The same grade on a report can evoke positive emotions for one person, and very negative feelings for another.

Everyone is part of this phenomenon when passing information along and attaching their own emotion to it.

Information and emotions are like a bus: it starts empty and along the road (flow) more and more people (emotions) just hop on. Until the bus is overcrowded. The longer the trip, the more “stuff” is added.

It gets harder to separate the original information from all added emotions when you receive input from others.

It gets harder to separate “your issues” from “somebody’s issues”, which part of the emotional charge is yours, and which one is from others.

If someone’s fear has colored the information you receive, and you adopt this feeling of fear without verifying if this negativity is truly yours, you are passing problems that aren’t there; you are taking on problems that aren’t yours.

You can practice by reflection and setting boundaries.

More important is to take the time to digest information. To separate “your stuff” from “their stuff”.

I am almost making it sound like the consumption of food. Because I like it as a metaphor for information consumption.

And, because Ali Anani wrote a fabulous presentation about the metaphor: The Information Digestive System. It’s all in there: capacity of information, the context and emotions attached and slow digestion: making the information your own.

Image by James Cridland.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Information And Attached Emotions. Together On The Bus. is a post from: Project Shrink.

This week I cover the same topic in a 2 minute video.

Which one has more impact in delivering the message? Which one captures my emotions about this topic? Text or video?

Be The Change You Wish To See – Project Shrink Episode 23

How do you get your team to do the right thing?

Show them. Do the right thing yourself. If you want to see some fabulous behavior in your team, be fabulous first.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - The Problem Might Be You – Comparing Text With Video is a post from: Project Shrink.

From a very high level perspective the behavior of a person is determined by

• who he is;
• how he is at the moment;
• what he wants, and
• what he thinks will happen.

How he is at the moment

If you ask someone the question “How are you doing?” you are inquiring about their current state, how they are feeling at this moment. How you are feeling has a big impact on the behavior you express. If you are feeling mellow, you will probably easy-going, where as you are stressed you probably react more intense then you normally would.

In Syed-Abdullah et al (2006) the researchers use a list of emotions and feelings to assess the current well-being of developers. By assigning a value to each of every entry in this list (e.g. 0=nothing, 10=maximal) we are able to describe the current state of well-being of a person.

The list they use is:

• Tense
• Miserable
• Depressed
• Optimistic
• Calm
• Relaxed
• Worried
• Enthusiastic
• Anxious
• Comfortable
• Gloomy
• Motivated

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Individual Behavior – How Am I Doing? is a post from: Project Shrink.