Navigate Your Emotions

SUMMARY

Do you try to leave your emotions at the door or manage them like you've been taught to do?

I'm sure if you do that, just like me and everybody else, it creates some problems for you.

Well, stick with me because this week I want to dispel some myths and help you do things better.

Emotions are designed to give us clues and cues for things happening and around us in our world. Therefore, we are not able to separate from them or leave them outside the door.

As an emotional being, you need to harness and leverage the power of your emotions.

What I want to do today is open a conversation around your emotions and help you navigate them in a healthy way.

Emotions are a physiological cue, a sensation in your body that tells you that something is going on in your world right now. 

What you do need to manage is that gap — that process — between the emotion and the feeling. It's the psychological, the thought patterns and the internal dialogue are the things that you need to manage.

And that is EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE.

Emotional Intelligence is the ability to be aware of the emotion you're experiencing in the moment and then use that information to manage your behaviour.

Human beings working with human beings. Imperfect people working with imperfect people.

Emotional beings need to be able to operate emotionally.

So, this is a vital set of skills. I really encourage you to take this seriously. You need to unlearn those myths of leaving your emotions at the door, of managing them, and looking at them as soft skills that are nice to have. You need to shift your thinking and consider these as important skills.

Next week, we're going to jump into self-awareness, that first quadrant area, and have a look at how you can become more aware of your emotions.

I'll see you then.

TRANSCRIPT

Do you try to leave your emotions at the door or manage them like you've been taught to do?

I'm sure if you do that, just like me and everybody else, it creates some problems for you.

Well, stick with me because this week I want to dispel some myths and help you do things better.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, VUCA Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to continue our conversation around our personal leadership by helping you navigate your emotions.

Like you, I have had these things said to me:

“Stop being emotional."

"Leave your emotions at the door."

"Manage your emotions.”

Unfortunately, these things are not what you want to do at all. You're a human being, and human beings are ‘emotional’ beings. It is what sets us apart from artificial intelligence.

Emotions are designed to give us clues and cues for things happening and around us in our world. Therefore, we are not able to separate from them or leave them outside the door.

As an emotional being, you need to harness and leverage the power of your emotions.

For many years, I too said “Manage your emotions” and this is something that you do not want to do.

When you ‘manage’ your emotions, you suppress, ignore, and try to take control of them. However, since emotions are a natural function of your body, that's definitely not something that you want to do.

What I want to do today is open a conversation around your emotions and help you navigate them in a healthy way. Over the next few weeks, we will look at various elements of your emotional intelligence, which are totally different from your cognitive intelligence and help you take in, retain, and use information. It helps you with the technical skills within your role.

However, because you are an emotional being, working with other emotional beings, you need to develop these emotional and social intelligence skills to have the relationships you need to get the results of working together in harmony and collaboration rather than all this conflict.

So, to start the conversation, I want to dispel some of these myths and help you understand what emotions are and how you navigate them in a healthy way.

Emotions are a physiological cue, a sensation in your body that tells you that something is going on in your world right now.

It's not what happens; it's what you make it mean. If you make that sensation mean something based on your previous experience or what you're thinking about in that moment, then you change your internal dialogue. The thoughts and what you make them mean are psychological. So, that initial sensation that you've now added a narrative around will help you reach a feeling.

A feeling comes out of that psychological interpretation of that initial sensation (emotion).

So, point number one is when you try to ignore your emotions, they're still going to run their course anyway.

The second thing is managing the emotion. Most of us are told to manage our emotions. Unfortunately, that does not work.

However, what you do need to manage is that gap — that process — between the emotion and the feeling. It's the psychological, the thought patterns and the internal dialogue are the things that you need to manage.

And that is EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE.

Emotional Intelligence is the ability to be aware of the emotion you're experiencing in the moment and then use that information to manage your behaviour.

It's the management of the response, or in most cases the reaction, to that initial emotion that we want to work on. That's what emotional intelligence is.

Social Intelligence goes beyond yourself to other people. It’s about being aware of what emotions other people could be experiencing in the moment, and using that information to have a healthy dialogue, have empathy and work with other people and understand them so that you can then have a healthy relationship.

So, Emotional Intelligence is extremely important.

The third myth that I want to get rid of is that Social and Emotional Intelligence are warm and fuzzy and nice to have skills. Not true!

If you think about all the conflicts that you've had in the last 30 days, particularly the external conflict with other people, I guarantee that it had nothing to do with your technical skills and cognitive abilities. It was all to do with your emotional intelligence.

I want to invite you to come with me again on a journey this month as we go deep into this particular area of intelligence. It's about transforming from singular intelligence — being reliant on your cognitive ability — to multiple intelligence. You look at the fact that you are a being of multiple intelligences, and it's not just your cognitive intelligence but your emotional intelligence, social intelligence, and creative intelligence. There’s so much more to you than what you know.

As we unpack each of these areas, I'm going to look at what's called the four-quadrant model of Social and Emotional intelligence.

And it starts with self-awareness.

Self-awareness is the ability to know what's going on for you. It is being able to be aware of your emotions in the moment, understanding and recognising patterns of thinking and behaviour that aren't serving you, building up your inner certainty and confidence, and accurately assessing your level of competence in these skills.

The second area is self-management. This is where you manage your response to emotions by taking hold of that psychological, shifting the meaning, and removing any unresourceful thought patterns that lead to the negative behaviour that you're used to. It's about controlling your behaviour. It's about helping you navigate stress in a healthy way, be more resilient by being agile, and learn many other competencies that help you navigate your emotions in a healthy way.

Then, we go into the area of others and look at social awareness. The key to this is empathy.

Moving on to the fourth area, and that's relationship management. This is where you learn to communicate well, handle conflict in a healthy way, build trust with others, and look at teamwork and collaboration as the way to get things done.

Emotional and Social Intelligence are critical components for every leader. I know from my own experience and career, and from working with many people (just like you) around the world, that when you rely on your technical ability alone (your cognitive intelligence), that's where the challenges come in.

Human beings working with human beings. Imperfect people working with imperfect people.

Emotional beings need to be able to operate emotionally.

So, this is a vital set of skills. I really encourage you to take this seriously. You need to unlearn those myths of leaving your emotions at the door, of managing them, and looking at them as soft skills that are nice to have. You need to shift your thinking and consider these as important skills.

When I discovered this thing called Emotional Intelligence, the first thing I realised at that point is that during my military and corporate career, I didn't really have any. Knowing this has allowed me to go on a journey of discovery and learning around these competencies.

What that knowledge has enabled me to do is reduce the stress for myself and for those that I operate with. It has allowed me to feel more confident in who I am and has given me the ability to work well with others. I’m not perfect and am still a work in progress. But being aware, in the moment, of what's going on with me emotionally is the key to these things.

Well, that's it from me for another week.

I just wanted to make sure that you understand that there is this “new” intelligence that (it’s not really new, but it may be new to you like it was to me) is the key to you being able to have stress-free and conflict-less days that will help you get more done and achieve what you want to achieve for yourself and in working with others.

Next week, we're going to jump into self-awareness, that first quadrant area, and have a look at how you can become more aware of your emotions.

I'll see you then.