Have you ever left a meeting certain everyone was aligned – only to get a message later where one colleague praises your idea… while another is quietly fuming?
Most leaders assume this is personality, poor communication, or ‘office dynamics.’ But it’s not. What you’re seeing is emotional filtering – the brain’s hidden process for deciding what matters, what feels safe, and what feels threatening. And until you understand that process, your team’s reactions will continue to look unpredictable, inconsistent and, at times, completely irrational.
This is why the question leaders avoid – “How does that make you feel?” – is the very question that reveals the truth. Not because you’re doing therapy. But because you’re finally getting information you can’t lead without.
An Everyday Moment That Makes This Clear
Driving recently, a friend glanced at a set of high-rise flats and immediately said: “I feel depressed now.”
I hadn’t even noticed them. When she looked, her whole system reacted. When I looked, I saw nothing meaningful at all. Same view. Two totally different internal experiences.
Why?
Because her brain had an emotional memory attached to buildings like those – something from years ago that her system still tags as significant. Mine didn’t.
This is happening in your team every day. You’re all looking at the same landscape… but no one is seeing it the same way.
And here’s the part most leaders miss: Your team isn’t reacting to the moment. They’re reacting to the emotional meaning the moment holds for them.
Until you understand that, you’re managing behaviour without understanding the mechanism behind it.
The Emotional Filter No One Sees – but Everyone Has
Every person you lead is walking around with a different internal filter – a personalised attention system the brain uses to decide:
- what feels important
- what feels irrelevant
- what feels safe
- what feels personal
- what feels threatening
- what needs defending
- what should be avoided
This filtering mechanism is shaped by:
- past experiences
- emotional memories
- previous workplaces
- old conflicts
- childhood patterns
- failed projects
- subtle embarrassments
- past leaders
- unmet expectations
So when a team member reacts strongly, they’re not reacting to you – they’re reacting to what their system thinks is happening. Until leaders grasp this, they spend their entire careers managing the surface.
Why Leaders Keep Misreading Their Teams
When leaders see behaviour they don’t understand, they usually try to fix the behaviour:
“Why is she so emotional?”
“Why did he overreact?”
“Why did that land badly?”
“Why is this suddenly a problem?”
But behaviour is only the output. The input is emotional. And because most organisations don’t teach leaders how to read emotional data, managers respond to:
- the email tone
- the silence
- the tension
- the withdrawal
- the defensiveness
- the disproportionate reaction
…without understanding what triggered it. This creates a cycle:
Leader reacts to behaviour → team reacts to leader → behaviour intensifies → issue becomes personal → communication breaks down.
Not from lack of skill, but from lack of insight.
Where Things Really Go Wrong
There are three hidden patterns leaders miss – and each one creates conflict:
- The ‘Innocent Trigger’ Pattern
A harmless comment. A neutral tone. A simple instruction.
Yet someone reacts strongly because something old just got activated.
- The ‘Mismatch of Meaning’ Pattern
One person hears clarity. Another hears criticism. Same words. Different emotional dictionaries.
- The ‘Surface Agreement, Internal Resistance’ Pattern
They nod. They agree. They say yes. But inside? They feel overwhelmed, undervalued, or unsafe – and the behaviour changes later.
Once you understand these three patterns, your team suddenly makes sense in a way it never has before. And once you don’t… you spend months fixing problems that look behavioural but are actually emotional.
The Question Leaders Avoid – and Why It Matters
Every leader knows the moment where someone reacts in a way that feels bigger than the situation. Most leaders move on quickly. Or rationalise it. Or hope it settles. But emotionally intelligent leaders do something different.
They pause. And they ask – gently, without pressure: “What was it about that moment that made you feel that way?”
Not because they’re trying to dig. But because they know the reaction isn’t random. It’s revealing something important:
- a boundary
- a fear
- an old association
- a confidence gap
- an emotional bruise
- a pattern you can’t see from the outside
Leaders who can hold that conversation are operating at a different level. They communicate differently. They influence differently. They lead differently.
The Leadership Advantage Most People Never Learn
Once you learn how to read emotional filters, three things change immediately:
- Conversations stop derailing.
You understand the internal story, not just the external behaviour.
- Miscommunication plummets.
People finally feel safe enough to tell you what’s really going on.
- Performance becomes easier to influence.
Because you’re no longer working against unspoken resistance.
This is the leadership skill that separates ‘competent managers’ from leaders people deeply trust. And it’s the foundation of emotionally intelligent teams.
Where The Breakthrough Framework™ Fits In
This is the part leaders can’t do alone – and shouldn’t try to because while you can recognise emotional filters, you need a structured method to work with them. That’s where The Breakthrough Framework™ comes in. It helps teams:
- identify their emotional filters
- understand their reactions
- spot the hidden triggers behind their behaviour
- communicate through emotional clarity rather than assumption
- reduce conflict at the source, not the surface
- build a workplace where people feel safe enough to think clearly
- lead, collaborate, and perform from a place of confidence rather than protection
It’s not about therapy. It’s not about analysing people. It’s about equipping teams with the emotional awareness most adults never learned and that workplaces desperately need.
Because once people understand how they see, you can finally influence what they do. That’s the turning point where teams stop reacting… and start transforming.
Final Thought
We all see the same world but our brains don’t. So the question leaders avoid – “How does that make you feel?” becomes the key that unlocks clarity, connection, and higher performance.
Not because feelings are soft. But because feelings are information. And the leaders who know how to access that information don’t just manage teams. They change them.
👉 If you’d like to develop emotionally intelligent, confidence-first leadership across your organisation – or explore how The Breakthrough Framework™ could help your team understand and change the patterns beneath their behaviour – feel free to get in touch: Jo@joblakeleytraining.co.uk
👉 I’m always happy to talk through what’s possible or you can download your free full programme overview here (no email address required).