MC82 Manager Emotions: Joy

maybe for today's coffee we need something a little bit more i suppose lighter maybe than than our latest one on anger tim uh so we go something a little bit lighter a pellet cleanser yes how about joy so before maybe we had like a really bitter coffee or a very dark tea and now we can go for a hot chocolate that can be if you like that kind of thing can just be a little bit more endorphin inducing well listen welcome to management cafe if it's the first time you've joined us welcome grab your favorite drink whatever it is whatever time of the day it is for you whatever you prefer and join us for about probably half an hour and us is a co-host tim verges and other co-host me pilar or t we'll be talking here for about half an hour and we're looking at joy as part of our new season on emotions we're looking at it from the manager's point of view from the manager of others point of view and we are starting with a definition and the definition is coming from claude ai it is joy is a positive and intense emotional state characterized by feelings of great pleasure happiness and delight it is often associated with a sense of well-being contentment and satisfaction and i found this interesting it's important to note that joy is distinct from happiness as joy is often more intense and momentary while happiness tends to be a more stable and long-term emotional state is it more of a bursty kind of it is internal but is it more about a bursty kind of emotion then what we're talking about yeah well i think joy is something that you want to celebrate you know joy something that's bursting out of you you know uh happiness is you know satisfaction happiness puts my own face but joy is you know you want to shout from the rooftops you're going to skip down the street you know joy is euphoric yes it is intense yes excellent which is why we can i mean you've already started to say what it feels like a heightened sense of energy enthusiasm and optimism i think that heightened or that burst aspect is important for we're talking about so what is its purpose i think its purpose is around that is around that celebration i'm a big fan of bernie brown um and she she talks about joy in context of gratitude that gratitude brings us joy so it's not it's not that joy makes us grateful but gratitude makes us joyful is a quote that she uses from a jesuit priest or something about that and i think that joy is like the affirmation of that so it's celebrating something that things are going right we feel connected that we feel this great sense of um everything fitting you know everything working in the right way so it's a lovely thing oh yeah i suppose that it's signaling that as well pretty much like we said that anger signals that something is wrong and signals it first to you and and to others that this is like i suppose it's an emotion that makes you stop to realize that something is very right and i think i never thought of it like that actually it's it's your your heart or whatever you think your emotions are saying hey you need to pay attention to this that's i think that's what i say without noticing because this is a big deal it's a big deal that you know you gotta recognize it and and actually i think that that um you know we can think about what it feels like and what its purpose is advice that i've given but not necessarily advice that i do well in following is that um you know because people come to you in a state of joy you know joy leads you to other people because they want to they want to share it they want to celebrate so when someone comes to you and say oh you know this amazing thing happened something i'll sometimes say to people is you know like remember this remember this feeling you remember what happened where you were you know what the weather was like what clothes you're wearing what it's not like you know like try and record it in your you know in your brain or whatever um because it's a wonderful memory and sensation and it's something that you want to access again there are times when you know if you can recreate even just a fraction of that state or bring it back it's wonderful and it's something that we might not do instinctively because here you speak two things come to mind one is that i always remember bad moments but i can't and i do remember some good moments but they're very specific and very punctual but i know i've had loads more joyful moments than i remember but instinctively my brain remembers the bad ones because they're the ones that warn me about things that can happen in the future whereas the joyful ones they're like well what would be our function so it's really interesting that you say yes remember that and learn how to also build your memory and your experiences around those joyful moments because they have something to help exactly and that comes back to that you know that idea of gratitude and actually i listened to an audiobook series called i think it's called the power of vulnerability brene brown uh this one sounds true fantastic and i'm a big fan of of her work but she tells a story uh and i won't go through the whole thing one of the concepts she discusses is foreboding joy and so she tells this story of uh you know a family and it's like christmas eve or thanksgiving or whatever and they're all in the car and the presents in the back seat and they're all singing along to the radio and uh you know the snow is coming down and they're driving down the highway at night like you're watching a movie and this is what's happening you know and the family are all in the car together and you know and there's other cars whizzing past and then what do you think happens and it's just in front of a crowd and a lot of people are like oh you know a semi-trailer smashes into them and so this is this concept of foreboding joy you know they're actually this family are in a moment of joy you know everything's perfect for them and yet we have this center you know media is entertainment complex you know movies and so on are wonderful at exploiting this you know where they you know things are going well and it's natural way and so we have this tendency i think to try and protect ourselves from from what might happen the bad thing that might happen and in doing that we prevent ourselves from enjoying the good thing that's actually happening and so when we talk about how it can joy help and how it can hinder joy can help us as we said in celebrating it can actually hinder us in that it can disconnect us a bit from the day-to-day realities because it's a euphoric state you know if you stay there for too long you can sort of just off but i think where it can really hinder us is if we don't allow ourselves to experience it or express it can i then if we're moving on to that i found this also interesting from the emotion thesaurus on the mental responses it's got some things that we can look at through the help or hinder lens it says um so mental responses positive thinking desiring to spread joy and make others feel good which for me can be a good and a bad thing noticing the small things helpfulness and patience with others i'm sorry this is more under happiness because they don't have joy so so but i think i think these apply as well being at ease with their world a bright outlook i decided to be with loved ones of friends who were saying this and now this is where i think it's interesting fearlessness and benign risk taking for fun and like okay yeah this sense of fearlessness can sometimes not be that great and because it's coming from a positive emotion we might not even realize that we're going into there i'm not saying we should never be fearless but i think we should be aware that we're doing it but if we are in a in the middle of a positive emotion like joy and we're starting to behave fearlessly because of it or taking risks without realizing it i think that that can be that can be not dangerous if you go whatever i think it's a lack of awareness that interests me more than the fact that it's fearlessness oh but actually it's a brave emotion it's a vulnerable emotion and if we step into experiences i've had experiences when i was an employee with a manager where um i was in a state of joy you know i may say or you know done something i thought was it was impressive tried it into my manager to tell them the good news and they just went interested you know or or i thought i'd done it right and i'd done it wrong and the state like the deflation you know the devastation of that you know going in on a high and leaving on a low devastation is the best way i can come from it like it hurts to be open and and you're making yourself vulnerable when you're expressing this uh joy and if somebody rejects it you know or says that's not a joyful situation but so i think it's a vulnerable emotion i think it's it's a brave way to live yeah again i hadn't thought of that i hadn't thought of that the fact that being joyful makes you vulnerable in a way i also i just wanted to touch lightly on um the fact that joy doesn't always i find it very interesting that joy doesn't always come from what we could call a good place even though it's a good emotion and i came across the words of schadenfreude which is a german word that refers to the feeling of pleasure or satisfaction derived from the misfortunes failures or humiliation of others and it's often described as they can join someone else's pain or suffering and i think that i can't think of specific examples but i know i've seen joy from people and joy that is expressed and that actually is coming from a place or something that's gone bad to other people and i think i think that that's also like i don't know i thought it was interesting uh with regards to this kind of emotion and it work as well yeah yeah i think you'll hear of schadenfreude for sure you're being a hater yeah yeah that's the irony hating people's success hating people's success and celebrating their failure it's uh not a positive not a very positive expression no but still joy and i think it's it's awareness as well but if we start to touch on the manager emotions and the expression of joy also again this awareness of where is the joy coming from what is it and sometimes it might not be i mean sometimes we shouldn't express it i find interesting the fact that not all joy might be worth expressing or sharing because it might be this it might be something that's we can't help but feel joy but maybe we don't want to express it well i think schadenfreude yeah i think it's a different um it's coming from a different place yeah but it's still joy well no i think it's a different i think it's a different emotion joy in itself is as we talked about right it's you're celebrating this sort of um connection you know the feeling that that things are in their right place whereas schadenfreude is comes it comes out of that insecurity it's it's you're resenting the other person or you're uh envious of them and so you don't want them to succeed i think we'll have to disagree on that i think it's still joy it's just coming from a darker place um it's definitely coming from a darker place i agree with you on that what about this one let me bring something that might move us on what about freud and freud which is a combination of uh well it's about joy and it's essentially about uh feeling joyful for someone else so you're feeling happy for someone else you know people who sort of like energy multipliers there are some people that you know if you're excited and happy you know i'm gonna go tell such and such because i know that they're gonna be excited and happy for me being excited and happy i don't know anyone like that oh wow you should you should they're wonderful people wonderful people like energize the batteries just waiting they're just waiting for you to come in happy so that they can jump on board the happy train but um i as a manager you know if we're talking about joy in the idea of like a positive celebration of a good thing i think is is really important because it doesn't happen all the time i think it's a really important thing to be able to have occur and and be celebrated you know to like the example of you know like i felt joy and my manager squashed it maybe they were right maybe i was feeling joy and you know i hadn't actually done a great thing but when good things happen allowing people to feel them encouraging people to feel them letting that be uh be something that occurs and gets magnified i think it's super important super important because the positive energy and uh atmosphere that it creates lasts a long time and it's the same thing it's also about like with anger it's also about being heard as well it's about creating that space for someone to be heard because like you said it's a very vulnerable emotion and not everyone wants to share it just because we consider it positive doesn't mean that it's acceptable in all circumstances so it can be also very challenging it's also challenging sometimes to create an atmosphere where it can be expressed and um and it takes work as well i mean just because we consider positive it doesn't mean it's easy it's still an emotion some people can be uncomfortable with it you know they're the foreboding joy people where they you know they don't want to they don't want to experience joy because they're waiting for the you know the other shoe to drop waiting for the bad thing there is that they think you know it's super serious and they don't think that uh the joy is something we should have in the workplace yes yeah but um the analogy that i think i was you know you're not the first familiar with remote teams and when you would when you come together for a retreat actually we only did this one time and it was a joy to come together like the whole experience was a joyful one and for everyone to acknowledge that but to share in that feeling and to acknowledge that that was the feeling we're experiencing it's just was just brilliant and i think i think that's part of why it you know joy recharges your batteries it brings back your you know your faith and your um and your reserves of energy so i'll get replenished by it so i think as managers we should be careful of trying to control this emotion if we see it in people we manage you know i think so like joining in is terrific you know i do think there's a stress where maybe you could get too carried away you know someone might someone might become too joyous or want to express their joy in you know what does that mean well like because it's a sort of euphoric state you know someone might be like oh you know let's go straight to the pub and get some champagne so you know maybe that's not an appropriate way to deal with it or maybe you still have stuff you need to get done but um if you squash people's joy then you diminish people and i think you'll be damaged the relationship if you're if you're known as somebody who people can't be joyous around then they're going to be very inhibited by that i think there's the flip side to that is being worried that the emotion is not there okay scrap that let's go back to so how about when you're feeling the emotion as a manager so we've talked about how it is to see it in other people how about when you're feeling that because to be honest this is why i was saying i cannot think of any experiences when this has happened oh my gosh oh my gosh wow wow oh no i've got loads i've got loads wow like um there are emotions that get to a point and when they spill over it becomes joy like i can feel pride and then that pride can yeah can can spill into joy or happiness and happiness can spill into joy like i mean for me it's a state that i really that i really i really like and i think that it makes the whole working experience much more um bearable to know that you're going to have some high moments because goodness knows there can be some low ones what is interesting is that just like with anger it's there and there are moments and degrees of expression of it i also think that there can be contexts where there are degrees and expressions of it and it could be i don't know i can't think of an example so it's really difficult but i don't i don't think that just because it's such a positive emotion that it can always be shared to the extent that we want and and this could be and that's why and this could be linked to what is going on it could be i mean just like human beings you have to be sensitive that where you are at that moment might not be where someone else is ready to receive even your emotions i for example it could be that i am something's happened to me and i'm very joyful and i want to share but actually the team itself is going through a really bad time and they've i don't know i've been letting them down for three weeks i don't know and then i don't want to you know and then maybe sharing my joy might actually be something that doesn't quite work in that moment and i think it's part still of understanding where we are at in relation to our team i mean in an ideal world yes of course we always would but i think what interesting for me is to look at other times when it's not just like anger other times when it's actually not suitable to share oh for sure when we sold shield uh that the when we actually did the transaction so i celebrated with my family and i celebrated with with duncan my co-founder but i couldn't celebrate with anyone that i anyone else that i worked with because they didn't know and even when we told them it wasn't those weren't celebration conversations so that that was a contextual joy i think you know and maybe maybe there was an element of foreboding because we knew that like there was a high point you know we felt joy around that but we knew also that there was pain coming with it yeah but that's a very interesting example because of what you said because there are times when that joy and you were able to celebrate with others outside of work and i think that what's really interesting to me is if you end up in a place where you can't share any of that joy with your team how isolating that could be and i think these are very specific examples because and probably when this happens it's probably very much in a moment in time a very specific example i think that's interesting how do we deal with that and i think what you said i i celebrated with whom i could but it wasn't suitable to celebrate in this other way because of a b and c yeah i don't think that that's that's unusual because often there's context to why we're experiencing joy so for example you know um i've been in situations where i was managing somebody and there was something that i wanted them to change to do differently i remember i remember a particular person where where i noticed that they had done it and i felt like i played a role in that and i felt really happy about it you know i felt joy uh joyous because of it and i didn't really have certainly known the moment i couldn't say to them other people didn't really get the context you know you couldn't walk them through that six months of journey to get there i remember going home uh and actually i remember talking to my kids about it and they didn't really get it but they knew i was happy right and that was like the wonderful reflectors i'm happy they're happy can we get ice cream how can we take advantage of dad's happiness to better our own conditions but you know they picked the right time they picked the right time for it and yeah so i guess to your point yeah you can't just run around spraying your joy in every direction there might be times you have to direct it in an inappropriate place but i think what's really important for me you know this example of selling company or you know this other example probably this other one's a better one right if i don't allow myself to feel joy in that situation if i go oh yeah next time or whatever then you know i'm really uh limiting my interest but also i'm not giving my joy the opportunity to reinforce a positive experience and draw me to more of that experience yeah i think that's a really good point in the same way as you were being so um insistent in a way of providing the opportunities for others to express their joy because of everything that it brings with it i think for us as well it's it's important to allow that and i think sometimes i don't know talking to you it's maybe oh joy that's great i'm fluffy but actually for me it can take just as much work to help that emotion help us as managers and as a team as well it requires more work than i than i realized yeah i think it's a great great positive i think it's great position and i do think that you know going back to the brain around thing around gratitude and joy i do think that joy and that celebration is linked to gratitude and being appreciative of good things being appreciative of what you have because that's what allows you to see that it's a good thing and to and to be happy about it and to allow that happiness to magnify into joy and i think that being grateful for what's going on is a really helpful way to navigate particularly management well listeners we'd love to hear what you think about joy uh you can email us over at management cafe podcast at gmail.com or you can send us a message through our contact form over at management cafe podcast.com and coffee's over for us now it's over to you what did you say you said bad people can also feel joy for doing bad things yeah thank you for joining us for this episode of management cafe you've been listening to tim burgess and pilar or team remember to subscribe to the show on whatever podcast you use and if you want to get in touch you can do so over at management cafe podcast.com coffee's over for us now it's over to you thank you for listening you