The Missing Layer in Strategy Consulting: Integrating Affect into Foresight
How emotion, empathy, and imagination are reshaping strategy and foresight
This work isn’t always easy.
It can feel unfamiliar for facilitators and participants because it pushes against norms and asks people to engage differently.
But over time, it builds something important: a shared ability to recognize what’s happening beneath the surface and to work with it, rather than around it.
This doesn’t mean that one Affective Foresight exercise changes everything overnight…because that isn’t realistic.
What it does do, though, is provide people with new tools and mindsets that provide a different way of engaging with uncertainty.
I have always been an “emotional” person.
For a long time, I kept that part of myself separate from my work—because that was the norm. Check it at the door. Carry on.
But I knew that meant I wasn’t showing up fully and that I was only bringing part of myself into the room.
And the truth is…my emotions are not separate from how I think or how I lead. They’re part of how I make sense of the world.
When I began my journey into foresight, I carried that awareness with me.
It never quite made sense that I would ask my fellow humans (especially in a time of rapid change and uncertainty) to imagine the future without explicitly addressing emotion.
It wasn’t until the last couple of years that I started putting language to this—talking more openly about what I now know is called Affective Foresight.
I ran a few workshops and exercises where I explained what it is, why it matters, and how it can shift the way consultants approach strategy.
Part of this thinking was shaped through my background in psychology, but also through experimentation—learning from others, including a session titled “Imagining the Emotions We Can’t Yet Feel” (led by Seth Harrell, who has since become my affective foresight thought-partner-in-crime), and testing what happens when we bring affect more explicitly into foresight practice.
In practice, this was showing up in a couple of simple (but not always easy) ways during my day-to-day work.
First, I started encouraging practitioners to notice and explore the emotions that arise during foresight exercises (from scenario exploration to trend analysis to basic conversations about the “what if”).
I would explicitly ask:
What feels exciting?
What feels uncomfortable?
What feels unrealistic (or too real)?
What feelings surprised you?
And I found that these feelings are not distractions from the work we’re doing, and instead they’re actually signals of the future we’re trying to shape.
Second, I was intentional about breaking the stereotype that emotions should be checked at the door, and started slowing introducing empathy, humor, and absurdity as foresight tools.
This can feel strange at first. It did for me, and I know that it did for the participants.
But that’s part of the point!
Absurdity gives us permission to think without limits. Humor lowers the stakes just enough to make space for new ideas. And together, they helped people step outside of their default assumptions and use their imaginations.
Right now, most of us are constantly consuming vast amounts of information—from news alerts to social media posts.
This environment is keeping (most of) us in a low-level state of threat.
And when that happens, our capacity to think creatively, plan long-term, and engage with uncertainty starts to shrink.
So, instead of ignoring the fact that we are all carrying emotions with us, I’ve started acknowledging the emotional layer of how people engage with the future and, when I do…something shifts.
I found that participants were better able to:
Anticipate how others might respond to change
Design more human-centered futures
Navigate resistance with more awareness
Open up space for more honest conversations
When we layer in humor and psychological safety, it becomes easier to explore ideas that might otherwise feel too uncomfortable or too far outside the norm.
So I’ll leave you with a question:
When might emotion, empathy, and imagination be the keys to unlocking new futures—for yourself, your teams, or your clients?