Primal Teams: Harnessing the Power of Emotions to Fuel Extraordinary Performance

Jackie Barretta: I've read a lot of stuff about emotional intelligence. I think there's some great work out there, there really is, and it certainly recognizes the importance of positive emotions and our ability to do a good job. The big difference between emotional intelligence and what I've done with primal teams is that in general, people that deal in emotional intelligence tend to assume that people can just choose to feel any emotion that they want: that logic in essence can control emotion.

So in a lot of the books that I've read about emotional intelligence it talks about how especially as a leader it's important to be optimistic – it's important to be upbeat – and I agree with those things, but you can't just will yourself to be those things. You have to deal with emotion more at its source, and that's where primal teams comes from. It deals more with the fact that emotion is primal, it's not necessarily controlled by our logical mind, and there are a lot of ways to feel more – I'll call them optimal emotions in business – but you have to really understand more about emotion, and you have to use some techniques that deal with your emotion more at a primal level.

Rachel Salaman: And in the book you make the distinction between positive emotion and heartfelt emotion. So what is that difference and how does it help to know that?

Jackie Barretta: Well, positive emotions are things like pleasant feelings, calm sensations, feeling generally good – let's say, maybe we just finished a big project, and we have a lot of relief that the project is over, so that's good, that's positive.

Heartfelt would be more like delight that your project has actually delivered some great value to its users, so it's a deeper engagement of our emotions: we feel it more deeply. And there's actually a state that has been termed "coherence," where our heartfelt emotions are really powerful. So we're feeling a strong feeling of appreciation, of gratitude, of delight, and when we're at that spot – when we're in that state of coherence – we're actually at our most creative, so we're more likely to have flashes of insight, so to solve maybe some big problem that we're working on.

We're more likely to recall details of something from our memory, and we're much better able to analyze maybe the consequences of a decision or analyze any particular problem or situation that we're faced with. So when we're in that state of coherence, or what I also call "heartfelt emotions," that is a unique state of awareness where we're really operating at our best.

And there is a lot of science around which – I won't go into the details – but there's a lot of science that shows a big connection between our heart and our brain, so the heart has a big influence on the brain through a lot of different mechanisms, through our nerve pathways, through electromagnetic signals that radiate from the heart to the brain, and also through the pressure in our blood vessels. So there's a big connection, and it appears scientifically that when our heart is activated through this heartfelt emotion, that is when our brain is really performing at its peak.

Rachel Salaman: That's interesting. So "heartfelt" here isn't just a metaphor which some people might have thought it was, it's actually about the organ – the heart.

Jackie Barretta: It is, yes: the heart itself.

Rachel Salaman: And why do you think the term coherence is attached to this, because it's not an obvious descriptor for this, is it?

Jackie Barretta: Well, I take that term from primarily an organization that I've worked with called Heart Mouth and it's located in California here, not too far from me, and that's the term that they use, and I'm not sure how they got to that term to tell you the truth, but I think it's when you're basically in an optimal state where your heart and your brain are kind of working their best together. They've done a lot of studies, and you can get a lot of their material online.

When you're in a state of coherence, your heart is emitting rhythmic patterns that are very smooth, and they have very deep valleys and high peaks, and it's that rhythm, it's like big waves in an ocean where they have the most power, so they have the most power to influence your heart, to influence your brain, and even to influence – as we'll talk about later – people outside of you; other people in your vicinity. So I think coherence means like a sense of order that's brought about by these big waves.

Rachel Salaman: Now this is a subject that risks sounding a little bit "new age." In your work with organizations, do you ever encounter skepticism or find that people don't take it seriously?

Jackie Barretta: Yes, certainly there are people that have that view, and the way that I deal with it is to definitely know your audience. A lot of the techniques that I talk about in the book you can do and people don't even have any idea that you're doing them, so that it's basically being done without their knowledge: they don't even have to know anything about coherence, or heartfelt emotion, or any of this stuff. They might recognize that in being around you or being on a particular team they feel better, but they don't necessarily know why.

So, for the people that are skeptics that may not really resonate with some of the language that we're talking about, then don't bring that up, you can still use a lot of the techniques, and again a lot of them are useful in ways that people have no idea that you're actually doing them.

Rachel Salaman: Now, you mentioned earlier that emotion affects creativity. There's a really vivid example in the book which describes this, about a candle and a box of tacks. I wonder if you could just share that with us now?

Jackie Barretta: Yes sure, that's pretty interesting. It's called the candle task, and it's a problem-solving task that's used a lot in research on creativity. And the way that it works is that you give a subject basically three items – you give them a candle, like a little votive sort of candle, you give them a box of tacks, and you give them a book of matches – and you tell them, "Affix this candle to the wall in a way that when you light it, it doesn't drop wax on the floor." And then typically, they give a subject, let's say, 10 minutes to solve that problem.

And the answer to the problem – and this is the only answer I've ever heard and there might be more than one – but you basically empty the tacks from the box, you tack the box to the wall, you put the candle inside the box, and then you light it and when it drips, it drips wax into the box, not onto the floor.

There's been a lot of experiments done with this particular kind of candle task, and some of the ones that I remember most were done by a woman named Alice Ison, and she's an American psychologist, and what she did was take subjects and split them into four groups and she induced a different emotional sensation: a different set of emotions for each of the four groups.

So the first group she showed them television bloopers, so like funny things from TV that they could relate to that put them in a very upbeat, positive mood. And then the second group she showed them a five-minute documentary of Nazi concentration camps which made them feel depressed. The third group she showed them a film like a math film that showed how to calculate the area under a curve – so pretty boring – and then the fourth group she didn't try to change their emotions at all, so they were basically the control group.

Then she had them solve this candle task, and she found that the people that were in the first group – the positive group – were three times more likely to solve the candle task than any of the others in the other groups, and the other groups were all pretty much at the same level, but the people in that positive mood, their insight was so much better.

And the thing that I should point out about the candle test – the thing that's interesting – is that most people don't get it because they can't separate the tacks from the box, so they're not looking at a different way of looking at the problem, and that's really the crux of creativity: being able to see what is in a different way. And this has been done many times by other researchers and in different variations, and it basically proves that our emotions have a big influence on our creativity.

Rachel Salaman: And your book suggests lots of ways that leaders might be able to get those ideas flowing in their teams, and one of them is that they should mix things up a bit to keep attitudes fresh. How might that work in practical terms?

Jackie Barretta: Yes – let me give just a little bit of background on that. So, there is this seeking emotional system that we have – so there are several emotional systems that we all have, seeking is one – and that particular one heavily influences our motivation, and it's that feeling that you get when you have a new job or you just got assigned a new project and there's this excitement, it's like "Wow, I get to do something new and it's fun and I get to dig in and it's just new and exciting."

And when you're in that state, your seeking emotional system has been activated: it's very strong at that point: you're highly motivated. And the problem is that that tends to wane over time, even if you're really good at what you're doing and you're meeting your goals and things are going well and all that, still a new job isn't as much fun typically after a year or maybe after six months, it just starts to wane a little bit.

And so what scientists have found is that people need to be stimulated, they need more novelty in their work, because novelty is one of the key things that will stimulate that seeking emotional system; give us that excitement again. So one of the things that I try to do with the teams that I work with – and I work mainly in information technology – so I try to look for more and more ways to take the work that they do and put them into project cycles. So if it's support work or different types of maintaining systems or whatever, put it into project cycles that have a clear beginning and an end: it has clear goals.

So people get this sense of "OK, now I'm doing something new. Here's a set of work I'm doing this new, here's my goals and my beginning and my ending, and I can feel that sense of accomplishment when I'm done, and then I can go onto something next that's ‘Wow, here's another exciting piece of work to tackle,'" and it's better to have projects with shorter durations if you can.

Another thing is to move people into different roles, just that sense of getting to experience something new and a different set of relationships. A different set of goals can help stimulate that seeking emotional system.

Rachel Salaman: So someone who might be on the production line could move to, for example, an administrative role for six months. Is that what you're suggesting?

Jackie Barretta: Yes, exactly.

Rachel Salaman: You also talk about how play can help creativity. So what are some of your ideas in that regard?

Jackie Barretta: Yes, play has a very unique ability to activate our emotional systems, and it gives us a similar feeling as novelty. So we get energized, we get excited, motivated – it strikes something very deep in us; it also makes us feel emotionally resilient like we can take on anything, and do well, and be fine with it.

And the most effective type of play – and you have to be really specific here: be really careful about play – it's typically something that includes some sort of physical activity: typically repetitive-type motions with some variations, like maybe throwing or batting. Something like a nerf basketball game can be really fun and it can be played in the office – something like that – something that challenges us enough to really attract and hold our attention, but it's not overly taxing, so it doesn't overly tax our minds or our bodies.

Rachel Salaman: So would you recommend that kind of play being introduced during work time or at lunch time, for example, or after work? What's the best way for a leader to introduce something like that?

Jackie Barretta: I've seen it done in a lot of different ways, and actually in the book in one of the stories that I tell there's a group, it's actually the group that created the Macintosh computer.

Basically the nerf games – the nerf wars that they used to have in their cubicle space – and they actually would set up cardboard barriers and that sort of thing to protect themselves until it looked like a maze as you walked through it. So in a lot of areas it's very acceptable in the workplace itself to do it.

It's not appropriate everywhere, but what I do see a lot of is lots of games in break rooms, so people when they're ready to take a break they grab a few teammates and they go in there and play ping pong or hacky-sack or whatever, so that works a lot. Then another thing that does work a lot too, even friendly teasing and verbal jousting can create the same sort of effect, but you have to be really careful about knowing where to draw the line so it can't get into teasing people to the point where they feel hurt by it. It has to be absolutely done in the sense of fun and play.

Rachel Salaman: Yes, and I imagine there are quite a few pitfalls for leaders to look out for in they are trying to introduce more play, or indeed novelty, in the workplace. What are a few of those?

Jackie Barretta: I think that certainly if you take part in activities like I'm talking about – so just playing around in your workplace, that sort of thing – it can be perceived as wasting time, and it's kind of interesting because I come from a background of information technology and I've worked in a lot of really big companies, some of them pretty conservative, and they've looked over time at some of the things that we've done and they're like "Really?" because they would never do these things in their part of the company, but it's worked for us because we deliver the results. They see the results of what we do and it's pretty amazing, so they're like "OK" – they put up with it because they know that we deliver.

Another pitfall can be that it can look like you're being too easy on people, or something like you care too much about how they feel personally, and that may mean that you're not demanding enough of them, so you're not getting them to work hard enough, and that can be a suspicion that crops up. But again, that's where you just really deliver on what you're doing and show that you can, and when you do, then even though there may be some executives that don't resonate with this sort of thing and they wouldn't do it in their own space, they respect it and they say, "OK, it provides some value," and they look the other way.

Rachel Salaman: So it sounds like it's about giving employees enough of these things to boost their creativity without making them feel that they can stop focusing on their work, which sounds like quite a tough balance to achieve. Do you have any tips for any team leaders who might be looking to get that balance so that his or her team does keep delivering?

Jackie Barretta: Yes, first of all, it's really important that you always put it in the context of delivering greater value to customers. It's not about just creating a cushy environment where people feel happy, that's really not what it's about. And I think it's a little thing about happiness anyway: you can't make people happy – that's something different for every person. So it's not about that, it's about delivering more value for your customers, so always put it in the context of that.

The other key thing is to be clear about how much creativity you really need in your teams: some jobs don't require as much. And also know your people: how much do they really need and want?

And then again, you have to be really good at what you do, so you've got to deliver well for your customers and remember that this is only one way to help teams deliver. You still have to have other pieces: you have to have a great vision, you have to have the right processes, great relationships, all those other things. This is only one part of the picture. It's a very important part, but it's only one part.

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Rachel Salaman: You include a chapter in the book on processing fear and negativity, and you say somewhat surprisingly that negativity can have benefits. What are some of those?

Jackie Barretta: Let me answer this with a story: something that's happened to me not too long ago. So, I was talking to a team and this team had requested a budget increase, a pretty substantial budget increase, and they were the team that develops the website for their company and they wanted to totally revamp their website as it just wasn't meeting customer expectations, but I had to come back to tell them, after dealing with the executives in the company, they just flat out didn't have the money. So I had to come back and tell this team that they weren't going to get a budget increase.

And there was this particular guy on the team named David, and he was just very upset – very angry – he just immediately got very angry and he started really yelling, saying, "I can't believe this company: our customers are going to get so frustrated with this, they already are frustrated with this, and now they're going to start going somewhere else. I can't believe we couldn't get this," and he was very angry. Some people might say, "Well, that's totally unacceptable for somebody to have that sort of negative reaction in a team." And he was very upset to the point where his teammates were kind of squirming in their chairs – they were feeling uneasy with it – and most people wouldn't do that, they wouldn't have that kind of emotion.

But I let it happen and I listened to him; I gave him the space to express that negativity. And really, there are two main reasons that I did that. Number one, people that are highly engaged in their work, people that really care about their work, they have an emotional attachment to it; they really do care at an emotional level, and we talk about all this engagement. Employee engagement and how important that is – well, that's emotional. Engagement is emotion, and if you tell people that they can't express negative emotions when things don't go the way they think they should go, then you essentially ask them to be more disengaged, because if they're engaged and things don't go their way, they're going to have those negative emotions. If you make them unacceptable then the way they deal with that is they say, "OK, well I won't care as much then. And then when bad things happen I won't get upset because I won't care as much, but if I care I'm going to get upset."

And so I let him express his negative feelings about it, because they were real for him, and I was in many ways glad to see that he cared that much. So it's important to let them be expressed so that you don't disengage people.

The other thing that's very positive about negative emotions is that they sound the alarm. So, when David got upset about this website his teammates were all sitting there hearing him talk about the impact this was going to have on customers and how it's going to cause them to go elsewhere, and this is a big deal. And if we are just sat there and saying, "Oh yes, this is not good" and just had no emotion about it, it wouldn't have sounded the alarm as strongly.

And so what happened from that was that we had some very good sessions where we talked about how we were going to take the budget that we did have and do the best with it, and we came up with some pretty good things. So I think though had we not ever had that emotion expressed in the team we wouldn't have been so dedicated to finding those solutions.

Rachel Salaman: Now in the book you talk about emotional contagion when emotions can be passed around among a group of people. Tell us a bit about some of the research into that.

Jackie Barretta: Yes, there's been a lot of really good research about how contagious our emotions are; there was an article in the Harvard Business Review not too long ago, and it was saying that they'd done a lot of research about strangers: just strangers that don't even know each other. They did some research where three strangers can come and sit in a room, and they can sit in total silence not even looking at each other, and within a minute or two the most emotionally active person will have transmitted his or her mood to the other two. And they said that any group of people will essentially end up sharing the same mood if they are together for a while. So, if we think about our teams who work together all the time – we have meetings and we sit together or whatever – we're passing around our mood, so emotional contagion is happening all over.

Rachel Salaman: And on that subject you include some really interesting tips for recruitment and recruiting around this issue, adding positivity to job descriptions and even interview questions. Could you expand on that?

Jackie Barretta: Yes, sure. So I'll come back to this concept of emotional coherence again, and it's a good thing that emotional coherent people, that particular emotional state is the most contagious. So the way I described the waves and all that, and researchers think that's why it is the most contagious – it has the biggest influence on people – so that's a really good thing.

So, if you can find people who are naturally coherent – because anybody can be more coherent than they are today – but some people are naturally more coherent – they're more upbeat, they're more positive, optimistic – and so it's really important to get those kind of people on your team.

There are ways to do that, and it starts with basically even in your job descriptions you can say something like "Candidate must demonstrate the ability to act as a positive force in your team," or "The successful candidate will promote high energy in a team," that sort of thing. Now some people would look at that and say, "What does that mean? That doesn't make any sense." And they would probably not apply which is OK, but people that are naturally more coherent and they understand the power of it, those are the people that get this and they would look at a job description like that and say, "OK, yes, that's me."

And also during the job interview there are questions that you can ask: things like "Describe how you‘ve contributed to a team's high energy in the past." And depending on how a person answers that you will know if they understand the importance of emotions in a team and do they have an upbeat nature. You can also ask them things like "Can you recall a time when you took steps to increase energy or improve a negative attitude in yourself or a teammate?" And that would tell you whether or not they actually use techniques or they actively try to shape their emotions to be in a more optimal state.

Rachel Salaman: So in your experience, what are one or two of the best ways a leader can go about harnessing the power of emotions in their team starting today?

Jackie Barretta: I think the best thing that a leader can do is to learn the feeling of coherence in themselves. So, understand the most optimal state called coherence and generate it in yourself, so that you really know what it feels like to be there, and so that you can actually get there more frequently, even in the heat of the moment when you're dealing with a team. And once you realize what it feels like to be there you can bring yourself back to it much more easily.

And I do this all the time: I bring myself to that state, especially if I'm in a team meeting and people are, let's say, getting upset about something; there are some negative emotions going around, or maybe people are just very low energy, they've just had a big weekend or something. And then I use the power of emotional contagion, and I see the team energy shift. And so I think that's the biggest thing you can do, and you can do that in any team because they don't even know that you're doing it. They know that they feel better, but they don't know why they feel better.

I think also some of the things around novelty and play can be really important, and even start with verbal jousting: ask some provocative questions or something, and get the conversation going in that direction in a way that's playful and teasing.

Rachel Salaman: Jackie Barretta, thanks very much for joining us.

Jackie Barretta: My pleasure. Thank you Rachel.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Jackie's book again is "Primal Teams: Harnessing the Power of Emotions to Fuel Extraordinary Performance." I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.