DYNA

3.1. The emotional economy and emotions at work

Goleman has stated that every interaction has an emotional subtext, which can lead us to make people feel better or worse. The moods we perceive and feel will last longer than the interaction or the encounter, resulting in an emotional afterglow [20]. Every interaction has gains and losses, which leads to the emotional economy.

There is a common belief that emotions interfere with work, but studies have found that the opposite is true. Emotions have been considered the way to achieve better working experiences [21]. Emotions are influenced by events that happen at work [22]. People who experience positive emotional states are more proactive, flexible, and goal-oriented [23].

Showing emotions at work is considered to boost productivity. According to different studies, two-thirds of workers suggest that showing their emotions at work makes them more productive, and nearly half are more comfortable doing so now than they were pre-pandemic [24].

Working on projects elicits many emotions, and sometimes, such emotions start with the fear of the unknown for those who have never worked on projects before. Also, since people from different areas and levels will be working together, there is a fear of misunderstanding others.

Projects sometimes produce extreme environments, amplified by urgency [25], creating spaces for extreme emotions. Interpersonal emotion regulation is essential for an adequate organizational life, although people tend to suppress emotions most of the time.

Emotional training has been used to promote positive feelings at work. It includes cultivating confidence, autonomous initiatives, responsibility, and productivity [26]. Emotional training also helps avoid burnout and understand how to deal with others' emotional outbursts, as well as antipathies, envy, resentment, and even anger.

3.2. Communication: the essence of understanding other’s emotions

Nothing is worse than talking to someone and feeling that one is not being listened to. The effectiveness of good communication relies heavily on the ability to empathize with and listen to people at all levels [27]. Language, or at least a common vocabulary, is of the essence in communicating. The importance of sharing a language lies in reinforcing a similar way of life and in understanding or appreciating the other's different interpretations or points of view. Still, it is important to understand that having a common vocabulary does not necessarily presuppose a common meaning to the concepts shared [17].

In order to increase trust, communication needs to go two ways: be fair and dependable and show competence. When employees need to tell their leaders bad news about the project not going as expected or about needed changes in the scope, time, or cost, they might not be eager to speak. By contrast, when the project is right on track or when unexpected positive things happen, such as reducing costs, it is easy to get and provide information to others. In good times, everyone wants to share the good news. Natural obstacles to trust and candor include fear, pride, politics, and dislikes.

In hierarchical organizations, people in lower positions tend to be more cautious about disclosing problems, weaknesses, mistakes, and failings and resort to self-protection, sometimes hiding valuable information. For instance, people sometimes keep quiet about a developing problem because they think that they might be able to solve it or that it would eventually solve itself. They hide the information to protect a client instead of losing him.

Trust takes time to build, yet it can be destroyed quickly. Betraying confidence, breaking a promise, humiliating, lying, withholding information, excluding someone-the list is endless-can destroy trust. Project leaders can also destroy trust by not giving credit to other members when they deserve it.

The most important signs of trust being broken are when the information flow deteriorates, and valuable information does not reach the adequate stakeholders. The group's morale is low, there is a lack of enthusiasm and engagement, reduced cooperation, and complaints emerge regarding the workload, the overall working conditions, and events about other members, further eroding personal relationships. Members will start to avoid dealing with problems, which will end up being dumped onto other members or the leader.

As trust evaporates, employees will be unwilling to speak the whole truth, withholding important information, and their messages will become ambiguous. It will be possible to identify certain non-verbal signs, such as increasing physical distance between members, and there will be changes in routines, such as having coffee or walking to the water cooler and chatting, as well as closed doors, even with an open-door policy. Finally, evidence will come from outside the organization in the form of customer complaints, lost customers, decreased productivity, and, ultimately, deteriorating quality.

In order for people to be able to work together, they must first be able to be together so that they can communicate with each other and listen. The act of listening implies interiorizing the words of others, valuing them, and sending a sign of recognition and acknowledgment that will allow openness to new horizons and new ideas [28]. Leaders need to create conditions so that members feel secure enough to speak their minds. When speaking, it is important to be attentive to the reactions of others and how they respond.

There are multiple moments in which authentic listening can be used in business settings, such as during meetings, recruitment interviews, planning sessions, and every activity at work. Leaders need to be aware of all possibilities of communication contacts and to listen to what all members have to say. Listening is, in essence, the recognition of the other as a human person. In the same way, the leader needs to be able to listen to the silences because they convey important meanings.

Leaders need to be aware that numerous factors can negatively impact their ability to fully listen and acknowledge the other person; these include prejudices, tiredness, and the belief that we know what the other person is thinking or meaning. Therefore, leaders should avoid precipitation.

Listening is an important part of human relations. In order to develop trust, one needs to listen. Listening abilities have become of great value in today's business as they lead to understanding. When people in business fail to understand each other, the results can be costly as they may result in inefficiencies, such as errors in names, dates, and places and forgetting previous agreements [29,30]. The listener needs to refrain from firing his thoughts back to the person talking and avoid judging because it leads to a sense of rejection, which negatively affects people. Approval, on the other hand, creates a positive climate as it recognizes the value of others.

It is important to become good listeners so that people can talk freely, communication can have an adequate flow, and the message will not be distorted. Presence listening needs to be done with an openness of will, heart, and spirit, becoming unconditional witnesses with unconditional love for others while being authentic. This will result in cultivating listening abilities that are essential to function in the space of the collective.

3.3. Connecting through emotions: Esprit de corps; brotherhood, sisterhood, and fraternity; communityship and teamship

Every member needs to feel connected. Regarding the leader, employees perceive an environment in which the leader makes an effort to form an interpersonal relationship with them. In terms of peers, employees perceive an environment in which they trust their colleagues and where their colleagues make an effort to form an interpersonal connection with them [31].

Internal connectedness happens in organizations with strong values-driven cultures. Common identity strives to achieve a shared vision; they work together for the common good. This results in a sense of fulfillment for making a difference in their communities to serve humanity and, ultimately, the planet. This cultural glue makes the difference between a good company and a great one.

The idea of a collective soul or a mental or moral contagion stems from common ideas, attitudes, emotions, and sentiments communicated from one individual to another and propagate and multiply. In certain circumstances, and only under certain circumstances, an agglomeration of individuals possess novel and strong characters different from each individual who is part of it. Conscient personality vanishes, sentiments and ideas become oriented in the same direction, and a collective soul is formed [32].

Even when there are social and cultural differences, none of these differences oppose the psychological law of mental unity [32].