I was invited to give the occasional address at the University of Canberra Faculty of Science and Technology graduation ceremony in September 2022. I shared my view on what I felt the secret to success was – a topic that we don’t discuss nearly as often as we need to, especially in a work context. Enjoy!
To the awesome graduates, their teachers and professors, tutors and administrators, parents, friends, family, significant others, neighbours and whoever else in the personal village you call your life that helped you to get to today – CONGRATULATIONS.
Congratulations not only because of the degrees being presented today but because many of you went through COVID while undertaking your studies: with its uncertainty, confusion, fear – and that’s just the course work – to physical lockdowns, online courses and teaching and probably many untold stories, obstacles, trials and tribulations to get to today. The tenacity, resilience and dedication to your personal development is tremendously inspiring.
As someone once said, “You must learn how to dance in the rain. You can’t just wait for the storm to pass”. It seems to me you chose to dance in the rain and continue your studies and arrive at your graduation.
I think that deserves some additional applause. Congratulations.
In the next 12 minutes or so, I am hoping you and I will go on a dance of sorts. And no, I won’t be reminding us all of what we went through with COVID or talk about the innovations, workarounds and the impact of science during that time.
I would like to start by making a bold claim. During covid, I crystallised years of experience and finally understood the secret to success. If you master this thing – you will be successful in whatever you do. You will be able to talk to anyone. Do anything. Be anything.
It is something that we all have and experience. Yet it is an intangible asset.
It’s something that you already have and can even, at almost magical will, create it in others. Yet many still struggle to understand it.
It’s something that we can all control. Yet some have better control over it than others. Who can forget the scenes of grown men and women fighting over toilet paper? I know I won’t.
So, what is this big secret?
It’s one simple word and one very complex topic. The secret to success is emotions.
Yes, managing our emotional state AND understanding the emotional state of those around us IS the secret to success.
Now, we have emotions all the time. They are part of what makes us human and what makes each one of us the complex person we are. We all know this and understand it. Yet, many of us are afraid of emotions. Not only our own but other people’s emotions as well.
Why are many of us trained to leave our emotions at the door when we come into the student or work environment? To tone down when we are passionate about something? How many of us have been told to stop being emotional? To stop being angry? Stop laughing too loud. Stop this emotion; stop that emotion.
Now, some progressive organisations might say, no, no, we want you to bring your whole self to us. We want you to be “authentic” and show your emotions. Yet, after a few emotional “outbursts”, we might begin to be labelled unpredictable, emotional or difficult or horror of all horrors– unpredictably emotionally difficult.
Stop being emotional is asking someone to stop being human.
So, how can a computer science, technology geek, turned leader and executive, like myself, talk to you about emotions? Especially when there are many in the room today who are undoubtedly experts.
I grew up in a time and a culture where emotions were private. Any external display was frowned upon. I was taught to repress emotions and to manage it is such a way that others also didn’t feel strong emotions when I engaged with them. I can tell you, as a highly emotional person, that was difficult.
When I entered the workforce in the early 90s in Australia, it was very much drummed into me, and as a woman from a diverse background in particular, to not show too much emotions. I wouldn’t have been taken seriously or, worse, not progress if strong emotions were demonstrated. I got so good at it that I was able to suppress emotions that were deemed socially unacceptable – like frustration and annoyance or even acceptable ones – like passion and enthusiasm – if it meant that people would feel uncomfortable around me.
Unfortunately, emotions – whether labelled “positive” or “negative” had a way of showing up when I least expected them. They would inevitably show up in passive-aggressive behaviours or in otherwise unhealthy ways. Did it impact my career? Did it impact my personal and professional relationships? Undoubtedly. And the worst of it? It impacted my health. I was not living in congruency with my emotions.
It was in 1990 that Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer coined the term ‘Emotional Intelligence’ describing it as, and I quote “a form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action”.
The key word from their definition for me is to discriminate – to find difference among the emotions and then use that information to guide the thinking and action. So like all good things it took 20-25 years, basically a generation before we all understood the importance of emotions, not only for our own health and wellbeing but also to that of others. We saw this well and truly demonstrated during Covid – the good, the bad and the ugly.
Old habits die hard, and many of us in the world today are not navigating our emotions to better serve ourselves and others.
I believe that stress, burnout, conflict in the workplaces, at home and in the general discourse is the lack of ability for many of us to deal with our emotions as they surface. Not many of us sit with the emotions and ask ourselves: what is this emotion telling me? What might be going on for me? What triggered this emotion for me, and how might I have more or less of it?
Now before you write me off, I am not suggesting that we walk around with thought bubbles all day questioning every emotion we have or query every emotion that someone we are interacting with has.
However, in conversations that matter, it is imperative that we understand both sets of emotions. Not only what is happening for me or you, but what might be happening for them? What might they be experiencing?
A mentor of mine once told me that as a leader, I had the ability to set the weather for my team. By this, he meant that my mood, i.e. emotional state, can, create an environment for my team that was either safe or not. Open and curious or fearful and secretive. Our emotions sets the tone for us as leaders.
Do we want to be known as the leader that blows a fuse when bad news comes their way or the leader that demonstrates their ability to differentiate and regulate their emotional state? A leader who has control on how and when to display these emotions.
Who would you prefer to work for? Who would you prefer to work with? And Who would you prefer to be? The leader that generates fear and anxiety or the leader that generates love and passion?
Once I knew what I knew and understood the power my emotions have, I chose love and passion, caring and compassion. Fear, anger, frustrations are still there for us as leaders, and our task, our call to hero’s journey, our superpower, is to master and manage our emotions.
Of course, many people know how to manage their emotions and those of others. Poets, actors, singers and politicians come to mind. Marketing and Public Relations firms also do this quite well. But what about the rest of us? The average person going about our daily life. Me and maybe you: pumped and full of enthusiasm, passionate, with a go-get-them attitude, perhaps even a bit of anxiety on the next steps in your journey. What about you?
Do we need to learn how to communicate and regulate our emotions? Absolutely. And many schools and universities do this already. But many don’t. You might have learned all the technical tools of your subjects: maths and science, media and communication – all the tangible assets that you will need to start a job, a business, a career and a profession.
But did you learn the art of the emotion?
If you have, then congratulations! You will go far. Please pay it forward and teach someone else how to differentiate and harness their emotions.
If you still have some work to do there, then congratulations, you know what you must do. Seek the knowledge and, like all things, the practice.
There are many courses you can take, books you can read and podcasts you can listen to. I will share 3 of my learnings with you:
Now despite my best effort, my mind-reading skills are still non-existent. So the first lesson I learned is to learn the art of the ask. Questions are the most amazing tool available to us all. Being curious – both in the asking and in the listening – has been a career and personal saver for me.
Ask yourself what might be going on and deal with it. Ask the other party, your partner in conversation, what might they be feeling. This is important not only because of good, solid communications but it is critical in the diverse world we are all operating in.
Different cultures express emotions in different ways and we can go down an ill-advised road if we don’t test the assumptions we are making about people’s emotional state.
Do the work. If the emotion is there and cannot be changed, then I know I must do the work that it is telling me to do. You must pause and give your brain an opportunity to catch up. Emotions are felt in the body first – well before the brain can process – so we must do the work to give our logical brain the opportunity to kick in.
Lastly, experiencing and exposing myself to a gambit of emotions, identifying them and processing them. Name it to tame it is a favourite saying in psychology. And one of the safest way I have found is to go to art exhibits.
Nothing creates a strong emotional reaction than art for its pure subjective nature. Art is an expression of emotion and the best form of art is the one that makes you feel a certain emotion.
And before you dismiss this all as a liberal computer scientist gone mad, remember that innovation – doing something different – and progress could not happen without emotion. It is emotion that propels us to want to change our state of being. To look for a better way. It’s also emotion that makes us go through the innovation and entrepreneurship journey. Feelings like joy, courage, fear of the unknown, ego protection – I feel the discomfort, and I am not liking it – that makes innovation actually happen.
Being emotionally capable is critical to innovation on another level. Innovation happens, as Lego would say “when you are part of a team”. Even the lone inventor or entrepreneur will eventually need a team of people to help them to take their invention forward and make it a success.
How can that be done if the inventor lacks emotional maturity? Or worse, is so unaware of their emotional impact on others that no one wants to work with them, and no one wants to be part of their team.
How many innovations went by the wayside because people could not connect emotionally to move the idea forward? A PhD thesis in the making, perhaps?
If we want to change the world – and heaven knows we do – from tackling climate change to dealing with the moral and ethical dilemmas of Artificial Intelligence, too living in the Metaverse, to solving the multiple diseases and viruses we will continue to experience, then we need to harness the emotions in ourselves and others.
We know that science – in all its forms – is changing the world. But science without addressing the emotional state of the audience, gives us science deniers and climate speculators and emotion without science gives us runs on toilet paper – pardon the pun.
As Maya Angelou, an American poet, once said, “…people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
So, in conclusion, I ask you:
- Who do you think you want to be?
- What impact do you want to have?
- And How will you harness the power of your emotions?
Congratulations again.