ‘feeling’ (the f-word). Instead, try: “You sound/look/seem…” [the name of the feeling] and then pause to let them acknowledge your observation and to continue with their point. My guess is that they will become more open as you encourage them to be clear about what is driving their point (how they feel). You may need to do this repeatedly as they express their various views. Be patient – your time will come!

Notice and declare – if you notice yourself getting stuck in a particular position and sense that you are being taken over by your opinion (emotions, actually) give yourself the chance to be explicit about how you are feeling. Again, you don’t have to mention that f-word.

Try: “I’m getting worried/annoyed/frustrated about where this conversation is going/the change in plan/the loss of momentum… because…”

What’s left unsaid – we frequently leave difficult conversations half finished, or at least with important things left unsaid. This is often because someone has purposefully or accidentally shut the dialogue down prematurely. To make sure that it’s not you, you can say: “Before we finish I want to ask a question of us both – “what’s left unsaid?” You might think this is completely artificial, too off the wall. This way of talking is certainly unusual because it does not follow convention but it does give us access to immense opportunities to clear up bad feeling and thus make progress on issues that most of us can get for ever stuck on. Deal with the unspoken and the rest will sort itself out.

If we want to keep emotion in its proper place in our lives, and not least of all in our businesses, then we need to learn how to deal with them. Properly managed, emotions help us to make great decisions, to be worth living with and drive us to do amazing things. But left to run riot by lack of acknowledgement they can make things truly miserable. Emotions for business people are like water for a plumber; if we don’t channel them properly we will forever be plugging the leaks – occasionally getting flooded out without warning.

Or to put it another way, we of all the animals, probably find it the hardest to learn new things – much harder than do the other animals. Why? Because thinking gets in the way. Thinking and having feelings about what we are being ‘taught’. Oh, and there’s that problem of reflexivity too – we can think about ourselves, or to be more accurate, about our ’selves’.  Because of that we end up also wasting quite a lot of time thinking about what other people think of us. All of these capacities  – they’re not skills because we don’t choose to have them or seek to practise them – result in us getting very caught up in ourselves and our thoughts. As time passes and we grow up (or at least grow old) all these thoughts and the feelings that accompany them shape our repertoire of thoughts, feelings and actions. Every time we are faced with a situation, we more or less pull our feeling, thinking and behaviour ‘pattern’ out of the bag and do it without a thought.

Training is supposed to interrupt these patterns – does it? A good question – Can you train someone not to be aggressive for example? Go and read about that. Mostly it does not because it only very rarely addresses what is going on in our heads and ‘hearts’. The other animals, however, can learn the new tricks much more easily because they have all that internal stuff going on. Animals react and ‘do’. Plain and simple. We are much more like them when we are frightened or angry – then we do ‘think’ with something more akin to their level of sophistication. If you can remember what it was like the last time you were angry or frightened or very sad you will realise that functioning at that level is indeed to experience functioning at a very basic level. Straightforward alright; quick; reactive; brutal. We could even say ‘thoughtless’. Not nasty or uncaring, just free from thought, in the human sense.

So why should you give a fig about any of this? Perhaps for two reasons:

1.    So that you can realise that it’s not your fault that the course on emotional intelligence you were sent on had little or no effect (just as the course on ‘developing your  assertiveness’, ‘listening skills training for managers’ and ‘developing leadership skills’ didn’t either). You’re not being thick – in fact, quite the reverse.
2.    So that you can spot yourself more easily in a situation when you are behaving like one of the other animals – in the nicest possible way of course. You might just notice in time to get your humanity back before it’s too late.