The Feelings Economy and its Impact at Work

Feelings drive behavior. Marketers have been selling feelings for years. Watch any good television commercial and you will see that marketers constantly connect to people’s emotions, whether it’s selling coffee or cars. Good branding is  about evoking feelings and emotion in your audience. People have a short memory about facts, but they never forget how you make them feel.

When it comes to people you work with, how you make them feel makes a significant difference in their performance. Why? Because feelings create energy - much like gas in a car or food for the body. People’s emotional state affects their performance. If people are positively charged it enables them to tackle tough issues and they can access their knowledge and experience  faster because there is little or no interference from negative emotions. If people are negatively charged, motivation plummets and the ability to access knowledge or experience is compromised and ultimately productivity is affected.

If people forget what you say and remember how you make them feel, how can we practically make this happen in a real and authentic way that produces results? At Juice, we help people understand it is possible to create environments where it feels good to work and it is easier to get things done. You can apply this truth to how change is managed. If you approach people purely on the rational level, the likelihood of enabling change will have more to do with  pushing it on them and mandating it. In turn, this  creates friction, interference and resistance in the system even when it is the right thing to do. If you engage people at an emotional level and speak to their heart and mind,  people will be more open to your message and it enables them to act. John Kotter illustrates this truth beautifully in his book The Heart of Change.

My business partner, Brady Wilson goes further in his latest book, Love at Work, Why Passion Drives Performance in the Feelings Economy and he makes a compelling case for the role of feelings in the workplace.

Humanizing the workplace is good for employees and good for organizations because humanizing the workplace gets results.

About the Author

Alex Somos

Alex Somos is co-founder of Juice Inc. His ability to cast vision and provide strategic direction, combined with his passion to make a difference in the lives of others' has created a strong leadership style that creates results and breeds loyalty from those around him.