SMALL BUSINESS

Dianne Buckner

Building a business? Get in touch with your sensitive side

Last Updated: Tuesday, November 23, 2010 | 2:59 PM ET

By Dianne Buckner, CBC News

You may want to put on a rendition of that classic song Feelings as you read this column.

That's because I'm about to make a case that businesspeople these days are becoming more focused on human emotions and the role they play in building businesses.

And that includes choices about what companies we want to be involved with. Sentiment can even be a "brand attribute," according to one expert to whom I spoke.

But let me start at the beginning. My observations about emotions in business actually began with my curiosity about the term "engagement." It seemed every other day I was hearing this buzzword, either from human resource professionals talking about employee engagement, or from marketing professionals wanting to engage with customers.

What the heck did it mean?

"It's a new term for an old thing," says Scott Stratten, author of UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging.

"People want to be part of a conversation, they want to feel like they'll be listened to and treated fairly. That's engagement."

"Everybody's an expert on engagement nowadays," adds Michael Leiter, a psychologist and business consultant based in Wolfville, N.S.

"In my opinion, engagement is the opposite of burnout. Burnout is when you're exhausted and discouraged. And on the other end, engaged means you're energetic and involved."

Building emotional attachment

It turns out engagement is really about having some level of emotional attachment to a company — as a customer or as an employee. And, naturally, most enterprises want those emotions to be positive.

How does that happen, though?

Leiter is an HR expert. He's studied the factors that make workplaces healthy or unhealthy, and found that workers tend to mimic the habits of the boss.

'Community and justice really matter if you want people to invest their emotions and their higher-order energy in your company. And if you're going to make it these days, you need that energy.'— Michael Leiter, business consultant

"People have a very sensitive antenna," he says. "They monitor relationships in the workplace very closely. They watch how the boss interacts and take their cue from that."

In a study he did recently, participants were asked how often their boss was rude to them. "Not abusive," he clarifies, "just thoughtless." He then asked how often the workers themselves were rude to co-workers. There was a high correlation.

"We also found that the more positive things supervisors did, the less rude workers were to each other," says Leiter, adding that relations between co-workers can be more damaging than relations between workers and supervisors. And almost needless to say, when people are feeling good about the sense of community and sense of justice in their workplace, productivity is affected in a positive way.

"Community and justice really matter if you want people to invest their emotions and their higher-order energy in your company," Leiter says. "And if you're going to make it these days, you need that energy. It's the creativity and new ideas that go beyond the level of ordinary that make success in this economy."

Cooking up trouble

Maybe it's the prevalence of psychotherapy in our culture. Maybe it's part of the emotional evolution of the species. Or maybe I'm the only one who thinks people seem much more in tune with their feelings these days — and more than that, expect them to be respected!

(Hum along now: "…whoawhoawhoa feeeeelings…")

In any case, there's no question people are expressing their emotions in new ways, particularly on-line. Happiness or unhappiness with a company or brand can be communicated passionately and quickly.

Stratten is the "un-marketing" specialist I follow on Twitter. He offers up a case study in how the digital world can punish those who don't engage properly or consider feelings.

"Look at what happened with Cooks Source Magazine," he says. "Everybody on the internet was lining up like Braveheart across the mountain to express their outrage. It's an example of how the playing field has changed."

The Cooks Source scandal happened earlier this month. It involves an editor who copied an article from the internet and published it in her magazine, without paying or even contacting the writer. When the freelancer, Monica Gaudio, found out, she asked for a $130 contribution to the Columbia School of Journalism as payment.

Instead of an apology or a cheque, she received a written smackdown. "Honestly Monica," editor Judith Briggs wrote, "the web is considered 'public domain' and you should be happy we didn't just 'lift' your whole article and put someone else's name on it." Briggs went on to suggest that perhaps Monica should pay her for the excellent editing services on the article. "Now it will work well for your portfolio."

Gaudio posted the reply on her little-known blog; the story quickly went viral. Angry Facebook postings and complaints to Cooks Source advertisers ("how dare you support plagiarism?") were next, and within two weeks, the magazine was saying it would have to fold.

'If people are happy or unhappy, they're going to tweet it, Facebook it, post it'—Scott Stratten, author

"Social media doesn't change anything," Stratten says. "It just amplifies it."

Clearly that's another reason to be careful with people's feelings.

"It doesn't matter if the brand wants to be part of the conversation," Stratten adds. "If people are happy or unhappy, they're going to tweet it, Facebook it, post it. And that will happen whether the company is part of the conversation or not."

His philosophy, of course, is that companies should get busy with social media. His book tells the story of a Domino's Pizza location that saw a customer complaining on Twitter, and responded by posting a video apology on Youtube. It too went viral, but in a way that benefited the company.

"People want to feel validated," Stratten says, "whether it's on a customer side, or an employee side."

Canada as a brand

(Big build to the last verse… "Feelings — feeling like I've never lost you…")

Here's one other interesting view of emotions as a basis for building business. This one is about Canada as a brand.

I attended a prosperity conference recently and watched a presentation by John Wright of polling firm Ipsos Reid. Wright was making the point that Canada should market itself to international companies as a wonderful place to build factories or add staff because of the optimism here.

In a series of slides, he showed how much better Canadians feel than Americans — about our economy, about making a major purchase, about how our country is heading in the right direction.

"We often don't understand how the rest of the world sees us," says Wright, noting that compared to Ireland, France or Britain, Canada is seen as a bastion of financial stability. "And if your workers are optimistic and stable, that's a brand attribute."

His firm tracks "public sentiment" on a vast array of subjects, so he knows just how much business counts on how people feel.

Based on all this, I'm thinking that along with accounting and management studies, psychology should be on the curriculum at more business schools.