"Managing Emotions in the Workplace" ~ Neal Ashkanasy

 

So when I am asked to do a training on "Managing Emotionally Charged Situations" the audience would like to have the Oprah winning book on how to stop others from being disruptive, nasty, rude, etc.  My approach is usually if I make a list of emotionally charged situations and ask the audience to rank them, why does everyone give different ratings to each situation? It's because it starts with YOU - it is your background, beliefs, values, triggers, calmness personality, and ability to be self-aware and manage your own emotions that determines what situation is hardest to manage.

Well, the audience can still resist and blame the organization - "Our security guards look like they are 80" or "I don't care if we are a public place - allowing obviously homeless people to stay here is just looking for trouble - they should change the policy." Here's the truth. Everyone of us experiences emotions at work. We get frustrated with bosses giving more work when they don't understand how much work we already have. We get upset with co-workers who don't do their jobs, so we can't do ours. We get angry with irate customers who don't realize we are only trying to help. But with all these emotions, most people don't think they have anything to do with how they are feeling.

They believe their emotions are a result of an external cause, i.e. the circumstances or situations or behavior of others. It looks that way because that's how you have been taught to think about emotions. It's not true. In order to learn how to respond quickly and effectively to defuse emotionally charged situations, you have to start with building your own self-management of your emotions. Do you ever play tag team and know that your emotions are so out of control that someone else would be better to step in and take over the situation? Why not? Do you know when you are in a stressful place, and need to replace unproductive reactions? Do you work on skills to maintain your emotional health so that you can remain composed and professional when faced with charged workplace situations? Do you think that expression of your emotions in the workplace is negative? Read more...

In our theme about managing our own emotions, I don't know a more emotion laden situation than dealing with unfair criticism.  How many of us have a hard time dealing with unfair criticism? While it can occur all the time, certainly a great many of us have experienced this at our performance review. (My mantra - an employee should never hear about any sub-optimal performance at his/her review for the first time). Read more...