Are emotions at work always a bad thing? Juliet Adams, a cognitive behavioural coach, author, and Director of A Head for work, helps clients to understand and manage their emotions. She shares her five top tips for managing strong emotions at work.
Lauren, a newly qualified Chartered accountant, was working on an audit for an important new client. Colin, a department head with a science background lacked knowledge on the criteria for capitalising assets, leading to a huge mistake inflating profits over a six-year period. When Lauren explained what had happened and the implications, he started yelling, thumping the table, and later stammering. Laurens eyes welled up with tears, she was unable to speak, and felt frozen to the spot.
To more fully understand why this happened, we need to understand the function of emotions.
Why do we have emotions?
Emotions are designed to help us survive, thrive, and avoid danger. They prepare our body for action. Thoughts trigger emotions which in turn trigger a response in your body and behaviour in response to the emotion.
Emotions play an important role in our lives – they tell our body what to do.They help us make decisions, allow other people to understand us, and allow us to understand others. Emotions are there to help us to ready our body for action.Fear for example tunes your senses for danger, recalls coping strategies that helped in the past, and prepares us to deal with the challenge we face. Sadness helps our minds access mental resources to establish new goals and let go of old ones.
Research suggests that showing emotions at work is increasingly being seen as acceptable, demonstrating our humanity.
Five ways to manage your emotions at work.
Emotions are not our enemy at work. Without emotions we could not read others, and others could not read us. Emotions help us to engage with others and form strong working relationships
- Observe the interplay between thoughts, emotions and physical responses in the body. Thoughts trigger emotions and physical responses in the body. Develop the ability to detach and observe the interplay between thoughts, emotions and physical sensations. Doing so stop thoughts triggering emotions that escalate out of control.
- Compartmentalise your emotions. If you cannot deal with negative emotions immediately, compartmentalise them. Its easy for emotions triggered by events at home to impact your working day and visa versa. You might find it helpful to mentally ‘store’ the issue in a box for the time being, locking it away safely until you have time to deal with it, but always allocate time to deal with it.
- Deep breathing & relaxation techniques. The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is activated when we experience a perceived threat or feel fear or stress. If it goes unchecked throughout the day it can leave us pumped full of adrenalin by the end of the day and result in feeling jittery, on edge and unable to sleep. Slow, calm can be very helpful. For more information visit: how to use and apply breathing exercises to calm you down when needed, or play or download guided mindfulness exercises.
- The 10-second rule. If you feel your temper rising, try slowly and gently counting to 10 to recompose yourself. Try to walk ways from the situation to get some distance, reassuring others that you will come back to deal with the matter shortly.
- Know your triggers and never respond when angry. Try to identify your triggers. Knowing them helps us to prepare and stay calm. Never reply or make a decision when angry. When surrounded by instant communication, it's easy to send a reply that might be regretted later. If it feels good, type a reply immediately, but save it as a draft and come back to it when the emotion has fully passed. Re-read it before pressing the send button.
