WATCH: Three Tips for Managing Your Emotions
Today I’d like to talk about emotions and being able to manage them effectively so you can be more effective as a leader and as a manager.
Emotions
It’s important to recognize, have a very useful evolutionary use for us because back in the Savanna when we were just running around as hunter-gathers, having our emotions, having us be alert to what’s going on around us would be really useful. I was in great survival strategy because there were a lot of things that could actually harm us or even kill us.
However, in today’s complex society we still have the same emotions and a lot of the time there isn’t a threat to our life, and yet we have this charged up emotions. So it’s really important to be able to understand what’s going on. What’s going on with or brains? What going on with our minds? What we’re making things mean.
So for example, if we’re upset, what is it that’s upsetting us? Or what type of upset is it? Because if we look at this list, we’ve got numb where we’re not feeling anything at all. To be let down or frustrated or perhaps provoked or resentful or humiliated and that can cause a lot of emotion or very annoyed about something hostile, furious or be incandescent. Because that was a lovely example where Prince Charles was absolutely incandescent about something that Harry had done. And I could just imagine him lighting up the whole palace with his rage because he was so upset. But it is about being able to label these things and knowing what level you’re at. Because if you can name it you can then begin, your brain can go “Ah I know what this is and therefore I can begin to do something about it” Rather than being stirred up and completely emotionally driven. So once you can name it you can reframe it. And a goodway to reframe it is to consider what else is going on here, what else might be happening with all the people here or how am I going to feel about this is five days from now, five months from now, five years from now. And that puts it in perspective.
This calms you down enough to be able to use your prefrontal cortex to be able to understand what’s going on.
Prefrontal Cortex
Moderate your feelings and then if you consider solutions you actually begin to go from being driven by adrenaline which can often lead to threat response and accidental connections to a reward response where you could be more creative make new connections and actually think of positive solutions about how to move forward.
With best regards,
David Klaasen
Talent4Performance help business leaders clarify complexity. We inspire people and drive continuous performance improvement, so they can convert thinking into action and results.
©David Klaasen – 2023
