Sigal Barsade: What’s Love Got To Do With Leadership?

Wharton Business School management professor, Sigal Barsade believes too many leaders focus on how employees think and behave at work and largely ignore how they feel.

This is because few managers realize that human feelings matter just as much – if not more – to their employees’ commitment, engagement & productivity. And by lacking a deeper understanding of what truly motivates people in their work lives – feelings & emotions – leaders unwittingly handicap their own performance, not to mention the performance of their team.

For a very long time in business, emotions have been viewed as noise, a nuisance, something to be ignored. But one thing we know now after a quarter-century of research (much of it Barsade’s), is that emotions are not noise – they're leadership data.  They reveal not just how people are experiencing their work lives, but also how they'll go on to perform.

In fact, in order for workplace leadership to truly advance, we’ve reached a point where it’s become essential for managers at every level to not only maintain an ongoing pulse of their team’s emotional culture, but to also be highly intentional about creating an environment where employees can fully thrive.

As we kick off the fourth season of the “Lead From The Heart” podcast, Sigal Barsade represents our consummate guest. Her brilliant work reconfirms that paying attention to the emotional side of work remains a huge gap in workplace leadership. And, as we discuss in great detail, emotions like affection, caring, appreciation & compassion prove to be the ones that really connect and inspire people. Researchers call this, “companionate love,” a term that, for some, might take a little getting used to.  But in Barsade’s words, “I’ve yet to see any research results indicating a positive outcome from an organization that has a systematic, strong culture of fear or sadness or anger.”

We’ve led exclusively with our minds for generations, & low engagement scores around the world reflect it.  To drive employee engagement where it should and can be, we now must achieve a greater balance between mind & heart in how we lead human beings in the workplace. Listen in as Sigal Barsade wonderfully explains both the “why” and the “how.”