No Hard Feelings

No Hard Feelings if someone at work hands you this book, okay? This is a book of pure genius that should be part of the onboarding process at every company in the United States, and possibly elsewhere. It manages to be fascinating, authentic, hilarious, and paradigm-shifting while still being completely suitable for the office. Leave it out in a conspicuous place, maybe in the break room, and watch everyone flip through it for the cartoons.

Everyone is included in No Hard Feelings. There are predictable style differences between extroverts and introverts, strategic optimists and defensive pessimists, leaders and followers, and of course the various generations, races, cultures, and genders. Some of these have been well explored in the business press, and others seem quite fresh and intriguing in the context of emotional intelligence.

Stress, burnout, and interpersonal conflict come up often. The authors have excellent strategies for setting boundaries, especially with the digital world. They recommend ways to set a company culture that encourages vacation time and discourages constant access. There are highly practical ways to lay down limits and shut down at the end of the day. Surely being less frazzled and exhausted would help everyone to get along and make it to Friday.

One of the features that I liked the most about No Hard Feelings is that it assumes ambition, that the reader is either in a leadership position or may eventually be considered for one. The concept of a “challenge network” was new to me, and I will be using that term when I speak on mentoring and continuous improvement. Everyone should have someone to go to for emotional support, and also someone to go to for advice and constructive criticism.

This is the Twenty-First Century, and it’s high time that we all collectively start acknowledging that emotions are real. Mood repair should be a part of standard operating procedure. Recognizing the human factors of communication and emotional intelligence can only make work easier, more fun, and ultimately more productive. Get your copy and put it in your boss’s inbox today.

Favorite quotes:

...the future of work is emotional.

If you let someone underperform for months or even years without saying anything, you’ve failed as a manager.