Senior leaders are fluent in the language of priorities, execution, and deliverables. They are far less practiced at noticing how work feels, even though emotional climate shapes behaviour well before changes appear in metrics.
In environments that reward composure and control, naming difficult emotions is uncommon. When executive development consultant Ted Klein asks leaders to describe how work feels, responses often emerge in pairs. When urgency is mentioned, so is fatigue. Alongside feelings of pride, there is often a sense of frustration.
For Klein, these contradictions indicate whether an individual’s needs are being met or if they are quietly eroding. Handled as data, these emotions reveal where pressure is distorting judgment, communication, or timing.
“There’s something really tangible about the emotions in an organization,” Klein says.
In his upcoming three-day retreat at the John Molson Executive Centre, Flourishing Leadership in Challenging Times, Klein unpacks what it means to flourish under unfavourable circumstances, showing senior directors and decision-makers how to acknowledge tough feelings and respond to their teams’ discomfort sooner, rather than when things escalate.
“Pressure doesn’t stay internal,” Klein says. “It changes how people communicate, what they’re willing to risk, and what they hold back.”
The ability to flourish when all roads seem to lead to further uncertainty depends on whether emotional signals are avoided, or named and used to inform choices.
Sustained pressure shapes a team’s expectations. When efforts repeatedly fail to influence decision-makers, staffers can feel like their work is pointless and start to disengage. Cynicism takes hold when people conclude that their contributions don’t change outcomes.
“It’s very difficult to motivate people who have become cynical,” Klein notes.
What counters cynicism isn’t empty reassurance or feigned positivity, but evidence that efforts still yield results. When uncertainty is acknowledged head-on, and when people can see how their input informs decisions, they’ll want to participate meaningfully again.
Ted Klein, executive development consultant
Likewise, Klein says optimism doesn’t need to be treated as false hope, but as confidence in a team’s capacity to find a workable path forward, even without clear solutions.
“Leadership needs to be optimistic that even if teams don’t have the solutions to a particular problem, they can find a solution that works,” he says.
When teams move from one task to another with little opportunity to register progress, even meaningful wins are quickly absorbed by what needs to be done next.
“We need to celebrate the small wins along the way,” says Klein. “If leaders aren't doing that, then people start to get demotivated. We also need to savour past victories because that helps us become more resilient. They remind us of deep satisfaction with the bigger journey.”
When effort goes unmarked, it registers as unresolved strain rather than usable momentum. Recognizing progress as it happens, including small gains and individual contributions, allows people to register that their work mattered.
Flourishing isn’t the outcome of success, Klein explains, but rather the capacity to keep it in view.
“What’s amazing is that through intentional activities, through developing the right habits, the right perspective, and the right story about our life, we can change our baseline,” he says. “So no matter what happens, we don’t just bounce back to where we were. We return to something stronger.”
© Concordia University
