Reducing Emotional Waste
My wife Linda and I were in New York City last weekend to celebrate her birthday by taking in a few Broadway shows and getting seriously lost in the largest department store in the world - Macy’s. The Miracle on 34th Street should be a reference to making it out of the building in one piece! Oh, and I don’t ever want to hear Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” ever again. Every pedicab in the city was blasting the song at full volume. The only thing worse than having one song on repeat for an entire day is to have that song on repeat so loud it’s distorted.
Anyway, we made our way back to LaGuardia Airport in a driving rain, expecting travel to be snarled and delayed. Surprisingly, everything was on time and running smoothly. We even pushed off from the gate five minutes early!
The Seeds of Emotional Waste are Planted
As the plane taxied out, we made a 90 degree turn onto runway 4-22, sat for 30 seconds or so, and then instead of roaring off into the sky, the engines whimpered and we made another 90 degree turn onto an adjacent empty tarmac. We all sat in relative silence, waiting for the captain to make an announcement about why our takeoff was aborted. We waited, waited, and waited some more. After approximately 30 minutes, the engines spun back up, the brakes released, and we made our way back to the runway. This time, the engines roared and in a few moments we were in the sky on the way home. Whew!
After we reached cruising altitude, the captain made routine remarks about the duration of the flight, cruising altitude, speed, and the presence of a few bumps we might experience along the way. There was no mention of the 30 minute delay. None. Nada. Zip. I can’t claim to know what was going on inside everyone’s head as we waited in silence on the tarmac, but it’s highly likely that each traveler was running through worst-case scenarios as the delay dragged on. Some thought bubbles of passengers might read: “Are we headed back to the gate to fix a mechanical issue?” “Has the weather turned another shade of nasty and are flights being canceled?” “If the flight’s canceled, where will we stay tonight?” “I need to be at the office by 8am tomorrow for a big meeting that I can’t miss!” “Why aren’t they talking to us! It would take no time to give us a quick update. If they’re that busy up there, the situation must be bad. No news is usually not good news!” And that’s all it takes to create excessive emotional waste.
Emotional Waste in Business
Now, let’s translate this emotional waste example to a business setting. The corollary might be a big project or product launch that multiple teams have been working on for months. The planning is complete, and significant effort and resources have been expended designing, building, and positioning the new offering for market. Teams are positioned at the end of the proverbial runway, and then senior leadership tells everyone to hit the “pause” button until further notice. Weeks go by and there hasn’t been a peep from senior leadership about the status of their go, no-go decision. In this situation—which is all too common in business—are team members waiting patiently or are they going out of their minds wondering what the heck is going on? It’s almost always the latter and not the former.
The lesson today is this. Your people need to hear from you. Radio silence is a terrible management practice and is a big driver of employee dissatisfaction. In the case of our delayed flight, all the pilot needed to do was provide a 30 second update to passengers regarding why we pulled off an active runway prior to takeoff. That simple action would have prevented unnecessary spinning and emotional waste. You can prevent spinning, gossip, speculation, and emotional waste by being prompt, clear, and as transparent as possible during times of uncertainty in your business.
