23- Emotional Intelligence: Changing your emotional weather

If you had to classify your mood as a weather system today, what would it be? Is it an overcast day with a chance of hail? Is it a clear day full of sunshine? If you are like me, your emotions vary as much as the weather. Unfortunately, various triggers can change your emotional state. It is how you react to the triggers that make you successful. By taking control of your emotional weather, you can earn the respect of your colleagues and peers.

Imagine walking into a meeting where you are going to review your progress on a big project with your boss. You have worked hard and accomplished many of your goals so you walk in with a brisk step and a positive attitude. What do your face and body language look like? Likely you are smiling and standing straight with your shoulders relaxed while you make eye contact with your boss. The meeting begins and as you start to review the current state of the project, the meeting turns sideways when your boss tells you how disappointed she is in your work and explains that she believes that you should have completed the task weeks ago. This is not how you expected the meeting to go. How do you feel now? Can you picture the sullen look wash over your face along with the sunken posture and avoidance of eye contact? This is the equivalent of starting the meeting on a bright day and ending with a dark storm. Just like the weather, your emotions can change quickly. Unlike the weather, however, you are in control of your emotions. Responding positively and professionally to an emotional trigger in the moment, and afterwards, will make you a better leader.

Use these tricks to dodge the emotional trigger and respond professionally.

• Recognize that it isn’t all about you.

You never know what is going on in someone else’s life. Just as each person brings a different background and perspective to a meeting, they also bring different emotional baggage. Perhaps the person just had a fight with their spouse, their car broke down, or worse. Because emotions are contagious, their bad mood will become your problem if you let it. By being empathetic and recognizing that the adverse tone of the other person’s comments may be routed in other, circumstances you will be able to better control your part of the conversation.

• Use daydreaming.

This is a very difficult thing for most of us. When an untrained brain receives negative feedback it goes into Flight or Fight mode. Your muscles stiffen, your heart rate increases, and you have trouble focusing on the situation. The easiest way to keep your emotional weather in check during these conversations is to focus your attention on something positive. For example, when I feel the blood rushing to my face during a stressful conversation, I think of the most recent Jeep wave  I’ve gotten. Often, when two Jeep Wrangler drivers pass each other they wave as a sign of camaraderie. This friendliness between strangers always puts me in a good mood. If you are new at facing these emotional challenges, you might consider adding a physical trigger to help yourself think of the positive distraction. For example, to train myself to think of the Jeep Wave, I started putting my right thumb and forefinger together every time I get a Jeep wave. Now, when in the midst of a difficult conversation, I use the same motion to force my brain to think of something positive and familiar. This allows me to maintain composure and show respect to the person on the other side of the conversation.

• Always change your emotional weather before leaving the conversation.

Emotions are contagious. Think back to the last time you were at a meeting where a superior, in front of the team, berated a subordinate. How did you feel watching the conversation? Chances are, even though you were not the person receiving the negative comments, you had a physical and mental reaction to it. If you are an empathetic person by nature, you felt bad for the person and perhaps even started to doubt the work you did. Leaving the meeting, you left your confidence at the table and the rest of the day you feel like a failure. Now, the rest of the people you encounter that day also pick up the failure vibes and start to doubt their work.

Just like a virus, emotions can run rampant if they are not controlled. You need to treat the symptom of emotional negativity before they spread to others. Don’t spread your negativity. It is not good for you or the people around you. Instead, focus on changing your emotions. Would you rather be known throughout the office as the person who brings the hailstorm, or as the one who brings the sunshine?

• Consider the feedback, independent of the way it was provided.

Too often, when a conversation takes a negative tone, all of the information provided is lost. When our body picks up negative verbal or non-verbal language from others, we have a way of shutting the words out. However, feedback is one of your best tools for making progress. Bill Gates summarized this nicely when he said, “We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.”

So, how do you separate the feedback, which is useful, from your emotions? One way is to write down the main points of the discussion and the necessary actions to improve them. For example, when hearing that you are a poor leader because you don’t delegate, you write “Delegation – find and read a good book on the subject.” By focusing on the skill to be improved and adding an action that can help you, your mind shifts from a negative focus to a positive one. By developing a path forward, rather than focus on the negative feedback, you will be able to mitigate negative emotions that could affect your productivity and happiness.

• When all else fails- start acting.

Every year I watch “It’s a Wonderful Life?” at Christmas. The story follows a would-be series of events if businessman George Bailey had never been born. Although I have seen the movie at least ten times, and I know that an actor, James Stewart, is pretending to be Mr. Bailey, I still cry when the credits role. Why? Because James Stewart is a master at conveying emotion with his voice, eyes, and body language throughout the movie.

If one of your emotional triggers is pulled and you need to regroup quickly, try acting like nothing is wrong. Picture yourself a day from now, having handled the situation in the most positive and professional way possible, and then start pretending to be that future-you.

When you act as if you have the situation under emotional control, your mind and body will start to follow along and eventually you not only feel more in control of the situation, but you will also be glad that you used your leadership skills and kept your emotional weather positive.

Keep in mind that these are just a few tricks of many that are available. It is important to find what works for you. Pick one out and try it the next time you feel your emotions are about to get the best of you. If that one doesn’t work, try the next, and so on. There is no magic recipe for emotional intelligence. However, by practicing your response to emotional triggers you can control your emotional weather.

 How do you change your emotional weather?