#582 Emotional Markers: Why One Single Moment Decides Whether Your Team Trusts You

Emotional Markers: Why One Single Moment Decides Whether Your Team Trusts You

Some workplace moments last only a few seconds, yet they stay with people for years. A name flashing on the phone screen, and the coffee has already gone cold before a single word has been spoken. In this week's episode of The Leadership Podcast, Niels Brabandt tackles exactly this phenomenon: emotional markers, a concept he argues is rarely taught properly in leadership training, despite being one of the strongest predictors of whether people continue to trust, and go the extra mile for, their leader.

What Emotional Markers Actually Are

Niels Brabandt is unambiguous on one point: emotional markers happen, whether a leader intends them or not. They are built from real experience, and they determine how much effort, trust and loyalty someone is willing to offer in future. He draws a clear line between emotional markers and a related but different concept, somatic markers, a theory developed by scientist Antonio Damasio describing the physical reactions, a tightening in the stomach, for example, that influence individual decisions in the moment. Emotional markers, by contrast, are longer-lasting impressions formed by repeated or particularly intense leadership experiences.

A Real-World Example: When Recognition Turns Into a Deduction

Brabandt illustrates the concept with a genuine case. An employee, already balancing family commitments, volunteers to help with an extremely demanding final phase of a project, ultimately working around 80 hours a week for nearly five weeks. The project is saved, the extra mile is walked willingly, and everything appears to end well. Then, the following Monday, the leader informs the employee that a routine review of expenses found an extra breakfast charged during every hotel stay, pushing the accommodation cost over the approved ceiling, and that the equivalent of roughly twenty two days' worth of that charge will now be deducted from the employee's salary, without any prior warning. The employee's internal reaction, as Brabandt puts it plainly, is the exact moment a positive experience becomes a lasting negative one.

Externalisation: The Fastest Way to Break Trust

What makes the damage worse, Brabandt argues, is what leaders do next: externalisation, the reflex of shifting blame away from themselves the instant a difficult conversation begins. Phrases such as "it's not my fault, it's the travel policy," "it's not my fault, it's compliance," or "it's not my fault, it's the legal department" may be technically accurate, yet they deepen the negative emotional marker considerably. What lands with the employee is not the underlying rule but the feeling of having been left unrepresented by the one person who was supposed to have their back. Anyone who reaches for this reflex, Brabandt suggests, should honestly ask whether they are actually leading or simply administering a process.

Management Is Not Leadership

This is where Brabandt draws a sharp distinction. Enforcing a rule and leaving the person to deal with the consequences alone is, by his definition, management: turning resources into value, nothing more and nothing less. Leadership, by contrast, means stepping into exactly this uncomfortable moment: pausing the deduction, taking ownership of the situation with the employee, and stating clearly that a solution will be found, regardless of who wrote the rule or why. Crucially, Brabandt stresses that leadership does not mean publicly blaming other departments either. It means taking accountability while still holding, and communicating, a clear position of one's own.

Why Leadership Quality Determines Your Sickness Rate

Brabandt situates this within a broader body of research, citing Professor Dr. Volker Nürnberg, one of Germany's leading researchers on the link between leadership quality and workforce absenteeism and presenteeism. Nürnberg's frequently quoted line, that every company has the sickness rate it deserves, is not popular at employer conferences, Brabandt notes, but it is well supported by evidence. The underlying reason, in his view, comes back to commitment: leaders routinely expect it from their people without consistently demonstrating it themselves. Positive emotional markers, set deliberately and credibly, produce the opposite effect, employees who go the extra mile because they genuinely want to, not because they feel they have no choice.

Niels Brabandt

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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify

For the videocast's and podcast's transcript, read below this article.

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Podcast and Videocast Transcript

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

Do you have any memories regarding your leaders in your organization, or any feelings? And probably now some people say, "Oh come on, how can you start with that on a Wednesday morning?" Well, you probably then have negative feelings. And let's face it, I had some leaders where I have negative feelings, no question about that. Fortunately, I also had some leaders who were really good leaders, and that is something where some people say, "I never had that." Unfortunately, leadership is in decline, and now we have to talk about how do you call this. And people say, "I have this feeling." Maybe you know this moment: someone calls you on Microsoft Teams, and before you say the first word, before you even heard them speaking, you already think, "Oh God, please, not you. Not you. Please no." And that is what we call emotional markers. Emotional markers are extremely relevant in any kind of leadership situation, yet many leaders do not even know what emotional markers are. And that is why we have to talk about them. Welcome to this week's episode. My name is Niels, Niels Brabandt. We talk about emotional markers today.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

So, very important: emotional markers happen. When you say, "Oh, in our industry they're not that relevant," lie. Straightforward lie. Or ignorance. Or both. When you say, "Oh, emotional markers for us, no, we're very transactional, people don't have them here," they do. They probably just don't tell you anymore because they stopped caring. When you say, "Emotional markers for us, well, people have to go through it, it's just a tough industry, that's just how we are," that's one approach. Not a very good one. Not a scientific one, and especially not a successful one. You now have to know how to do better. And that's why we're here today.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

When we talk about emotional markers, I give you a real-world example which happens in the real world. Someone gets asked to get into an extremely difficult final of a project. It's very tough, it's very challenging, and despite this person already having family, with two children and enough things going on there, the person says, "Look, I really want to help you here, so let's just do that. Let's just do that." So the person helps. And after four, almost five weeks of 80 hours a week, everything was saved, everything went well, the project was saved, everything was in place. And, yeah, well, the Monday after these four, five weeks, the leader turns up and says, "Oh, we just looked at your accounts, by the way. When you were traveling, you always got this extra breakfast. I'm very sorry, you already with the room charge, with the room fee, you hit the ceiling. So just that you're not surprised, next month we're going to deduct 22 times 14 euros from your salary because that's something you have to pay by yourself." Silence. And the person thinks, "WTF is going on here?"

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

And from there, this person has one aspect which many people label "experience." And the experience this person now made will lead to the following: the person will say, "The next time you ask me, you can do that by yourself. The next time you ask me, you can whatever you want to do, not do anything with me or plan with me. The next time you ask me, I will make up a reason why I can't do this, and I will blame you entirely on it." So this is the moment where emotional markers happen. As soon as leadership happens in a bad way or in a good way, you have emotional markers. And very important here, emotional markers happen in both directions, positively and negatively.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

However, unfortunately, especially with the external ones, sorry, especially with the bad ones, leaders tend to do one thing, and that is called externalization. They say, "Oh yeah, you know, it's really bad, but..." And then the magic reason appears why it is not their fault. "Oh yeah, you know, we looked at your expenses. It's not my fault, you know, it's just a travel guideline. It's not my fault, you know, it's accounts. It's not my fault, you know, it's compliance. It's not my fault, you know, it's the legal department." You immediately make up something why it is not your fault, blaming someone else. And as soon as you do this, as soon as you do externalization, there is a real issue, and you immediately say, "Yeah, I know, issue, but you know, not my issue because not my fault." Then people will have an even worse reaction than before.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

And also, we have to very clearly state one aspect here. As soon as in these situations, you have to, as soon as in these situations, you say, "I see the situation, but you know, not my fault, protecting myself, blaming others," people will stop following you. Because what you do is not leadership. What you do is management. We already talked about that last week, the difference between leadership and management, very broadly speaking, a bit of oversimplifying here. Management is what you do here, which means turning resources into values. You convinced someone to go the extra mile, save the project, cool, all the plus sides are for you, and the other side gets a deduction of their salary and a nice thank you, while at home you can explain why you haven't been home basically for five weeks, and maybe during the birthday of your first child. And by the way, that's exactly what happened there. So the situation when you deliver only management, you're making the emotional marker worse.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

And let's say this kind of thing happens, but you as a leader say, "Look, I just received this complaint from the department. Look, I will take care of this. They will contact you. Put them straightforward on my desk. I will tell them what's happening here. I will take care of this. Of course you get your money and nothing will get deducted because this is abhorrent and we need to find a solution for it." So here you see how people can actually act as a leader. And by the way, again, as a leader, do not blame others. Do not say, "Oh, you know, these idiots from the compliance department, these idiots from legal, these incompetent nutters from XYZ department." That's again not great because you're now again blaming others. Take accountability. Really step up to the accountability you are meant to take anyway. That's leadership here.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

Because you have to see, emotional markers is something which always happen in a positive or negative way, but not last in equal ways. And by the way, when you now said, "Isn't there another term for markers?" Yes. Don't mix it up. There's something which we today talk about, emotional markers, from Antonio Damaso, a scientist from the US. He talked about somatic markers. Somatic markers are when you have a physical reaction to something. So for example, you see a certain name and suddenly your stomach turns. Or a certain project or a certain aspect turns up and you have a physical reaction which simply tells you either, "Yes, we should do that," or "No, we shouldn't." A physical reaction towards something from happiness to joy to anger and frustration. The whole spectrum is there, up to trauma, which is a completely different thing then. When you have that, somatic markers are something else. That's a different concept here.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

Emotional markers, when I tell you, "Think back, think of great leadership and think of bad leadership," people usually experience both, or I hope they did. However, as soon as they ask them, they usually remember one thing way longer, and that is the negative emotional marker. You need to be aware that emotional markers are set by your actions. Sometimes emotional markers are set by other leaders, and then you can have a clear opinion on that. So for example, let's say on a higher level, someone says, "Sorry, no, we don't have remote work anymore. We cut it down from five days a week to two days." And there is no scientific evidence backing that in the situation in which you are right now, massive frustration amongst the staff.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

Then you can say, "Hey, I certainly have an opinion on this, and I certainly disagree, obviously," without telling that other people are idiots or sitting in the ivory tower. Without that, right? Very important. But you can still say, "Look, it is something we can't influence right now, and we need to make the best out of it. And I am here to guide you through this situation. I will address it, of course. However, it really needs to be done in a reasonable manner from us as well." When we now just sit here and yell, no one's going to listen to us. That is leadership. And your staff will follow you. Your people are following you more when you are setting more positive emotional markers. Without positive emotional markers, everything goes down from there.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

So the question is now, how do you, let's face it, negative emotional markers last way longer than positive ones. The question is now, how do you actually implement that in your daily routine as a leader? So first, of course, you need to be aware of one aspect. The quality of leadership is heavily depending on emotional markers. Let's say business running well, everyone's doing their work, and you are there as a leader. People will say, "Yeah, you know, leader, I mean, business going well, business is coming in automatically. No one has to do anything. It is not leadership. The person's just there." As soon as the first bad thing arrives and you don't do well, that's where you set emotional markers. Or when you do well, also an emotional marker. The quality of your leadership will very quickly be determined by emotional markers.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

The issue here is you don't know when the emotional markers turn up. Could be in your first week, could be in your first year, could be five years later, could be usually in today's economy. It happens rather quickly. The question always is, what kind of emotional marker are you setting? And it might happen when you are on vacation, suddenly someone sends you an email while you're on vacation says, "What should we do here? Massive problem at the moment." So it is very important. It is very important that the quality of your leadership is relying on that. Because when you ask people for commitment, and that's something which, that's a term which goes usually far, far, far beyond the contract you sign with someone. Commitment means you go far beyond what you promise to do in exchange for money.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

The question always is, what kind of commitment do leaders actually show? And as soon as you see that there is something where people should show commitment, but leaders do not, that's where everything goes down from there. Only when you have leaders who really show commitment beyond the usual means, then people will say, "Look, our leaders are doing really well, and they're trying their very best. So I do my very best as well because I feel obliged to them, and I actually like to work in a nice environment." This kind of sustainability is only reached when you are in the know, and when you are able to put in as many positive emotional markers as possible. As soon as you put in positive emotional markers deliberately, or when the situation asks for it, your whole team, your whole staff situation, everything in your department, in your district, in your organization, will become better from there when you do it the positive way we just discussed here.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

And I wish you all the best implementing this in your organization. And when you now say, "That's a bit challenging. I have 5 to 78 questions at this point." Of course, when you now watch me on YouTube, first, of course, leave a like there. Thank you very much for doing so. You can, of course, subscribe to my channel. You can, of course, also comment below here. And of course, very important, when you now listen to me on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, I'm very happy when you also leave a review here. Thank you very much for the five stars.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

Very important also is this channel is all free of charge. We have amazing rankings. However, this is a lot of work. So we are always relying on organic outreach. We do not buy any kind of outreach. The whole growth of this podcast is only relying on actually delivering proper content. So it's very important that if you can, recommend this channel amongst friends, colleagues, online, offline, social media, wherever you like. Very important also is when you say, "Hey, is there more than this once per week episode?" Yes, we do. We have so-called shorts, leadership tips, one tip every day at least. So feel free to go on YouTube, and when you sign up to the YouTube channel, you also will see the YouTube Shorts.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

YouTube Shorts are usually short tips, 30 to 60 seconds. We promised you one tip per day. We are far ahead of plan, so we did this so far. I hope you can keep it for the whole year. The YouTube Shorts will simply be one tip each day, or sometimes even more, which you can only find on YouTube. So it pays off not only to subscribe to the channel, but also put the tiny bell in there because then you get a tiny notification which actually tells you as soon as some new content is online there. You can, of course, also follow me on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. That's the main channels on the podcast site we have.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

When you now say, "Hey, we need very specific help. We need a trainer, a speaker, a coach, a mentor, a project or interim manager," feel free to follow me and go to my website, nb-networks.biz, or you simply drop me an email, nb@nb-networks.com.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

Very important is every single outreach will be answered within 24 hours or less, which of course means if you reach out to me and you do not receive an answer within 24 hours, for whatever reason, your message got stuck somewhere, spam filter, deep spam, quarantine, whatever it is. So please contact me again on a different means then, or again on that channel so that that next message hopefully goes through. I really answer every single message within 24 hours or less, absolutely no exception.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

And when you now say, "Hey, you like to have a bit more, is it possible that we can have live sessions?" Yes, we have live sessions besides this podcast and videocast here. At least once per month, we have a live session. We only communicate our live sessions, the date, the time, the access link via our leadership letter. So it pays off to sign up for that.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

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Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

And of course, we always publish there the next date and time for the live session. And by the way, the whole access link, so the date, the time, and the access link is directly in the email. You don't have to register, but you need to know we only communicate this via the leadership letter. So it really pays off to subscribe to that. And of course, you can also connect with me on social media. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, or simply leave a follow on Instagram, or a like on Facebook, or you can simply subscribe to the channel on YouTube.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

By the way, when you say, "We need live session, but it's pretty confidential. Can we have a private live session?" Of course we can, and that of course is then free of charge. Drop me an email and we find a date and a time for that.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

The most important thing is always what I say at the end of each podcast and videocast. Apply, apply, apply what you learned in this podcast. Because only when you apply what you heard, you will see the positive aspects that you obviously want to see in your organization.

Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc

I wish you all the best doing so. Feel free to contact me anytime. You will receive an answer very quickly within 24 hours or less. And at the end of this podcast, as well as at the end of this videocast, there's only one thing left for me to say. Thank you very much for your time.