The influence of emotion in employee engagement

Emotional neuroscience trainer Ravi Rao joins us to discuss the influence of emotions, creativity, innovation and design on business performance.

Emotional intelligence 

Ravi’s career has taught him that that organisations will struggle to advance if they lack emotional excellence; “that’s why such a large majority of initiatives never achieve the impact required, because they're not well designed, have a poor approach, and a bad operating procedure, because the emotional side of the human is not dealt with.”

“I kept watching initiatives, programmes, and leaders fail,” says Ravi, “because whether we like it or not, the only way to remove the emotions from the business environment is to remove the humans from the business environment.”

He believes this explains why a lot of change management projects fail to gain traction. Businesses need to grasp the realities of change resistance and what is occuring at a behavioural level with employees - dialog and actions, “in order to understand why conflict and jealousy are undermining most initiatives.”

Ravi notes that business leaders need to address irrationality, hostility, jealousy and rage in the work environment, as negative mindsets like fear, disappointment, frustration, and chronic anxiety can affect a company’s short term performance. Ravi explains: “If your employees are worried about something right now, it detracts from their ability to innovate and collaborate, because anxiety and fear are driving behaviours, rather than a more optimistic, collaborative mindset.”

He adds: “It is the job of the CEO to figure out how to create value - value for shareholders, for the customer, and all the valuable pieces that finally converge back to the employee. It's impossible to serve the shareholders or the customers and just burn the employees into the ground.”

Customer engagement strategies

Emotions are especially vital to customer experience initiatives. Leaders should encourage compassion for customers, listening, and empathy to provide genuine motivation to address pain points in customer journeys.

Listen below to hear more about Ravi’s fascinating revelations, finding and insights into how to take better care of your employees and customers for better business performance: