Support Your Team... Quietly

Helping people deal with emotions is a key leadership skill, especially in times of crisis. Your tone may effectively quell negative emotions or promote beneficial emotions, and improve camaraderie, trust, and team performance.

But recent research into the field of social regulation shows us that how you support your people can make a real difference. It turns out that caring delivered in an indirect, implicit manner tends to have a greater positive impact than support delivered in a direct, explicit manner. In other words, people get more out of compassion when they don't know they're getting it. (I presented these findings at the recent Neuroleadership Summit held in New York in October; you can view it for free on the Summit website.)

Whereas implicit forms of caring unfold relatively automatically, explicit caring involves conscious goals to regulate emotional responses and monitor their effect. So, implicit emotional regulation may include the "chameleon effect," where we unconsciously mimic the body language and tone of a conversation partner, or react to the opinions of the group around us without even knowing it. By contrast, we are using explicit social regulation when we deliver tough, constructive feedback — or support and guidance after a setback — by carefully choosing the way we frame our messages in either neutral or positive terms. Explicit regulation also occurs when we attempt to consciously mirror the verbal style and/or body language of someone we wish to persuade.

One study of explicit regulation illuminates the ways people hear indirect feedback as opposed to something more forceful, in your face. Research by my colleague Niall Bolger at Columbia shows that caring and support delivered in an indirect, implicit manner tends to have greater positive impact than support delivered in a direct, explicit manner.

Implicit support is invisible to the recipient and doesn't call attention to the fact that you're offering support. For example, you could indirectly offer advice to a coworker or employee by noting that you think they're doing fine. But, you would also explain that were you in their situation, you might need help; then you would "think out loud" about what you would do in that situation. By contrast, managers who make it obvious that, "I'm here to help," or lead off by saying, "let me tell you how to handle this," tend to threaten self-esteem and autonomy by highlighting that their direct report is being evaluated negatively for performance.

Consider Bolger's research involving couples where one partner was studying for the bar exam (which is known to be extremely stressful.) Niall found that when the giving partner gave support, but the receiving partner (who was studying for the exam) was not aware of receiving it, the benefits were far more pronounced. Such instances of implicit, "invisible," support occurred when the giving partner reported being "listening and comforting," but the receiving partner said no support was being offered. In such cases of invisible support, anxiety and depression were lessened, particularly at times when stress was at its highest, just before the exam.

In another study from Niall's lab, women were given a highly stressful public speaking assignment and an associate of the experimenter (status unknown to the subjects) was prepared to offer support in two ways. One involved the associate pointing out where the individual preparing for the speech needed help and explicitly giving advice about different aspects of the speech. In the second approach, the associate noted that his counterpart didn't need much help but talked about parts of his speech that could use some more work and ideas about how the speech could be improved. Once again, this implicit means of offering support lessened anxiety for the speech-giving subject by indirectly offering them guidance and a downward social comparison (the confederate is worse off than they are) to bolster their confidence and avoid threats to their autonomy and sense of self-worth.

By conveying the belief that the person you're coaching can cope with the situation, and offering yourself as an indirect example of how one can fail but find ways to succeed, you can communicate that they are competent while still imparting guidance. As a result, you can support their sense of self-control and lessen anxiety at the same time.

Remember that the influence you have emotionally is also affected by your social context. Closeness and intimacy increase the effects of social regulation, and being in a position of power means those below you will be more attuned to your social cues and more likely to mimic or take them on, while at the same time they will also be dealing with greater levels of stress and fear because of your position of authority over them.

If you want to explicitly help others with their emotions, think twice about jumping in to fix their problems or telling them that you're there to help. Look for ways to help people see for themselves that things will turn out ok, provide a shoulder to lean on when requested, and offer advice indirectly without calling attention to the fact that they seem to be buckling pressures of a tough day at the office.

Support Your Team... Quietly
Kevin Ochsner