What doesn’t get posted on most job descriptions are the emotional responsibilities of the role. This is emotional labor.
A typical job description for a sales role might be:
- Maintaining and updating the CRM
- Reaching team-wide and individual sales goals
- Contacting new leads
- Conducting seminars and marketing events
Here’s how that same job description might look if we were to detail the emotional requirements to succeed:
- Not becoming frustrated with the grind of data entry that is updating the CRM
- Caring about the performance of your team and believing in yourself when you’re underperforming
- Handling rejections graciously and positively (especially the rude ones) and letting go of residual anger
- Compassionately and patiently educating prospects on the leap of faith they need to trust in our team’s theoretical ability to help them
Before you write that next report, meet with an unhappy client, or spend those next 3 hours of unpaid overtime to help a new employee fix their innocent mistake, you can try asking yourself:
“Beyond technical, intellectual, or physical requirements to do this next task well, what are the emotional responsibilities?”
What we might realize is how much of our work is emotional. After that, we might also have a better sense of what bringing our A-game feels like.
