How to stop your emotions trashing your success
Throwing your teddy out of the pram is a satisfying thing to do. But only for a very, very short space of time. Then, quite frankly, it’s humiliating.
When you lose it
I remember a guy I worked with years ago who would ‘lose it’ on a fairly regular basis. His face would go red, his veins would pop out on his neck and he’d erupt like a volcano. He thought he was giving everyone on his team ‘a good kick up the butt’, showing them who’s boss and shaking them up. But he was actually just being an ass. (Everyone was thinking it!)
Goodbye respect, trust and power
When you fail to manage your emotions, you lose respect, trust and power. Most people would agree that you lose respect and trust, but power? Doesn’t it give you more power?
Well, perhaps in the short term your outbursts create a buzz of increased productivity but in the long run, you will find yourself with far less power and influence. Real power comes from being able to engage people to collaborate on your ideas and for that you need trust.
Build trust to enjoy power with your people
You cannot do it all alone, and neither can you spend all your day micro-managing others to ensure they do what you’re paying them to do. Trust and respect are two essential ingredients that allows you to have power-with people, rather than using dominating or coercive tactics to get power-over.
Power-with others means all pulling in the same direction, focused on meeting goals, sharing responsibility, resolving problems and increasing efficiency and productivity along the way. A power-with organisation engages employees because it meets their needs for significance, contribution and being valued. When people get these needs met, they feel empowered and motivated, they want to do their best for the company, and they trust you to lead in the right direction that means success for everyone.
Manage your state to bring out the best of yourself and build trust
When you get frustrated or angry, it’s because something in your belief system has been triggered. Your ideas about how the world is supposed to work jars with your present reality, an emotion comes up and you have an automatic reaction.
We each have our default reactions – our programming that tells us how to respond – but it isn’t always helpful for building trust with others. We learn many of our responses at a very young age; we are wired to learn how to behave from those around us. Parents often unwittingly teach us ways of behaving that don’t really help us connect with other people in our lives!
The good news is that we aren’t puppets of our programming – we can deliberately change our default responses and effectively re-program our minds to react differently and create new realities.
It’s an inside job – ARM yourself
“If you always do what you’ve always done,
you will always get what you’ve always got”.
Tony Robbins
To get better results, you’ve got to do something different.
Here is my A.R.M. method that you can use right away to stop yourself firing off knee jerk reactions. Think of it as ‘ARMing’ yourself before you engage with others so that you’ve prepared yourself to do well.
A= Awareness. Notice when you are getting irritated, stressed, angry (or any other negative emotion)
R= Regulation. Pause. Take a ‘Reset Breath’. Turn down the volume on any strong emotions by deliberately breathing them out as you imagine turning an emotions dial from ‘high’ to ‘low’.
M= Motivation. Think about what you really want. What is the positive outcome you would most like to achieve? Use your energy to choose the most constructive way to get that outcome.
Start using this simple technique to get a handle on your emotions and start to really manage them. Much deeper work can be accomplished working one to one with a coach, but using this ARM method will give you a head start on developing your Emotional Intelligence.
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