Coaching is an increasingly popular method to better understand and manage emotions
Managing emotions effectively is essential and inevitable leadership skills. The naming of our emotions - which psychologists and business coachis called "tagging" - the first important step to managing them effectively. However, this is harder than we think; many of us struggle to name exactly what we are feeling, and often the most obvious 'label' may not be the most accurate.
There are many reasons for this: we have been taught that strong emotions must be suppressed. There are certain (sometimes unspoken) social and organisational rules that prohibit their expression. Or we have simply never learned to describe our emotions accurately. Consider the following two examples:
Aniko is in a meeting with Ferenc, who is saying things that make her jump the whole time. Apart from interrupting him all the time, he reminds everyone again of the one project he was working on that failed. He's angry.
Zsolt comes home after a long day and sighs as he hangs up his coat. His wife asks him what's wrong. "I'm just stressed," he says as he pulls out his laptop to finish a report.
The anger and stress are the emotions we experience most often at work - or at least the terms we use most often to describe them. Yet, these are often just disguises for deeper emotions that we could describe more accurately and nuanced to develop greater emotional resilience - a critical skill that allows us to interact more successfully with ourselves and the world.
Yes, Aniko might be angry about something, but what if she's also sad? Sad because her project has failed, and perhaps worried that this failure will follow her through and hinder her career. With Francis constantly interrupting him, this concern seems increasingly justified. Why didn't the project work? And what will happen to his job now? All of these emotions are fuelling his anger, but they are separate emotions in themselves that he needs to name and deal with. These can be helped by coach or a psychologist.
And what if Zsolt's stress is really because he is simply unsure about his career choice? Long days used to be fun - why aren't they any more? It's certainly stressful, but what's behind it? In these or similar cases, the coach.
These questions open up a whole world of possible exploration and answers for Aniko and Zsolt. Just like them, we need a more nuanced emotional vocabulary, not only for the sake of accuracy, but because if we misdiagnose our emotions, we will also misreact to them.
If we think we need to deal with anger, we will take a different approach than if we feel frustration or worry - or we may not deal with them at all.
It has been shown that people who do not acknowledge and manage their emotions report worse well-being and more physical symptoms of stress, such as headaches.
The cost of avoiding our feelings is high. On the flip side, if we have the right vocabulary, we can see the real problem more clearly - we can sort out a confusing experience, understand it better and make a plan with our coach to deal with it.
Three ways to perceive our emotions more accurately:
Expand your emotional vocabulary
Words matter. If you experience strong emotion, take some time to consider what you want to call it.
But don't stop there: once identified, try to two more words to findthat describes how he feels. You may be surprised at the breadth of your feelings - or that you have revealed a deeper emotion behind the more obvious.
A list of emotive terms; you can find many more if you type any of them into Google or any search engine.
Happiness,
joy, satisfaction, adoration, enthusiasm, love, tenderness, intimacy, passion,
Fear,
nervousness, anxiety, fear, panic, regret, guilt, shame, confusion
Loneliness,
abandonment, disillusionment, hopelessness
Harag,
anger, irritability, indignation, hatred
Undor,
disgust, dislike, contempt surprise,
Amazement,
amazement, astonishment
Sadness,
depression, grief, mourning, despair
If you can articulate exactly how excited you are about a new job (not just "nervous") or trust a colleague (not just saying "he's a nice guy"), this will help you better establish your intentions for the role or relationship, which will be more likely to lead to success down the road.
It is equally important to do this with "positive" emotions, not just "negative" ones.
Consider the intensity of emotion
We tend to cling to basic descriptors like "angry" or "stressed", even when our emotions are much milder.
I had a client, Ede (not his real name), who was having problems in his marriage; he often described his wife as "angry" and he often got angry in return.
But as the emotional vocabulary list shows, each emotion comes in different shades. When we talked about what other words could be used to describe his wife's emotions, Ede realised that there were times when his wife might have just been nervous or impatient.
This realisation transformed their relationship, because Ede suddenly noticed that his wife had not been angry all this time.
This meant that he could actually respond to his wife's specific feelings and concerns without getting angry himself.
Likewise, in your own self-assessment, it matters whether you are angry or just grumpy, grieving or just discouraged, content or merely contented.
While labelling your emotions, rate them on a scale of 1 to 10.
How deeply do you feel the emotion? How urgent or strong? Would you choose different words to describe it?
By James Pennebaker, who has been researching the relationship between writing and emotional processing for 40 years. His experiments have shown that people who wrote about emotionally charged episodes had significantly improved physical and their mental well-being. In addition, a study of workers who had recently lost their jobs found that those who experienced feelings of humiliation, anger, anxiety and relationship difficulties were three times more likely to find a new job than controls.
These experiments also showed that, over time, those who wrote about their emotions gained insight into what those emotions meant (or didn't mean!), using phrases such as "I realized", "I remembered", "The reason is that...", "I understand now" and "I understand". The writing process allowed them to see their emotions from a new perspective and to better understand them and their meaning.
Here is an exercise you can use to reflect on your writing.
You can do this every day, but it is particularly useful if you are going through a difficult time or a major transition, or if you are experiencing emotional upheaval - or if you have had a difficult experience that you feel you have not fully come to terms with.
Set a 20-minute timer Use a notebook or computer to write down your emotional experiences over the past week, month or year.
Don't worry about being perfect or legible: let your mind take your thoughts. In the end, you don't have to save the document; the point is that those thoughts are now written out of you and out of you on a piece of paper or in a document...
These three approaches - expanding vocabulary, the taking into account the intensity of emotion and the Description of - can also be used when you want to understand the feelings of others. As we saw with the example of Ede and his wife, we are just as likely to mislabel other people's emotions as our own, with similarly complicating consequences.
By understanding more accurately how others feel, you will be better equipped to respond in a constructive way.
Once you understand what you are feeling, you are better able to manage and learn from those more accurately described emotions.
If Aniko is dealing with the sadness and regret she feels about her failed project - as well as her concerns about her career - it is more productive than just thinking about how to deal with her anger towards Franz.
Or, if Zsolt can recognise his own career concerns, he can start making plans to shape his future more consciously - instead of just diving into more of the same work every night when he gets home.
Naming and understanding our emotions more accurately helps us to know ourselves and others better, deal with difficulties more constructively and ultimately navigate our lives more successfully. While this can be challenging, the reward can be a richer, fuller life.
With a wider emotional vocabulary, we can communicate our feelings more accurately.
Which helps others to better understand and accept them without judgement. Considering intensity helps you to respond appropriately - more moderately to milder emotions and more carefully to deeper ones.
And through writing, we can gain distance from our emotions, allowing us to see them from a new perspective.
Labelling our emotions is a first step to understanding and managing them.
But once we can name them more precisely, we also begin to better understand their depth and complexity. This knowledge is the foundation for emotional resilience - the ability to harness our emotions constructively to achieve our goals, overcome obstacles and form fulfilling relationships with others.
Understanding and managing our feelings can give us great power. When we recognise and accept them, emotions can be valuable guides rather than uncontrollable forces. This emotional awareness and resilience is essential leadership skills in our turbulent world. It is worth the time and effort to better understand our emotions.
