I think Emotional Coding in way can be broken down into the two basic modes that we used in the game. Those emotions that we encode and those that we decode, I am going to break down my personal life and how I use encoding/decoding, and don't use it enough...
1.) Encoding: Projecting my emotion onto others.
This is a very very important one, especially at work... I think I can credit much of what I learned and am learning from my father who is in my opinion a master of encoding/decoding... Since I basically have known him my whole life, and have worked with him for the last six years, I grew up knowing my dad as a father only until I joined the family business.
Having the perspective of knowing him outside of work, and seeing how he encodes messages to our staff has taught me a lot about what works in certain situations and how to encode certain emotions in the tone of voice and general reaction to situations.
Situations that can arise between customers, employees, and our own management. Pretty much any situation and combination of customers, employees, and management can end up in either situations where coming in as the leader and encoding things in the right way are essential so that people "really get the point".
I recently had a situation a few months ago arise where I encoded a message incorrectly to another manager who has been at our company longer than I have. It was about a new idea and way that we were going to change some responsibilities around because of the economic downturn.
I learned a really big lesson about encoding incorrectly... The other manager exploded in a loud verbal attack on me (with profanity included) which other employees heard... I remained quiet, I think he did not understand my intentions nor reasons, it was really in his best interest... I waited till he calmed down. We ended up making the changes...
After a few months... The changes benefitted the whole team, and will most likely lead to him getting a larger bonus than he would have otherwise... (probably double) because he took on some new responsibilities... He recently appologized to me, but I was reflecting on it, I think I encoded that message improperly, as I was excited about the change, but should have encoded it more for how he would had interpreted it up front...
Ive also come to learn that being from an engineering background, a lot of times we can come off a little too square with our message, sometimes we gotta round off the edges off our message since people like soft things, not necessarily those that are purely logical and functional. I'm still working on it... :)
1.) Decoding: Figuring out the emotional communication of others.
This side is especially important when it comes to employees, since they are the largest projectors of emotion. Normally, from my experience, an employee will not come out and tell you something outright. Being a good leader requires that you can read the messages they are encoding to you...
Even small things, avoiding conversation, or saying things in a way they normally don't. Ive learned that if an employee is acting different, chances are he trying to tell you something, before he has to "say it". Or say it the way he really wants to say it...
I recently had an employee that was avoiding conversation, and acting very much more quiet than usual the last two weeks, but different towards his coworkers... I knew something was wrong... Since he has been commuting from Livermore to our facility because the company he came from went out of business over a year ago when I hired him.
I had a feeling about two weeks ago he was going to tell me he was leaving... I could tell just by the way he was encoding messages physically, and in conversation... Nothing bad at all... But more like he had the look that he had something to tell me...
He gave notice to me last week... It was kind of a relief for me, because it gave closure to the last few weeks where I was decoding this... When he told me I was completely relieved and was already prepared, sat down with him, we talked about a lot of things outside of work. I said I understood because I lived in LA for a few years where the commute was terrible...
It was a good decode, I was completely ready for that talk and mentally prepared... I'm glad he gave me the right signals to decode, it made it a lot easier on both of us... He really did not want to leave, but the time in traffic and cost to travel so far, made his decision justified.
So far I'm +1 point decoding, -1 encoding... I guess I should stop writing here to be safe... :)
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