How To Manage Your Emotions In The Workplace

How do you manage emotions in the workplace? Because let's face it, the workplace is full of different emotions. It's kind of like an emotional assault course. In this video, we're going to explore some of the most common emotions that you might experience in the workplace. And what's more, we're going to look at some strategies that you might integrate so that you can turn your workplace from a place of chaos to calm. You know, I work with quite a few scientific communities in some of the training that I do. And it's really interesting because at times they say, you know, Irvine, I just want a place of logic. Take all those emotions out of it. Let's just have reason and that logic and we'll be fine. And I always respond, you know, you're a scientist. So let me just tell you something. The science is clear. We can't keep emotions out of the workplace because our emotions are quicker and they respond in a way before we're even conscious of them. What we've got to do is to manage those emotions. Today, we're going to explore what are the key emotions that keep coming up time and time again in the workplace and get us into trouble. And let's look at some practical ways that you can use to manage those emotions. At the end of World War II, the war colleagues was tasked with coming up with the scenarios of what might happen with the Cold War. And they come up with an acronym. The acronym was VUCA, V-U-C-A. And they said this would describe the geopolitical reality that we were in. V stands for volatility. Things would be very volatile, would change in an instant. Uncertainty. We would not be able to plan much in the future because the future would be uncertain. Complexity. The world would be known by ever more complexity. And finally, ambiguity. Things that we thought were certain might not be as certain. Now, I think they really nailed this. That describes the geopolitical reality we're in. Yet, they also nailed it for everyone else. Isn't that what work is about at the moment? Work is a series of volatility, uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity. With all that VUCA going on, our emotions are triggered more than ever. And we need to learn how to manage them. So, what emotions are we seeing more often in the workplace? First of all, we see a lot of anger. I don't know about you, but I'm hearing more and more of people literally screaming at each other. People feel that, in some way, that their goals or objectives have been taken from them. And the response is anger. The second emotion I see so often is frustration. People who are genuinely trying to do their best in the workplace. And yet, so often, the rules get changed. The boundaries are extended. And people say, why am I even trying? I'm just so frustrated. Third emotion I see often in the workplace is fear. With constant change, nothing can be taken for granted. I remember I did a workshop, must have been about four or five years ago. It was down in Georgia. And one of the attendees there was talking to me. And she was saying, you know, I've worked in the bank for 47 years. I said to her, 47 years? That's unheard of. And she said, not only in the same bank, but in the same branch of the bank. You know, the days when we could count on going into a place of employment and being there for 20, 30, 40 years, they're gone. We're lucky now if we're there for five years. And so with that change, there is a lot of fear. How do I support my family if something goes wrong? What am I going to do if all the jobs are shipped overseas? So all of these create fear in the workplace. There's also sadness. You know, at times I don't think we think of sadness in the workplace. I remember I had a client a few years ago. And she was saying, you know, I'm just so sad. And I said, why are you sad? And she said, you know, because I really find the workplace here very toxic. And I said, well, why don't you move? And she said, well, I can't move. I'm stuck. And so often people feel stuck in their work. And if they're stuck long enough, what we see is sadness and the occurrence of sadness because they feel trapped and nothing can be done. Finally, there's dislike. You know, unfortunately, we have to work with other people. And because we have to work with other people, personalities begin to clash. And so therefore, we have dislike of other people. How do we manage that? How do we manage working with a person that perhaps triggers us presses our buttons, and that we dislike all of these emotions have to be dealt with. And so therefore, it's really important to have to go to skills that we can implement that will help us manage these emotions. So I want to give you five tools that you can use to manage your emotions in the workplace. The first is a little bit of self awareness. That's the foundational part of emotional intelligence. And that is the ability to label the emotion as it is happening. The greater our self awareness, the greater our ability to label emotions as they're happening. You know, sometimes, our ability to label emotion is very limited. We're not able to say the extent or the intensity of our emotion. But what we know is, with labeling comes a greater ability to manage in the moment. I often like to say, if we're not able to name it, we're not able to tame it. And so therefore, part of that is being able to label the emotion as it's happening. So can we take some time during our workday, just a few minutes even, to be very explicit in thinking about what emotion am I feeling in the morning? What emotion am I feeling in the afternoon? What emotions am I feeling as I come into work? What emotions am I feeling as I leave work? Our ability to label helps us explore what's happening, and helps us respond more effectively to those emotions as they happen. The second will come as no surprise, it's revisiting all those triggers. You know, at the beginning, I talked about this VUCA world, this volatile world, this uncertain world, this complex world, this ambiguous world. And all of that provides opportunities for our emotions to be triggered multiple times throughout the day. And so our ability to really be aware of what those individual triggers are, because my triggers will be unique from another person's triggers, to the extent that we're able to really identify those triggers, is the extent to which we begin, and this is the magic word, we begin to introduce some choice in how we respond. And so therefore, I would invite you to perhaps keep a journal or something that will help you identify triggers, and also go a little bit deeper and explore perhaps why is that trigger important? What value perhaps was violated? Because our triggers happen because of some moment or some value that was violated. The third is keep a monitor on your sleep and what you eat. You know, survey after survey is very clear, many people are going to work chronically deprived of sleep. And when we are chronically deprived of sleep, guess what, it impacts the intensity of our emotions, and it impacts how we're able to manage those emotions. And so therefore, monitoring your sleep and just be aware that if you've had a bad night's sleep, that is going to put you on edge, that perhaps will prevent you being able to react and to respond in the moment. The second thing is food, energy. Food gives us energy, and yet I hear so often from clients that they just don't have time, I don't have time to eat, I'm eating on the run. And one of the consequences of low energy, again, is our inability to manage emotions in the moment. So you want to improve your emotional intelligence, you want to improve how to manage your emotions, get some sleep, and eat well. The fourth item is to have some go to exercises. I always work with people, and I ask them to drop a list. If you had 10 seconds, if you had 15 seconds, is there something that you could do in the moment that would help you manage your emotions? And then if you had five minutes, what would you do? And then if you had 30 minutes, what would you do? So say, for example, if you only have 10 seconds, part of that may be just taking a deep breath. I have a friend who likes to de-stress by walking in the mountains, and it's the smell of the trees that really impacts him. Now, when he's stressed because he's an ER nurse, there's no way he can go out walking in the mountains. But what he's done is bring a little bit of the mountains into work. And so he goes to his office, and he has this candle. And this candle has a scent of mountain fir. And so he smells the candle, and that brings him back, it transports him to a place of calm. So be creative. What would you do if you had 10 seconds at work? What could you do to help you manage an emotion? And then if you had 10 minutes, what would you do? You know, one answer that I've heard back is I would go for a quick walk. I would get up, look out the window and look at some of nature. I would quickly call some friends. I would look at a picture of some loved ones just to remind me what work is all about and what's most important in my life. All of those are great ways of re-fixing our focus and attention and managing emotions. And then finally, a longer time, 30 minutes. You know, I talked about chronic lack of sleep. Well, I have a friend who takes a power nap 20 minutes every day. And that 20 minutes rejuvenates, helps him refocus and energizes him and helps him manage emotions. So think about the different moments during the day and how can you add some practices that will help you manage those emotions. And then the final practice is what I call my detox. Now, how many people do you know are on some sort of detox? And I like to call this the emotional detox. You know, we have certain periods in our life, we leave home, we go to work, we leave work, we go home. And to become aware of the emotions that we are carrying to each place is critical. So say for example, something's happening at home, are we bringing that to work? Or if we're living in a work situation that's just horrible, are we bringing that home? And I just suggest two moments of detox during the day. Before you go into work, sit in the car or if you're walking, just take 30 seconds and just become aware of some of the emotional weight that you are carrying. And just try and help you compartmentalize it and to leave it there for work. And vice versa, as you're leaving work, realize that you're about to enter a new space. And can you become aware of all the different emotions that have happened? And the last thing you want to do is to bring these emotions and share them with your loved ones or with your family. And so therefore, are you able just to take a little time, sit in the car before driving home? Just let it out. Or if you walk home or get public transport, is there a landmark that you pass each and every day that on seeing it, you know, time to detox, time to take a few breaths, time to leave the world of work there and to enter a new reality where I can bring my positive self. You know, we spend 90,000 hours in our lives at work. Too many hours not to be able to manage our emotions. If you want to work more on how to manage those emotions, why not watch another video on how to practice mindfulness in the workplace, because it has the power to transform your workplace experience.