3 Ways to Better Understand Your Emotions

https://hbr.org/2016/11/3-ways-to-better-understand-your-emotions
by Susan David


Marion Barraud for HBR

Dealing effectively with emotions is a key leadership skill. And naming our emotions — what psychologists call labeling — is an important first step in dealing with them effectively. But it’s harder than it sounds; many of us struggle to identify what exactly we are feeling, and often times the most obvious label isn’t actually the most accurate.

There are a variety of reasons why this is so difficult: We’ve been trained to believe that strong emotions should be suppressed. We have certain (sometimes unspoken) societal and organizational rules against expressing them. Or we’ve never learned a language to accurately describe our emotions. Consider these two examples:

Neena is in a meeting with Jared and the whole time he has been saying things that make her want to explode. In addition to interrupting her at every turn, he’s reminded everyone again about that one project she worked on that failed. She’s so angry.

Mikhail gets home after a long day and sighs as he hangs up his coat. His wife asks if anything’s wrong. “I’m just stressed,” he says, pulling out laptop his to finish a report.

Anger and stress are two of the emotions we see most in the workplace — or at least those are the terms we use for them most frequently. Yet they are often masks for deeper feelings that we could and should describe in more nuanced and precise ways, so that we develop greater levels of emotional agility, a critical capability that enables us to interact more successfully with ourselves and the world (more on emotional agility in my new book of the same name, available here).

Yes, Neena may be mad, but what if she is also sad? Sad that her project failed, and maybe also anxious that that failure is going to haunt her and her career. With Jared interrupting her so frequently, that anxiety feels increasingly justified. Why didn’t the project work? And what’s going to become of her job now? All of these emotions feed into her anger, but they are also separate feelings that she should identify and address.

And what if what’s behind Mikhail’s stress is the fact that he’s just not sure he’s in the right career? Long days used to be fun — why aren’t they any more? He’s surely stressed, but what’s going on under that?

These questions open up a world of potential inquiry and answers for Neena and Mikhail. Like them, we need a more nuanced vocabulary for emotions, not just for the sake of being more precise, but because incorrectly diagnosing our emotions makes us respond incorrectly. If we think we need to attend to anger, we’ll take a different approach than if we’re handling disappointment or anxiety — or we might not address them at all.

It’s been shown that when people don’t acknowledge and address their emotions, they display lower wellbeing and more physical symptoms of stress, like headaches. There is a high cost to avoiding our feelings. On the flip side, having the right vocabulary allows us to to see the real issue at hand–to take a messy experience, understand it more clearly, and build a roadmap to address the problem.

Here are three ways to get a more accurate and precise sense of your emotions:

Broaden your emotional vocabulary

Words matter. If you’re experiencing a strong emotion, take a moment to consider what to call it. But don’t stop there: once you’ve identified it, try to come up with two more words that describe how you are feeling. You might be surprised at the breadth of your emotions — or that you’ve unearthed a deeper emotion buried beneath the more obvious one.

Here’s a vocabulary list of emotion terms; you can find much more by searching Google for any one of these.

It’s equally important to do this with “positive” emotions as well as “negative” ones. Being able to say that you are excited about a new job (not just “nervous”) or trusting of a colleague (not just “he’s nice”), for example, will help you set your intentions for the role or the relationship in a way that is more likely to lead to success down the road.

Consider the intensity of the emotion

We’re apt to leap to basic descriptors like “angry” or “stressed” even when our feelings are far less extreme. I had a client Ed (not his real name) who was struggling in his marriage; he frequently described his wife as “angry” and got angry frequently in return. But as the vocabulary chart suggests, every emotion comes in a variety of flavors. When we talked about other words for his wife’s emotions, Ed saw that there were times that she was perhaps just annoyed or impatient. This insight transformed their relationship because he could suddenly see that she wasn’t just angry all the time. This meant he could actually respond to her specific emotion and concern without getting angry himself. Similarly, it matters in your own self-assessment whether you are angry or just grumpy, mournful or just dismayed, elated or just pleased.

As you label your emotions, also rate them on a scale of 1-10. How deeply are you feeling the emotion? How urgent is it, or how strong? Does that make you choose a different set of words?

Write it out

James Pennebaker has done 40 years of research into the links between writing and emotional processing. His experiments revealed that people who write about emotionally charged episodes experience a marked increase in their physical and mental well-being. Moreover, in a study of recently laid-off workers, he found that those who delved into their feelings of humiliation, anger, anxiety, and relationship difficulties were three times more likely to have been reemployed than those in control groups.

These experiments also revealed that over time those who wrote about their feelings began to develop insights into what those feelings meant (or didn’t mean!), using phrases such as “I have learned,” “It struck me that,” “The reason that,” “I now realize,” and “I understand.” The process of writing allowed them to gain a new perspective on their emotions and to understand them and their implications more clearly.

Here’s an exercise you can use to reflect through writing. You could do this every day, but it’s particularly useful when you’re going through a tough time or a big transition, or if you’re feeling emotional turmoil—or if you’ve had a difficult experience that you think you haven’t quite processed..

• Set a timer for 20 minutes
• Using either a notebook or computer, write about your emotional experiences from the past week, month, or year.
• Don’t worry about making it perfect or readable: go where your mind takes you.
• At the end, you don’t have to save the document; the point is that those thoughts are now out of you and on the page.

You can also use these three approaches—broadening your vocabulary, noting the intensity of an emotion, and writing it out—when trying to better understand another person’s emotions. As we saw with the example of Ed and his wife, we are just as likely to mislabel someone else’s emotions as our own, with similarly complicating consequences. By more understanding what they are feeling more precisely, you will be better equipped to respond in a constructive way.

Once you understand what you are feeling, then you can better address and learn from those more accurately described emotions. (If you want to assess your own Emotional Agility, here is a link to a quiz.) If Neena addresses the sadness and regret she feels in the wake of her failed project — as well as the anxiety about what it means for her career — that is more productive than trying to figure out how to deal with her anger at Jared. And if Mikhail can recognize his own career anxiety, he can start to craft a plan to build his future more deliberately — rather than simply miring himself in more of the same work when he gets home each night.

Susan David is a founder of the Harvard/McLean Institute of Coaching and is on faculty at Harvard. She is author of Emotional Agility (Avery, 2016) based on the concept named by HBR as a Management Idea of the Year. An in-demand speaker and advisor, David has worked with the senior leadership of hundreds of major organizations, including the United Nations, Ernst & Young, and the World Economic Forum. For more information, go to www.susandavid.com or @SusanDavid_PhD.

4 Ways to Control Your Emotions in Tense Moments

https://hbr.org/2016/12/4 -ways-to-control-your-emotions-in-tense-moments?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29
by Joseph Grenny

Twenty-three years ago, one of my employees — I’ll call him Dale — asked for a private meeting. Dale was serious and bookish and had very strong opinions. His work was fastidious. He rarely socialized with colleagues, but he was impeccable in his commitments to others. And he was skilled at his job.

As I closed the door to our huddle room, he came straight to the point, “Joseph, I’d like to offer you some feedback.”

I had expected a different agenda. But given my professions about candor in our culture, I was somewhat trapped. “Please do,” I said cautiously.

“Joseph, you are arrogant and difficult to work with. Your first inclination is to shoot down criticisms from me and others. That makes it impossible for me to do my job as an editor.” And with that, he was done. He looked at me calmly.

I compressed an hour’s worth of emotions and thoughts into mere seconds. I felt waves of shame, resentment, and anger. In my mind, I made a frenzied inventory of Dale’s defects — as though assembling a case to rebut an aggressive prosecutor. I fantasized briefly about firing him. My chest felt tight. My breathing was shallow. Through it all, I did my best to fake a composure I clearly did not feel. My tacit logic was that confessing hurt would telegraph weakness.

An overwhelming majority of the bad decisions I’ve made in my life were impulsive. They weren’t errors of faulty logic or ineffective deliberation. They were avoidable mistakes in moments when I was unwilling or unable to manage potent negative emotions. Likewise, the most consequential progress I’ve made in my development as a leader has been not in professional but in emotional competence.

The career-limiting habits I entered my profession with were a direct result of my inability to deal with emotions like anxiety, embarrassment, and fear. For example, I routinely procrastinated on tasks that provoked anxiety and a lack of confidence. I reacted defensively when embarrassed by criticism. And I struggled to speak up when my views were at odds with powerful colleagues.

The ability to recognize, own, and shape your own emotions is the master skill for deepening intimacy with loved ones, magnifying influence in the workplace, and amplifying our ability to turn ideas into results. My successes and failures have turned on this master skill more than any other.

But can you strengthen this core muscle of your emotional anatomy? If your impulses tend to override your intentions in cherished areas of life, is it possible to make the converse the norm?

Four practices have made an immense difference for me at important moments in my career, like this one when I faced “Dale.”

Own the emotion. Emotional responsibility is the precondition of emotional influence. You can’t change an emotion you don’t own. The first thing I do when struck by an overpowering feeling or impulse is to accept responsibility for its existence. My mental script is, “This is about me, not about that or them.” Emotions come prepackaged with tacit external attribution. Because an external event always precedes my experience of an emotion, it’s easy to assume that event caused it. But as long as I believe it was externally caused I am doomed to be a victim to my emotions.

For example, my anger following Dale’s criticism had nothing to do with Dale’s criticism. His statement could have corresponded to feelings of curiosity, surprise, or compassion as much as resentment and anger. The fact that I experienced the latter rather than the former was about me, not him.

Name the story. Next, you need to reflect on how you colluded with the initial event to create the present emotion. Emotions are the result of both what happens, and of the story you tell yourself about what happened. One of the powerful practices that helps me detach from and take control of my emotions is to name the stories I tell. Is it a victim story — one that emphasizes my virtues and absolves me of responsibility for what is happening? Is it a villain story — one that exaggerates the faults of others and attributes what’s happening to their evil motives? Is it a helpless story — one that convinces me that any healthy course of action (like listening humbly, speaking up honestly) is pointless? Naming my stories helps me see them for what they are — only one of myriad ways I can make sense of what’s happening. As I sat with Dale, I realized I was deep in victim and villain stories. I was thinking only of reasons he was wrong but not of how he was right — and I was attributing his criticism to his personal flaws, not his legitimate frustrations.

Challenge the story. Once you identify the story, you can take control by asking yourself questions that provoke you out of your victim, villain, and helpless stories. For example, I transform myself from a victim into an actor by asking, “What am I pretending not to know about my role in this situation?” I transform Dale from a villain into a human by asking, “Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person say this?” and I transform myself from helpless into able by asking, “What’s the right thing to do now to move toward what I really want?”

As I pondered these questions in my interaction with Dale, I saw how my impatience and… gulp… arrogance, was a big part of why he was saying this. As I asked, “What is the right thing to do…” I felt an immediate release from resentment and anger. A calming humility emerged. And, I began to ask questions rather than present my defense.

Find your primal story. Over the years, I’ve wondered why the stories I tell myself are so predictable. In my research with hundreds of leaders, I’ve found that most people have habitual stories they tell in predictable circumstances as well. Early life experiences that we perceived at the time to be threats to our safety and worth become encoded in our potent memories.

For example, perhaps a classmate in second grade coaxed you to an unsupervised place in the schoolyard and bullied you in a traumatic way. A parent may have shown you less approval than a sibling. From these experiences, the most primal part of our brains code certain conditions as threatening — physically or psychically. And from that point forward, you don’t get to vote on whether you’ll react when those conditions are present. When a larger work colleague raises his voice, your brain might connect with the old bully experience. Or, when Dale accuses you of being arrogant, your parental criticism triggers flare. I’ve found greater peace over the years as I’ve become aware of the primal origin of the stories I tell — and learned to challenge the perception that my safety and worth are at risk in these moments. When my chest got tight sitting across from Dale, simply thinking, “This can’t hurt me” and “Humility is strength not weakness” had an immediate calming effect. Reciting a specific script in moments of emotional provocation weakens trauma-induced reaction that is not relevant in the present moment.

Dale and I worked together productively for years after this episode. I’ve failed as many of these moments as I’ve mastered — but by working intentionally on these simple exercises, my successes are far more common.

Joseph Grenny is a four-time New York Times bestselling author, keynote speaker, and leading social scientist for business performance. His work has been translated into 28 languages, is available in 36 countries, and has generated results for 300 of the Fortune 500. He is the cofounder of VitalSmarts, an innovator in corporate training and leadership development.

4 Common Mistakes That Lead to Bad Hires (And How to Avoid Them)

http://app.mhb.io/e/2qr1u/2
Written by Karla Cook | @krla_cook

Hiring the wrong person costs your agency more than you might think.

According to Jörgen Sundberg, founder of Undercover Recruiter, a bad hire can end up costing your business around $840,000. That's not a number to take lightly.

Sundberg's team based their calculations on the cost of a second-level manager who makes $62,000 a year and is terminated after two and a half years. They considered the cost of hiring, onboarding, and retaining the employee, as well as the overall revenue loss associated with mistakes, failures, and missed business opportunities caused during the employee's doomed tenure.

If you work at a small agency, losing that amount of money over a single bad hire can cause unthinkable damage to your bottom line. There's simply no room for hiring mistakes.

To ensure your next hiring decision isn't a major pitfall for your business, we've compiled a list of common reasons behind poor hiring choices. Avoid these at all costs to make sure your next new hire succeeds. 

4 Common Mistakes That Lead to Bad Hires

1) You fall victim to "The halo effect."

Imagine you're a hiring manager conducting interviews for an account manager position. After a long day of mediocre and disappointing candidates, your next interviewee turns out to be eloquent, positive, and friendly -- a welcome combination of traits that impress you immediately. On top of his enjoyable presence, he has a pretty solid resume. You hire him right away.

A few months after he's been onboarded, you hear word from his manager that his performance has been disappointing so far, and he shows no signs of improvement. So what went wrong? How could the candidate who impressed you so much in the interview turn out to be a total dud?

This is a perfect example of the halo effect: a type of cognitive bias that occurs when we overlook obvious faults when someone impresses us in one particular area. In this case, you were impressed by the candidate's sociable demeanor, and assumed he'd be equally impressive in other areas. His resume might not have been stellar, but since you were already sold on his sociability, you didn't even notice you were overlooking potential issues.

Beating the halo effect starts with being aware of its impact, and developing a straightforward hiring system to offset its effect. Melvin Sorcher and James Brant -- partners with Sorcher Associates, a management consulting firm -- recommend putting an evaluation process in place which requires candidates to be assessed by a group of people from different levels and areas of the company.

"The process enables the group to probe a wide range of leadership criteria and obtain balanced and complete information," Sorcher and Brant wrote in Harvard Business Review. When a candidate is reviewed by a wide range of people, it exposes them to varying sets of opinions and biases, minimizing the potential impact the halo effect can have on the hiring decision.

2) You don't know what the position really requires.

Most job requirements come in list format: a neat index of basic skills, recommended experience, and personal traits that somehow combine to describe the ideal person for the job.

Unfortunately, succeeding in most roles requires more than a laundry list of vague qualities -- particularly in the fast-paced, ever-evolving agency landscape. Hiring managers seeking candidates for a new position should set aside time before the interviews to dig a little deeper and discover "the pivot" -- the elusive set of qualities that tips the scale towards one candidate over another.

"The pivot" is a term coined by Ram Charan, a business advisor and author of Boards That Lead. As Charan describes it, the pivot is "a strand of two or three capabilities that are tightly interwoven and required for the new leader to succeed." In other words, the pivot is what separates someone who will be an average performer in the role from someone who will truly flourish and exceed your biggest expectations.

For example, when hiring a new business development manager, the pivot might be a background in economics, an adaptive nature, and a unique ability to remain calm and collected in stressful situations.

"Directors who choose the right CEOs do a lot of work before arriving at the pivot," Charan writes. "They take the time to fully understand the company's current challenges and how the external context is changing. They read analyst reports, talk to insiders, and consult outside experts to expand their thinking."

Although Charan uses "the pivot" as a way to help companies hire CEOs and other major leadership positions, it's useful for all hiring managers to think about what specific abilities really put a candidate over the edge.

3) You focus too heavily on technical skills and not enough on intangibles.

Technical skills are important -- don't get me wrong -- but they hardly ever make up for larger issues with an employee's disposition, attitude, and work ethic. Hiring an employee primarily on the merit of their technical skills could cause you to overlook other major red flags -- and might lead to a wasted investment in an unfit employee.

According to a study conducted by Leadership IQ -- a leadership training and development company -- new employees rarely fail due to issues with their job competence or technical skills. In fact, of the new hires that were terminated within 18 months of being hired, only 11% failed due to technical shortcomings.

So what were the top reasons new hires didn't succeed in their new roles? Issues taking feedback, inadequate emotional intelligence, and a lack of motivation caused more employees to fail than gaps in technical job competency.

Check out the full breakdown of the survey below:

Image Credit: Leadership IQ

"The typical job interview process fixates on ensuring that new hires are technically competent," explained Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ, on their company blog. "But coachability, emotional intelligence, motivation and temperament are much more predictive of a new hire's success or failure. Do technical skills really matter if the employee isn't open to improving, alienates their coworkers, lacks emotional intelligence and has the wrong personality for the job?"

It's easy to get blinded by an employee's impressive technical skill set, but hiring managers need to look beyond the resume and make sure candidates have the right attitude, disposition, and mindset for the role as well.

4) You treat every open position like an emergency hire.

Sometimes it's necessary to get someone hired and onboarded as quickly as possible for the overall stability of the agency -- but most of the time, you can afford to take enough time with the hiring process to find someone who will bring the right energy to the role.

In periods of rapid growth, agencies often feel the need to acquire talent expeditiously, without much thought to the hiring framework or time line. With this attitude, it's easy for unfit hires to slip through the cracks when they wouldn't have otherwise been considered.

Linda Brenner, a coauthor of Talent Valuation and the CEO of Talent Growth Advisors, emphasizes the importance of prioritizing hiring for open roles according to long-term business needs.

"Start by identifying which roles are most essential to delivering on future growth commitments -- not just to continuing your operations right now," Brenner writes in Fast Company. "Finding and hiring top talent in those areas is most essential."

Once you've identified which roles to prioritize, develop a hiring time line that allows your team adequate time to select ideal candidates. If you start hiring now for roles that will be essential in the coming months or years, you'll be able to conduct a more thorough process that yields better candidates.