Please motivate your team, but responsibly
By: Adrian H. Raudaschl
Tags: Product Management, User Experience, Psychology, Productivity, Product Design

Years ago, I was devastated when a project I had poured so much passion into was one day unceremoniously cancelled. It hurt. And what was worse was I had encouraged my team to also emotionally invest themselves. I learned many lessons from that experience. I vowed never to put myself or anyone else in such a vulnerable emotional state again. Work was not worth it. Now I’m starting to rethinking that approach.

In the office, we are encouraged to take a rational, not passionate approach to our daily tasks. Emotions are for the home, especially undesirable ones like anger, jealousy, or stress.

The idea of having a version of yourself for work and another for the home has somehow become an internalised trait for the office worker. Nobody has told us to do this, so why do we lean into it? It’s not like the underlying characteristics of my professional conduct a.k.a. being a decent human being, ends at 6 PM.

I can only assume it’s a kind of defensive mechanism — a way of conserving mental energy for rigours outside of working hours. Why should you get excited about a project? It could fail or end for reasons outside your control. Who needs that drama in their lives?

Well …. I think you do.

The Inspiration ’Trick’

Enter the product manager. You find a problem, validate a hypothesis, test a solution, measure the impact, and repeat. No matter how emotionally unattached and objective a decision-maker, you think you are, you are slowly falling into an emotional trap. With each successive choice made, you are directly and indirectly tying the product's fate with your own. It becomes the most visual representation of your taste and judgement.

Now, this not necessarily a bad thing from my perspective. This means you have ‘skin in the game’ and should hopefully exercise a more considered strategy to improve your outcomes. The trick becomes knowing when that emotional component is more harmful than helpful.

Inspiration is an excellent example of this. People like to be inspired. It boosts productivity, stimulates creativity, and most importantly makes work worth waking up for. Enough inspiration can even distort the way you see the world into something where anything seems possible.

The “Reality Distortion Field” is a term first used to describe this effect based on observations of Steve Jobs’s management style. Jobs’ could convince himself, and others around him, to believe almost anything with a mix of charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, appeasement, and persistence. Great for motivation, but was also likely the source of much unnecessary misery when asked to achieve the impossible.

You need to take responsibility for the optimistic feelings you are leading others towards. Inspiration can be a potent productivity trick, but knowingly abusing it is an act of psychological sabotage. Don’t misguide people, don’t overstate rewards, don’t promise things you can’t deliver, and be realistic with problems you encounter.

Inspiration and optimism are like wind in the sails of any new idea. With the promise of treasure and riches you put together a crew, a ship, and set out on murky waters. When you take the first step on the journey of a thousand miles, it looks like a long way, and it really helps if someone is saying “We’re one step closer.”, “I promise it’s not just the siren songs and jagged rocks out there”.

Being the keeper and reiterator of the vision takes considerable will power and even self-delusion. If someone decides to invest their emotional energy in your vision, you better make sure you are making the best strategic decisions possible. Don’t be deceptive.

Another risk is becoming so enamoured in your own passion that it blinds you to the reality of the situation. The trick is not to let your own desires completely blind you to the faults behind an idea or perspective, nor allow those same shortcomings to impact your team.

Leveraging Emotion for the Unemotional

But, I understand leading by emotion is not for everyone. If you need to conserve energy and employ pragmatism to get the job done then fine. Try the following instead.

When describing your vision, by all means, make sure its purpose is practical, but be careful not to make it completely logical. Make its purpose of a sentimental or emotional type.

A logical problem, for example, is designing a “Sign In” experience and getting a visitor into their account. But emotionally, consider how frustrated you were that time when you couldn’t log in to a site you really needed. You wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, right? Build your product vision around minimising those kinds of feelings.

The Dark Side of Passion

What do you do when all this emotional investment brings out your worst characteristics? Resilience can take you far, but bad days will come, and anger, jealousy, and stress will raise their ugly heads. Our commitment to passion makes us vulnerable to these feelings. A single lousy episode can be enough to untangle a year’s worth of camaraderie. It’s wise to bear in mind that your teammates may not remember the excellent work they produced, but they will certainly remember how poorly you behaved under pressure.

To prevent this, we need to be actively conscious of our emotional state and leverage compassion to rein it in. Anyone who has been in a meeting filled with passionate voices knows what I’m talking about. You need to take a second, step back, consider the perspective of the person across from you, then respond.

What I’m discovering is we need to build a system of thinking that intentionally forces us to slow down. Take the time to mull over feelings and absorb a greater variety of logical pieces. It’s at high emotional points (both good and bad) when we should stop and reflect before making the next move.