The Art of Feelings

In the acclaimed AMC series ‘Mad Men,’ an iconic scene exists where advertiser extraordinaire, Don Draper, delivers one of the greatest advertising pitches in television history to his clients at Kodak.

Cutting the lights in the conference room, Don inputs Kodak's slide projector with pictures of his early years of marriage. He says this projector isn't some spaceship, but rather a time machine where one can go back to a place they are loved. With each new picture, of Don with his young infant children, or passed out on the couch of his first home, the emotional intensity is palpable and crescendos with Don giving the projector a name that eventually made Kodak a best seller.

He dubs it, ‘The Carousel.’

The pitch hits so hard that one of Don's colleagues leaves the room before the end of the presentation to avoid breaking down. And you wouldn't fault him either, because Don taps into a rare ephemeral place that is usually missing in most board rooms and office hallways: emotions. In other words, feelings.

Advertising is a powerful tool and has been around for centuries. Companies like Apple, Amazon, and Nike spend billions on advertising because they understand the potency of customer engagement. So much so that Phil Knight has said Nike's campaigns work because they've, 'tried to create an emotional tie with the consumer. Why do people get married—or do anything? Because of emotional ties. That’s what builds long-term relationships with the consumer.'

These emotional ties can be so powerfully communicated that in the 1920s during WWI, the ‘Uncle Sam Wants You’ ad was rolled out to convince the population to join the cause. Even though a young man could go to war and meet a tragic end, this Uncle named Sam you didn't know existed until now saying he needs you specifically, might sway you to go anyways .

While most workplaces aren’t trying to convince you to go onto the battlefield, they could do a better job of understanding its employees' feelings. Most employees at companies would probably desire more emotional intelligence from their managers and employers.  And even if we as business leaders wanted to know what exactly employees are feelings, there’s not an ideal way to measure this. Because as we mentioned last week, surveys only scratch the surface of what employees are thinking. And if that’s the only way of gauging where employees are at mentally and emotionally, you truly don’t understand what’s going on and risk more than just poor employee morale.

The truth is, measuring feelings is not novel. 

As mentioned, advertisers have been measuring feelings for years. Feelings are an advertiser's currency to success. It's a philosophy that would bode well for professionals outside of that space. The same way an ad executive would sit down with prospective customers in the space they want to sell to, what they like, what they watch on a daily basis,  we in tech and other knowledge sectors currently lack that.

In fact, according to the Niagara Institute in a 2023 study, only 22% of  155,000 leaders had strong emotional intelligence.  

Emotional intelligence has a lot to do with empathy, which has a lot to do with understanding how the other person feels. With an already large laundry lists of tasks for leaders and CEO's to accomplish, how can one best accomplish such a complex task and where should they look? 

Shifting The Paradigm When It Comes To Employee Engagement 

The legendary military tactician Sun Tzu once said in regards to how to be with soldiers under his leadership, “Treat your men as you would your own beloved sons. And they will follow you into the deepest valley.”

Most businesses today, may look at employee engagement or measuring of their emotions as either lower on the priority list or an impossible task.

The reasons can be many, but mainly it is that businesses began as very small teams, some as little as one or two people, adopting a hyper-customer focus. Going from that mentality to a more nurturing style of managing once you have over 100 employees can be overwhelming.

We can start answering this question of measuring feelings by taking a more inside-out approach. All the data that we need to do this, actually already exists. It’s just most of the time companies are either too big now to sort through that gargantuan pile of information and make sense of it, or lack a realistic, cost-effective approach to perform the task.

In fact, in a world where an abundant amount of public data exists about not just our fellow employees, but the population at large, business leaders only use about 15% of existing employee data in making relevant decisions.  That leaves us a whopping 75% on the cutting room floor, so to speak, collecting dust.

But what kind of data are we referring to, you might be asking. Where in the company does this secret treasure chest lie?

Let’s look at Junaid, for example, who is head of sales at an enterprise company.

A Case Study In Misread Feelings

Junaid has been in sales at this company for over five years, has brought in millions of dollars of business, and is well-liked by his peers.  

Usually, Junaid heads out on his morning commute at 7 am. Before heading out the door he turns his status on Teams to active and answers emails in his usual clear and upbeat way. As he gets into his car, he joins a conference call with his sales team on the East Coast, where he drives the conversation in his trademark humorous, yet professional tone.

Swiping his badge at 7:45 am, Junaid takes a look at his calendar and accepts or alters a few events, before his 1-on-1 with the sales director, Salman, who has managed Junaid for over four years. During this Zoom call, we see Junaid wide-eyed, smiling, asking a ton of questions, and suggesting ways to improve. Salman appears satisfied with Junaid’s inputs and the two usually go well over their scheduled time to speak about other things as well.

The rest of the day over several apps, Junaid interacts with his colleagues and clients exhibiting the same exuberance until about 5:30 pm before heading home. Yet he keeps himself online over Teams until 8:30 pm to deal with potential issues that may come up.

From the looks of it, Junaid exemplifies your hard-working, personable employee at any company.

But a week later, things take a downward change. Junaid’s emails become more terse and less energetic. He arrives well after his usual 7:45 am. He decides to skip out on the morning call with the East Coast team and instead reschedules for the afternoon. Salman notices Junaid’s expression lacks the same usual exuberance he’s seen from him over the last few years and his responses are missing the same clarity.

Performance begins to dip, Junaid becomes despondent, and next thing you know his colleagues become worried about his future at the company.

Look No Further Than Within

Junaid’s arc here is probably one that has shown up a lot at companies. There could be several reasons why his behavior took a sudden turn; trouble at home, relationship issues, something in the news, anything. The key isn’t the why though, it’s focusing on what is happening.

Most companies seeing their head of sales in a slump like this might try to inquire about Junaid's lackluster performance, schedule meetings, and put him on a performance plan. Others might not even do anything and allow this kind of behavior to fix itself while looking for another head of sales.

At times, there just may not appear to be a feasible solution to helping Junaid turn the other corner. I mean how could people do this? There are so many issues to solve at work that one head of sales employee can’t receive the lion’s share of focus to course correct.

But there are certain tell-tale signs to look at and there are ways to nip this in the bud before it gets worse.

Number one, you probably saw this as well, but there is a trove of data about Junaid that exists in his emails, Zoom meetings, chats over Teams, and other public applications that Junaid interacts with. Maybe at one point, Junaid would send paragraphs worth of information to his client, whereas in the last week, his emails have been abrupt and short. On Zoom his 30-minute video chats are less than 10 minutes. His response times on Teams aren’t as swift and they lack clarity.

Note that we shouldn’t take this info as definite conclusions about what Junaid is thinking. Rather, we should rely on this kind of data to help us do the best we can as leaders to paint a possible picture and understand our employees when they appear to be slipping from what was a previously established behavior.  

Remember, the implications of this data-centric approach to understanding employee sentiment go beyond an exceptional employee who shows signs of embarking on a downward trajectory like Junaid. 

Imagine on the flip side, you have an employee who was amazing during interviews but started very slow in their first few weeks at the company. The same strategies of mining the chat and other applications they use can not only bring that back up to speed, but you save the time and money it takes to replace them.

Again, the possibilities are endless.

The Not-So-Common Sense Solution

The ideas mentioned above are not always very intuitive for most leaders. They need to be learned, as do most things.

AI-based HR platforms, or any type of machine learning tools, can mine these kinds of subtle communication variances and present insights to managers about their employees’ sentiments and feelings.

Worksense AI is a watershed initiative using AI to best understand employee feelings using public information shared by those same employees to keep your workforce operating on all cylinders.

We should be thinking like Don Draper, or as best as we can, to understand our employees on a deeper level.  When we do that, only then, will we be able to provide them a place of relative peace to shine. And while there are a ‘carousel’ of ways of going about this, some are better than others. Learn more about Worksense here.