The Best Leaders Normalize Emotion at Work
- nurysotelo4
- Aug 25
- 5 min read
(Why Future CEOs, Founders, and Team Builders Should Care About Feelings)
The Missing Leadership Skill No One Teaches in College
When you think of a “great leader,” what pops into your mind?Maybe Steve Jobs in his black turtleneck.Maybe Elon Musk dropping bold tweets.Maybe Oprah commanding a room with presence.
But here’s the quiet truth: the best leaders aren’t just visionaries, strategists, or hustlers. They’re emotional guides.
They know how to deal with their own fear, doubt, and stress—and how to help their team handle theirs.
That’s what nobody tells you in college lectures or startup podcasts.Startups don’t die because of bad ideas. They die because founders burn out. Teams implode. Co-founders stop trusting each other. Investors sense chaos.
And the root cause? Unspoken emotions.
The best leaders don’t try to suppress feelings—they normalize them. They make emotions part of the conversation, part of the process, and even part of the culture.
That’s not “soft.” It’s the hardest and smartest thing you can do in business.
The Startup Rollercoaster: Why Entrepreneurship Feels Like a Fight
Let’s be honest: starting a company is emotional whiplash.
One hour, you’re convinced you’ll be a unicorn.
The next, you’re googling “cheap ramen bulk order.”
Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, famously said:
“In a startup, you encounter an upper bound of happiness you never knew existed—and a lower bound of misery you didn’t either.”
Data backs this:
72% of entrepreneurs report mental health struggles (UC Berkeley, 2015).
Founders are 2x more likely to suffer from depression and 3x more likely to experience substance abuse compared to the general population.
Gallup (2023) found that 70% of employee engagement is tied to how managers handle emotions at work.
Translation: leadership is emotional labor.And if you ignore it, your startup becomes a pressure cooker.
The leaders who survive—the ones you admire—are the ones who make emotion normal instead of taboo.
Case Studies: How Startup Leaders Used Emotion as Fuel
1. Airbnb’s Air Mattress Breakdown
San Francisco. Recession.
Three friends—Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk—can’t pay rent. They blow up some air mattresses and list their apartment online for strangers.
That’s Airbnb’s origin story.But what people forget is the emotional chaos behind it.
Rejected by 7 VCs in a row.
Credit card debt piling up.
Family asking when they’ll get “real jobs.”
Brian Chesky later admitted: “I felt embarrassed. Like we were running a joke instead of a company.”
Most founders hide that shame. Chesky and Gebbia didn’t. They turned it into creativity.
Desperate, they designed limited-edition Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain cereal boxes during the 2008 election.
They sold 800 boxes. Made $30,000. And kept the company alive.
By naming their fear and embarrassment openly, they channeled it into scrappiness.Without that, Airbnb would have died before it ever got funding.
👉 Takeaway: Naming emotions out loud creates survival strategies. Suppressing them kills creativity.
2. Slack’s CEO and the Power of Admitting Doubt
Stewart Butterfield didn’t set out to build Slack.He wanted to build an online video game called Glitch.
Years of work. Millions in funding. A passionate team.
And then… it bombed. Nobody played.
Imagine walking into your office and telling your team their dream project is dead. Most leaders would sugarcoat it. Or push harder out of denial.
Butterfield did the opposite. He told his team: “We tried. We cared. It’s not working. And it hurts.”
By admitting doubt and disappointment, he gave the team permission to grieve—and then pivot.
They realized the one thing they actually loved was the internal chat tool they’d built. That became Slack.Slack sold for $27 billion to Salesforce.
👉 Takeaway: Vulnerability isn’t weakness. It’s the doorway to pivots that save companies.
3. Buffer’s Radical Transparency
Joel Gascoigne, founder of Buffer, built his startup around one radical rule: “Default to transparency.”
That didn’t just mean salary spreadsheets (though Buffer publishes everyone’s pay online). It also meant emotional transparency.
Weekly “pair calls” where employees share not just tasks, but how they’re feeling.
Company Slack channels for mental health, gratitude, and personal updates.
Leaders modeling openness about stress, burnout, or even therapy.
Result? Buffer has one of the most resilient remote cultures in tech. While other startups imploded during COVID-19, Buffer stayed steady.
👉 Takeaway: Making emotions part of the agenda isn’t fluffy—it’s strategic.
4. Stripe’s Write-It-Down Discipline
Stripe, founded by Patrick and John Collison, is famous for being document-obsessed. Everything is written: decisions, debates, frustrations.
Why? Writing forces clarity.
Science backs this: UCLA research shows labeling emotions reduces their intensity in the brain. Writing “I feel anxious about fundraising” literally calms your amygdala.
At Stripe, that habit prevents emotional flare-ups from derailing meetings. It normalizes strong feelings without letting them explode.
👉 Takeaway: You don’t need group therapy. Sometimes, structure is the best way to handle emotion.
5. Canva’s CEO Mel Perkins—Kindness as Strategy
Melanie Perkins, Canva’s CEO, runs a $40B design empire with one unusual rule: kindness is a competitive advantage.
She normalizes emotional check-ins. Keeps an open door for team worries. And frames leadership decisions through empathy: “Would this make life better or harder for our team?”
That culture keeps turnover low, morale high, and innovation flowing.
👉 Takeaway: Empathy scales. It’s not just nice—it’s billion-dollar smart.
The Science of Emotion at Work
For skeptics: this isn’t “feel-good” fluff. It’s neuroscience + business ROI.
Labeling emotions lowers stress. (Lieberman, UCLA, 2007)
Psychological safety is the #1 factor in high-performing teams. (Google’s Project Aristotle, 2016)
$1 invested in mental health = $4 return in productivity. (WHO, 2020)
Teams with leaders who express vulnerability are 30% more innovative. (Harvard, 2019)
Suppressing emotions isn’t strength—it’s a productivity drain.
The Startup Playbook: 30-Day Emotional Leadership Experiments
Want to practice emotional leadership right now? Try these:
Week 1: Normalize Feelings in Standups
Do a “mood check”: each person shares one word for how they feel. (“Excited,” “tired,” “overwhelmed.”)Takes 30 seconds. Builds trust.
Week 2: Run an “Emotion Retro”
After a sprint, ask:
“When did you feel frustrated?”
“When did you feel energized?”These moments reveal bottlenecks or sparks for innovation.
Week 3: Practice the “Write It Down Rule”
Before confronting someone, write your frustration down. Wait 24 hours.Most times, you’ll rewrite it more constructively.
Week 4: Do a “Close the Loop” Ritual
When mistakes happen, walk the team through:
What happened
How it made us feel
What we learned
What’s changing
Turns shame into growth.
Pitfalls: How Not to Do It
Toxic positivity – Pretending everything’s great kills trust.
Oversharing – Leaders shouldn’t dump their panic on the team. Balance is key.
Ignoring structure – Emotions matter, but rituals and systems prevent chaos.
The Future: Why Gen Z Entrepreneurs Are Built for This
Here’s the good news: young entrepreneurs (yes, you) are uniquely positioned to lead this way.
Gen Z talks openly about mental health.
Remote work has blurred personal/professional lines.
Startups now win not just on tech, but on culture.
The next generation of unicorns will be built by leaders who make emotion normal—not shameful.
Conclusion: Your Real Job as a Leader
When you launch, you’ll think your job is pitching, coding, selling.
But your real job is this:
To name your own fear so it doesn’t leak sideways.
To normalize your team’s emotions so they stay creative.
To turn vulnerability into pivots, scrappiness, and resilience.
Brian Chesky turned embarrassment into creativity.Stewart Butterfield turned grief into Slack.Joel Gascoigne turned transparency into Buffer.The Collisons turned discipline into Stripe.Mel Perkins turned kindness into Canva.
The best leaders don’t suppress emotions.They normalize them. And that’s why people follow them into the unknown.
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