MC82 Manager Emotions: Joy

Management Café

We continue with our Manager Emotions series. Today’s episode is all about joy. We remind ourselves of what it feels like, but we also wonder whether it’s always ok to express it.

Join Tim Burgess and Pilar Orti for coffee - or tea!

In our last coffee we talked about how anger can signal that something is wrong. Joy, on the other hand, signals that something is very right and motivates us to celebrate this feeling with those around us. For managers these can be milestone moments where all the hard work and difficulty can be forgotten for a moment of pure positivity and happiness.

But joy is not a simple emotion. It carries some risk and can require bravery to be vulnerable. Expressing joy can expose us to hurt if others don't share in our joy. There is also the concept of foreboding joy which limits our experience of joy in the present in order to protect us from disappointments in the future. Lastly, maybe not all joy comes from a good place, for example schadenfreude, the joy that comes from the pain of others. Is that still joy or something else?

There are many benefits for managers and their teams that can experience joy at work. Joy is very energising and these celebrations can reinforce when and how the team gets to good outcomes. In fact counter to the notion of foreboding joy, it might be that healthy experience of joy and the resulting memories are better suited to carry people through inevitable hard times and disappointment.

01:00 mins Joy is a very pleasurable emotion, generally more intense and temporary than happiness. Joy motivates us to connect with others and celebrate something wonderful. It brings us a heightened sense of energy, enthusiasm and optimism.

3:00 Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Jesuit priest, said that "It is not joy that makes us grateful, it is gratitude that makes us joyful."

4:00 Tim wants people to "save a mental record" when they feel joy so they can recreate some of that state in the future.

5:00 Pilar tends to remember bad moments more than joyful moments. And this is a common trait, we are wired to remember things that protect us and warn us. But it's also good to remember good experiences.

5:45 Dr Brené Brown talks about foreboding joy in her audio series "The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings on Authenticity, Connection, and Courage". We have a fear that just when things are good, they will be snatched away from us. And so we try protect ourselves from disappointment by not letting ourselves feel too much joy.

7:00 Joy can hinder us in a few ways. Firstly it can be euphoric and disconnect us from day to day reality. But it can also hinder us if we don't allow ourselves to properly experience it. And it can lead us unawares into a sense of fearlessness, which can be tricky.

9:00 Tim talks about times when he's been in a state of joy and gone to share it with his manager, who has not shared his enthusiasm. This can be extremely deflating and it highlights how vulnerability is linked to joy, because when we share joy we run the risk of being hurt.

10:30 Pilar introduces the concept of schadenfreude, the feeling of joy that comes from someone else's misfortune. This is something which we might feel at work but be cautious about expressing. It comes from a darker place than pure joy.

12:30 Our hosts have a rare disagreement about whether schadenfreude is really joy or something else.

13:00 We move on to freudenfreude, the feeling of joy that comes from someone else's happiness. Tim talks about "energy multipliers" as having a natural affinity for this, people who you can go to when you feel joy because you know they will be happy and excited for you.

14:00 It's very important that people are allowed to feel joy at work when good things happen. The positive energy and atmosphere lasts a long time. And it is part of creating that space for people to feel heard and seen. This takes some work because not everyone is comfortable with joy in the workplace.

15:40 Tim reflects on the joy Shield GEO felt when coming together at their company retreat. This shared expression of joy replenished the energy of the whole group for a long time afterwards.

16:30 Managers need to be careful of trying to control joy in the people we manage. There can be a risk of people being carried away by joy and you might wish to keep them focussed on the tasks required. But if you squash someone's joy then you really damage your relationship with them.

17:45 Pilar can't remember any occasions when she experienced joy as a manager. Tim, on the other hand, has many. And for him the high points like joy make the low points more bearable.

19:00 There can be times where the manager cannot share their joy. For example, your team might be going through a difficult time. When Tim sold Shield GEO he could only really celebrate with one person from work, his co-founder Duncan. And there was an element of foreboding to it because he knew that there were difficult times and hard conversations coming up.

21:30 The experience of joy and how we celebrate it can be very contextual. Tim shares another example where he helped someone change their behaviour but couldn't really share it in a work context. Luckily his kids, even without the background, are normally happy to share in their parent's happiness.

23:30 If we, as managers, limit our expression of joy then not only do we miss out on the pleasurable emotions. We are also missing the opportunity to reinforce a positive experience and create the "muscle memory" to lead us to similar experiences in the future.

25:00 Joy is linked to gratitude and being appreciative when we experience something good.

25:50 A little outtake for those who want to go further down the rabbit hole. Can bad people experience joy when they do bad things?

What about you, dear listener? What is your experience of joy at work and in your management practice? We'd love to hear from you! Get in touch through our Contact Form https://managementcafepodcast.com/contact/