I could be described as a scientist and a Cartesian. Thus, when I observe the same phenomenon many times (like team scenarios that mysteriously repeat themselves), I cannot help but look for its hidden springs and invisible laws. This is how, by studying many cases of team dynamics, I came to be interested in the essential role that emotions play in setting them in motion.
However, for me (as for many athletes, leaders or managers), emotions have long remained “at the gym door”.
The reason is that we live in a society where the “strong man” is often associated with the one who “controls” his emotions, who is “cold” and rational, and who knows what to do to achieve the goal (emotions being more of a handicap than anything else). And the same naturally goes for the woman who, in a “masculine” culture, must often resemble the “strong man” to be respected.
Thus, emotions were ignored for many years and, even today, some managers avoid “putting emotion” or “affective connection” into their management. For example, I still sometimes hear people say to me: “We are here to achieve objectives, not to take into account everyone’s states, we are not shrinks.”
Emotions are vital to performance
However, for the past ten years or so, the wind of a new dynamic has gradually been breathing emotional intelligence into the managerial posture. And fortunately so, because as we will see, emotions are as vital to performance as electricity is to a computer.
Performance can be defined as simply achieving a higher result than usual. Like increasing profits or winning more games than usual. But in the same way, developing better relationships with colleagues or between departments is also performance.
Just like feeling more relaxed at work or being happier than usual (for some, these are even achievements!).
Get out of your comfort zone
We all seek to be more efficient in one way or another: how can I make more people aware of my ideas? How can I develop my quality of “presence”? How can I “earn” my living better to free up time, and thus be more present for my loved ones? How can I pollute less? How can I make my body healthier? … Performance is inherent to Life.
So, striving for performance means:
– Change our habits to generate new behaviors;
– Mobilize a significant amount of energy and time over time in order to master these new behaviors.
It is therefore inevitable: if we really claim to seek performance (which is the reason for being of a team), this requires regularly getting out of our operating habits (comfort zone) and fully engaging in action… and this inevitably generates emotions: fear of the unknown, or of not being up to it, the joy of feeling progress, the anger of not succeeding, the sadness of leaving what is familiar, etc.
A team that seeks performance (pleonasm) will therefore generate a lot of emotions within itself and, as we will see, these emotions have the effect of releasing neurohormones which themselves will have a powerful impact on our physical and mental capacities.
Managing performance means managing a lot of emotion.
So, managing performance also means managing a lot of emotion, and that’s why it seems important to me to really take an interest in it.
Conversely, not taking it into account would be like wanting to build a Formula 1 car to win a grand prix without being interested in its engine, its fuel, or the feedback loops in order to have information on the state of the car in a race situation!
Just that? Yes, because emotions have 4 major functions for human nature:
– Alert us of what distances us or us approach of what is important to us.
– Send an influx of energy to get us moving: either to flee what scares us, or to achieve what we desire.
– “Fix” in our memory the “significant” events so that we “always” remember what is dangerous or important to us (what is “impressive” is imprinted inside).
– Create a bond between members of a group by “fixing” a shared reality that makes sense to everyone.
Emotions are a rational and vital phenomenon
Playing with emotion is therefore fundamental to generating performance!
So, if you claim to want to achieve a collective performance, you will have to invest time and attention in an area that is perhaps still unknown to you, but nevertheless very real and concrete: the world of emotions.
And it is important that emotions are no longer seen as an irrational and dangerous singularity, but on the contrary, as a rational and vital phenomenon. Because, if we consider them as something “complicated”, then we will not want and will not succeed in using them. Thus missing out on an essential source of setting in motion.
We know more about emotions thanks to the many studies that have multiplied in recent years. As Bernard Rimé shows: from 1910 to 1919, there were 52 studies on the subject; from 1929 to 1969, there was an average of about 280 studies per decade; from 1980 to 1989, there were 2030 studies; from 1990 to 1999, there were 5554 studies.
Interest in emotions and their associated knowledge is therefore very recent, and our culture is still strongly marked by many beliefs about them. However, as this sentence engraved at the entrance to the temple of Delphi and taken up by Socrates says: “Know yourself, and you will know the universe and the gods.” This is why it is important, for those who want to reach for the stars, to better understand this intimate world of emotions.
*“Winning teams: Drawing inspiration from French team sport to reinvent our organizations”, Diateino, 360 pages, 15 euros.
DR
The author
Passionate about human adventures, leadership and team dynamics, Berenger Briteau has been a professional business consultant and coach since 2010. It was during his first career as a professional volleyball coach (where he achieved five divisional promotions with his team, going from a small regional level to the elite division) that he began to take an interest in the power of the collective and the mechanisms of spirals of defeat or victory.
