Where are your emotions?
Have you ever been told to “manage your emotions” before? Or thought about it?
When I think about leaders, I always wonder how they manage their emotions.
I had one boss who didn’t manage his emotions well in the beginning – his anger spilled over the entire office and wasn’t easy to clean up.
Maybe others are careful to never show their anger at work, and instead channel their frustrations strategically with maximum effect to demonstrate urgency and importance.
Maybe they use a metaphor like “Show time!” when they open the doors to customers which signals the importance of smiles and care for their customers. Emotions are to be kept under control while supporting those customers.
Maybe they are like Marcus Aurelius, former ruler of the Roman empire for almost 20 years, who was always telling himself to “stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you.” Little did he know it was his mind influencing his emotions!
What kind of a leader would you want to work with? Clearly, I don’t want leaders to let their emotions rule their actions. But what do I really want?
I want to explore how I see leaders actually manage their emotions.
On one hand, it could be argued that some leaders do a fantastic job of managing their emotions. That is, they manage them so well they never show up at all. Those emotions are packed down deep inside their heart and soul. In fact, I’m pretty sure that is how most of Generation X’s and everyone older than that were raised. Anyone younger seems to be much more emotionally literate. Or maybe I’m just talking about myself.
In the earlier days of my career working at UBC, I bought into the belief that the only emotion appropriate in the workplace was happiness – or those contributing to all things pleasant. But then when I ran into a bad patch at work (cue toxic environment), I had to seek help from a trained professional who wanted to talk about my emotions in our third conversation. I remember looking at her directly and saying “We’re not going to talk about that.” She kindly informed me that she couldn’t help me until I was ready to talk about that. Fast forward a few months and I finally began to find my emotions. Truth be told, I’m pretty sure I’m still exploring them.
But where do we keep these emotions if they can’t be found? To answer that question, I began to learn about repressed emotions and suppressed emotions. We might have unconsciously repressed emotions and consciously suppressed emotions. The impact is the same though: any unmanaged emotions lead to problems with our physical and emotional health, some more than others. I found this interesting blog post to learn a little bit more about the range of those physical and emotional symptoms.
Upon further reflection, it seems to me that some emotions can’t be found because we don’t recognize them and/or we don’t actually know what to call them if we do recognize them – because we weren’t taught about that yet. I don’t think it is a trait as some psychologists would tell you.
Luckily, it is not too late to learn. It strikes me how I have found it helpful to read or hear how someone else describes how they felt and what they called it. Maybe that is why I signed up for One Stop for Writers in order to access their emotional thesaurus. I can learn to pay attention to how I show up, through physical signals and behaviors, internal sensations, mental responses, cues of suppressed or repressed emotions, and what it can lead to. It’s like reverse engineering – if I don’t know the words to use, I can begin by paying attention to how my body responds. Then I can begin to learn the words to use.
On the other hand, there are some (but not enough) leaders who know how to regulate their emotions. They know how to recognize both negative and positive emotions when they do arise and they know what to call them. They also know how to cope with the negative ones, including when to ask for help. In particular, they know how to take a moment to choose to act, so they don’t automatically react. They might even know how to preempt such moments with a reframing of past experiences. Doesn’t that sound amazing? It also sounds more healthy and sustainable in the long run. This is actually a key part of their leadership lifeboat! And one of my own personal goals.
This is clearly just scratching the surface of where we keep our emotions but I think this is a good place to start for now. We either share our emotions, bury our emotions or we learn to ride the waves of our emotions. The choice is ours.
Resources
Aurelius, Marcus. 2002. Meditations. New York: Random House.
Image by Tammy Brimner
