Let’s get clear about something obvious: humans feel emotions. Emotions carry real intelligence. They signal what matters, what’s misaligned, what needs attention. They are not noise. They are information. And they must be allowed in the workplace.
I say “obvious,” and yet…
Sharing our own feelings and acknowledging others’ is tricky for leaders. Even those who know it matters rarely do it well. Consider two versions of these moments:
“I’m feeling uncomfortable about your lack of engagement.” (So-called feedback with no observable data.)
vs.
“You’ve missed the meeting three times in a row. It’s slowing us down, and I’m feeling uncomfortable about our deadlines. Can you see my perspective?” (Evidence, honest expression, and an opening for the other person to respond.)
Or:
“It seems like you’re annoyed.” (Presuming someone else’s feelings without evidence.)
vs.
“I’m noticing you haven’t spoken up in the last two senior staff meetings. Are you feeling unsettled about the new structure?” (Evidence, empathy, and an opening for the other person to respond.)
You have likely heard (or spoken!) a version of the first line in each pair. Maybe the way we talk about feelings is one reason emotions get a bad rap at work. But it’s not the only reason.
Traditionally, emotions were not welcome in the workplace. Professionalism was synonymous with being unemotional, and feelings were treated as an impairment to rational decision-making. Emotional intelligence entered organizational psychology as a serious discipline back in the 1990s. Decades later, in my experience, the stigma has not fully lifted. It just got quieter. And it persists even though the research is unambiguous: suppressing an emotion doesn’t make it disappear. It creates stress that fuels burnout and erodes psychological safety. Suppressing emotions also stalls team dynamics, because the free flow of ideas and honest collaboration requires people to show up not just with their thinking minds, but with their feelings, intuition, and lived experience.
As a coach, I often hear some version of the following apology: “I know this isn’t therapy, but I need to talk about how I’m feeling about this situation.” Or, after sharing something real about a business problem: “Thanks — and sorry, that was like therapy.”
Here’s what I tell them. Coaching isn’t therapy. But good coaching absolutely requires the coach to understand what the client is feeling, because feelings are where real information lives. If the conversation felt “therapeutic,” that’s not a detour from the work. That was the work.
If you’ve been told — and believed — that feelings don’t belong here, try something new. Feel your emotion. Then name it. That act makes you the observer, and being the observer frees you to use what the feeling tells you, rather than be defined by it.
As leaders, we need to know the difference between feeling pressure and being pressure. That distinction is small on this page, yet enormous in practice. It is the space where your effectiveness lives. It is emotional intelligence embodied. Masterful leaders have learned to let a feeling inform the next move without letting it become the next move. They neither suppress their feelings nor express them involuntarily.
Reflect on my opening examples: naming a feeling, backing it with evidence, then asking the other person to respond. That’s what it looks like in practice. It’s a leader treating emotion as information, not interference.
This mastery is available to every one of us — one honestly named feeling at a time.
