I’ve got a great new word for you

Hello friends

Welcome to the first of edition of the more indulgent newsletter. My goal is to brighten up your Friday with a skimmable update of the latest work shizzle, with my own (slightly dark?) twist. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed creating it.

This week I'm talking about how being "moved by love" can improve life in the office, the psychological hack to better understanding children (and co-workers who act like them), and finding joy every day...

THE NEW WORD

Picture that famous scene at the end of Love Actually, as returning loved ones are swept into welcoming arms at the arrivals gates at Heathrow. Why do happy moments like these make us weepy, goose bumpy and warm inside?

The answer, based on research from the American Psychological Association, is "kama muta": we're moved by positive events that 'intensify social relationships'. The words kama muta come from the Sanskrit, meaning "moved by love". They used it because we don't have an English equivalent.

It perfectly describes the feeling that swept over me on New Year's Eve. Close to midnight, I paused sweatily on the dance floor of our local pub in full wedding-disco mode. I mentally inhaled the exuberance of my husband, kids, friends and half the village dancing wildly to Mr Brightside (and totally ignored the inappropriate lyrics).

Animals also trigger the feeling: anyone as old as me will remember sobbing through Lassie as a child. Or like those social media clips of dogs going loopy wild with joy when their owners come home after deployment abroad. If you watched Hercules the Bear: A Love Story on BBC2 over Christmas you'd have to have a heart of stone not to feel it when the family's grizzly bear was found and airlifted home after a month lost, thought dead, in the Hebrides.

Why does it matter for work?

One in five workers say they feel lonely at work daily (YouGov). No, sorry, it still doesn't mean they want to go in five days. But they do want more connection and the researchers found the best way to develop social relationships, is through listening. People who are listened to feel more comfortable, more connected and they share more. It promotes the rapid growth of the connection.

As anyone who's been to one of my keynotes in the last year or so knows, given half a chance I get people to do this in the room. Even the ones who hate me for it initially. To listen to the person next to you for three minutes without interrupting. And for them to return the favour. Without knowing about kama muta, I've always described it as giving someone the gift of your attention and delighted by the magical feelings of connection that flood through the room.

Sometimes people cry, saying they feel heard for the first time in a long time. Often people say that they found themselves voicing things they had long known to be true but never properly surfaced. Just this week a man came up to me and showed me a note he'd written for me which said:

“This is going to change my relationship with my wife.”

I asked him if he wanted to share that with the room: he said “hell no” and ran back to his seat.

The good news is that we can seek out and create these feelings. So if you have the mid-January bluerrrrghs, maybe go and find someone to create a little kama muta with today. If that's making you feel too nauseous you could watch the cat sleeping instead.

And a new phrase

My other recent discovery is the work of psychiatrist (Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts hospital) Dr Stuart Ablon. He's spent his career studying people, especially children, who struggle to “manage their feelings and behaviours”. As we say these days instead of calling them pains in the arse.

He says that we assume that, when kids mess about at school, they just don't want to play ball. They're not motivated. So we try and correct that, we tell them what they should do, we give consequences, end up yelling at them to get a grip before they end up on minimum wage living in our spare rooms into their forties.

But his observation, after three decades of practice, is that "kids do well when they can." Read it again and lodge it in your brain. Kids don't want to fail at school or at home. Far from it. They want to do well. When they can do well, they do.

When they can't, it's because they lack the skills they need: "skill not will". Those skills could be emotional regulation, processing information, empathy, problem solving, whatever. The key to helping isn't to add to their sense of failure, it's to spot the skills they lack and to try and help build them. Which I can assure you your teens will hugely appreciate. Not.

Why does it matter at work?

Because his phrase also applies to adults: people do well when they can. If your colleague overly uses AI, is always late, misreads a meeting...they are almost certainly not trying to ruin their career. They're lacking the skills to understand or fix what's going wrong. When you reframe it that way, you see the issue as a limit rather than just being a moron.

It could also mean it's fixable. Maybe!

Ablon has some great techniques for connecting to people struggling, starting with really understanding the other person's perspective. A lot of which works with adults too. The easiest way to access his thinking is via Mel Robbins' podcast although she is quite annoyingly gushy on it. If you prefer a book, it's Change-able & on Amazon. But I've not read it yet as I'm wading through When the Going was Good: An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines, by ex-Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. If you're considering it prepare for the longest name drop in history. But also some bracingly counter-intuitive career learnings I'll share another time.

Fine on Paper

We launched our first cohort of Fine on Paper: a framework for leaders who've made it but still feel lost, last week. It's flipping terrifying. I feel staggering pressure to do a good job: I can hardly breathe. We have people from banks, law firms, charities and tech. My hope is that's transformative on both sides. Updates as we have them.

Chasing sunshine

There are very few objects that give me joy these days. But occasionally something special creates it's own a ray of winter sunlight. On the vlog this week is me sharing an insight from Craig and Mandy Hickson about how to live every day, illustrated by a thing I cannot even identify. Well it's better than a resolution to take up running.

What's your yellow pot of joy today? And do let me know your thoughts on the new format.

Christine