Affective Reality

Sep 1

The Friday Finance Break

Affective Reality is the idea that our emotional state impacts our perception and judgements of how the world actually is.

Aka. You’re happy, so you think your sales are going great!

Or you’re sad so you think your company is doomed.

It’s natural, it’s normal, and it’s particularly prevalent when strong emotions are at play.

As founders, a lot gets thrown at us

It’s an emotional free-for-all

And we’re human.

So perceiving affective reality is almost inevitable.

But when you’re the boss, this impacts other people:

You’re feeling worried about money so you throw your sales team into overdrive even when your product team can’t support more customers
You give harsh criticism to a trusted employee because it “feels” like they’re not doing their job
You spin up an entire business unit to chase after an exciting new, untested idea

As CEOs, what can we do?

Pause and Assess

Recognizing that affective reality is a thing and checking ourselves - is this objective reality or Affective Reality?

What metrics, data, resources can help us plug into objective reality when we need to tap into it?

Take F-ing Care of Yourself

Your #1 job as CEO is to make good decisions. Full stop.

You must be in a headspace where you can make informed, objective-reality-based decisions.

Everyone on your team is relying on you to be capable of that.

Never feel guilty, conflicted, unproductive doing the things it takes to get you there.

Taking a bath, meditating, going on vacation, paying yourself enough to not stress about personal finances

If that’s what it takes to make you a good CEO

Then it’s part of your job.

Do your job.