3 Ways to Boost Your Emotional Agility at Work

Though the world is talking about Emotional Intelligence for almost last three decades but the concept is remarkably recent, and its application to business newer still. The term surfaced in 1990 in a research paper by two psychology professors, John D. Mayer of UNH and Peter Salovey of Yale. One of the researched definition goes as below:

But the application of Emotional Intelligence must come from building Emotional Agility. Without emotional agility, emotional intelligence can be an empty victory.

Let us have a deeper look into it before we go into the steps which can improve the agility. Research shows that on an average we speak sixteen thousand words each day. Just think about the number that goes unspoken. The common wisdom shows that there are no place of feelings at office. It also says that the leaders has to be stoic and cheerful. But that is counter intuitive to human biology. As a human we all experience criticism, fear and doubts. We do not struggle because we have these feelings rather we stumble for getting consumed by it. Sometimes we buy into these feelings and start seeing them as facts, (I’ve been a failure my whole career) and avoid by saying (I’m not going to take on that new challenge). Sometimes we force ourselves using enormous willpower and suppressing the feelings and sacrificing our values and principles, (I have got to get over this). In both the cases we are putting too much attention to our chattering mind and wasting our precious cognitive bandwidth. To fix them we try to learn putting positive affirmations, prioritisation, quickly getting involved into work, but all of those come in the form of distractions and clearly does not work.

1. Get Un-Attached

Let us start with a case that Susan David conducted. Jeffrey, a rising-star executive at a leading consumer goods company, had a different problem. Intelligent, talented, and ambitious, he was often angry — at bosses who disregarded his views, subordinates who didn’t follow orders, or colleagues who didn’t pull their weight. He had lost his temper several times at work and been warned to get it under control. But when he tried, he felt that he was shutting off a core part of his personality, and he became even angrier and more upset.

This smart, successful leader was attached to their negative thoughts and emotions.He was being controlled by his inner experience, attempting to control it, or switching between the two.

Anger and stress are two of the emotions we use most frequently at work. Yet they are often masks for deeper feelings that we should describe in more precise ways, so that we develop greater levels of emotional agility. Every emotion comes in a variety of flavours. 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, you should also rate them on a scale of 1–10. How deeply are you feeling the emotion? This can help you to actually respond to the specific emotion and concern without getting angry or stressed.

Later he 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 significant 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 the writing groups.

Here are some simple ways

Set a timer for 20 minutes. Open up your notebook (or begin a document on your computer). When the timer starts, begin writing about your emotional experiences from the past week, month and year. Don’t worry about punctuation, sloppiness or coherence. Simply go wherever your mind takes you, curiously and without judgment. Write just for yourself, and not for some eventual reader. Do this for a few days. Then, close the document without saving it, or throw the paper away. Or stick it in a bottle and cast it out to sea.

Once you understand what you are feeling, then you can better address and learn from those more accurately described emotions. Effective leaders are mindful of their inner experiences but not caught in them. They know how to free up their internal resources and commit to actions that align with their values. Developing emotional agility is no quick fix. But over time those who can earn the mastery in it are likely to thrive.

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