This is one of my favourite quotes:

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou

As leaders, we’re often rewarded for our strategic thinking, decisiveness, and ability to stay calm under pressure. But what about how we feel? Or how we make others feel?

Too often, workplace culture focuses on thinking, not feeling — and it’s costing us. I’m not saying strategic thinking isn’t important but we do need to bring more balance to thinking AND feeling.

Emotions Are Your Dashboard Warning Lights

magine a red light flashing on your car’s dashboard. You could ignore it and keep driving, but eventually… you’ll break down.

The same applies to emotions at work. If you ignore feelings — yours or your team’s — you risk running on empty, or worse, creating a culture where burnout, disengagement, and turnover thrive.

A recent experience with a Managing Director I coached brought this home. They shared how lonely leadership had become. Once they recognised this feeling — instead of pushing through it — they gained clarity and choice. With this awareness, they made intentional changes that led to a deeper connection and increased performance.

So what, where’s the research?

We often talk about culture in terms of values, behaviours, or performance. But there’s another, less visible layer that drives how people show up: emotional culture — the shared affective values, norms, and emotional expression at work.

According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2022:

Only 21% of employees are engaged at work, increasing by only 2% to 24% in their 2024 report.

44% experience daily stress.

Teams with higher emotional engagement report 23% higher profitability, 18% higher productivity, and 10% better customer ratings.

These are not just “soft” metrics — they impact your bottom line.

A ground-breaking study by Sigal Barsade and Olivia O’Neill (Harvard Business Review, Manage Your Emotional Culture) found that emotional culture plays a critical role in team collaboration, retention, and even safety performance.

For example:

“In a healthcare setting, when nurses felt emotionally supported and safe to express compassion, patient outcomes improved and burnout decreased.”

In other words, emotions are contagious, and leaders are the emotional thermostats. If you’re calm, curious, and self-aware, your team is more likely to reflect that. If you’re stressed, closed-off, or disconnected, that too will ripple out.

Marc Brackett, founder of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and author of Permission to Feel, notes that our ability to accurately recognise and regulate emotion is foundational to good decision-making, relationship-building, and wellbeing.

“We have emotions, but we don’t have to be our emotions. The difference is awareness.”

What can help?

One of the most effective tools I use consistently with leaders and teams to unlock emotional awareness is The Emotional Culture Deck — created by Jeremy Dean, founder of culture consultancy Riders & Elephants.

It’s a card game that creates a safe and reflective opportunity to connect with ourselves and our teams, expand our awareness and get pragmatic about how to unlock and elevate performance.

Jeremy isn’t a psychologist — he’s a former communications strategist who saw a gap in how organisations approach emotion. His insight?

Most companies focus on what people do, but rarely explore how people feel — even though feelings drive behaviour.

The Emotional Culture Deck flips the script. It’s a deceptively simple yet powerful tool that prompts leaders and teams to ask:

How do we want to feel at work?

How don’t we want to feel?

What behaviours support or undermine those feelings?

By identifying the emotional drivers of culture, leaders can design environments where people feel safe, connected, and motivated. In leadership sessions I’ve facilitated, leaders are often surprised by the clarity that emerges when they name their emotional needs — not as a vulnerability, but as a strength.

In a recent Emotional Culture workshop, I delivered to a group of Engineering leaders, they shared their newfound understanding of one another and their commitment to enhancing team performance by utilising The Emotional Culture Deck and designing their Team Culture Canvas.

This isn’t about group therapy. It’s about equipping leaders with the emotional literacy to shape a culture where performance and wellbeing can thrive side by side.

As Jeremy puts it:

“If you don’t design your emotional culture, it will end up designing you.”

Leading With Feeling Is Not Soft — It’s Smart

The most effective leaders create cultures where people feel safe, supported, and emotionally connected to their work. Emotional culture isn’t a HR side note — it’s a leadership imperative.

If you want to retain top talent, drive performance, and build trust — start by tuning into the emotional tone of your workplace.