“What’s Your Emotional Bottom Line?”

In business we pay attention to the bottom line as a measure of net income and as an indicator of the health and potential of an enterprise. But in our own lives, what helps us gauge our current health and potential for success? Our emotional bottom line can be an enlightening interpersonal benchmark of what’s working and what’s not working for us.

An emotional bottom line is the difference between what you need and what you are getting. A healthy emotional bottom line means that in general you are getting your needs satisfied more often than not. For example, if a person has an expressed need to feel challenged in their position at work, a healthy emotional bottom line would indicate that in general they enjoy a sense of challenge on most days at work. Your bottom line can be measured by identifying and reflecting on your various roles and responsibilities and documenting what aspects provide reasonable degrees of challenge.

Similar to a businesses’ bottom line, our emotional bottom line can help us to be reflective about a given situation to determine whether or not we need to address any gaps.

While working with a client recently, I had the opportunity to help them articulate their emotional bottom line related to a contentious issue in the workplace. My client explained that she had repeatedly felt “shut out” and “undermined” by a dominating colleague. During meetings, she was unable to present her own ideas without fear of being interrupted or sidetracked. This led to anxiety and an ever-present, underlying sense of worry. I asked the client what she needed in this situation. She explained that she desired mutual respect with her colleague and wanted the freedom to express ideas on her own terms, without fear of sabotage. When asked where her emotional bottom line was right now, she explained that in general, most days left her feeling frustrated and unable to meet her needs.

As we probed on the related issues more deeply, the realization of an unhealthy bottom line helped the client to assess how important these emotional and psychological needs were, what negative effects their absence were having on her life inside and outside of the workplace and, most importantly, what assertive action she was willing to commit to in order to improve her emotional bottom line related to these particular needs.

Walking yourself through this type of reflective exercise to measure your own emotional bottom line can add a lot of value at both a personal or team level. It helps to put something very subjective into a more objective framework, making it easier to talk about difficult interpersonal issues. Rather than losing our balance, imagine what’s possible if we took an honest look out our emotional bottom lines?