Showing posts with label Emotional. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Emotional. Show all posts

Thursday 3 September 2020

Avoiding impulsive decisions( Contd..)

 Avoiding impulsive decisions( Contd..) 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 
Last week we discussed one of the methods to avoid impulsive decisions-i.e Going beyond the numbers or facts with example. Let us understand other methods to avoid impulsive decision making.


Taking timeout for responding:

Except for emergencies, not all business decisions call for immediate reaction or response. We can take time out to make the decision. One of the benefits of taking timeout is that the time makes us think about the alternatives or choices for solutions. When we are making decisions impulsively, we feel as if there is no alternative.

When we give time ourselves, we are thinking about both rationally and emotionally. We are in a position to generate the options and able to evaluate the pros and cons of the options.

Typically we come across situations when dealing through emails. We used to react to mail communication immediately as impulsive and later realized that we could have taken timeout to respond with different choices. Sometime back, i have shared my experience on impulsive way of reacting to email as given in the link.

https://lifeexcellenceinsights.blogspot.com/2019/05/lessons-learned-on-email-communication.html

It just needs the ability to distinguish which decisions call for immediate attention and which decisions can be delayed. Not all workplace decisions need the same level of urgency!
 
Getting the perspectives from elders or mentors:
 
The next practical method is to get a perspective from others or mentors on important personal or business decisions. The obvious reason is that when we are emotionally overwhelmed with the problem, we may not see it from the other dimensions. Others could see it from a different perspective because they are not emotionally attached.

Most of us might have experienced that when we were about to make an impulsive decision due to emotions, and when we discussed with others, they provided us simple, rational solutions to the problem.

It requires that we need someone to share the concerns and get different rational perspectives than making impulsive decisions and struggling with the consequences.

How to avoid impulsive decisions?

 How to avoid impulsive decisions?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
 
As we discussed the importance of avoiding impulsive reaction in the conversation and making hasty decisions on any business aspects, now let us learn some of the methods to avoid impulsive decision making.
 
1.Going beyond the numbers or facts
2.Taking timeout for responding
3.Getting the perspective from mentors
 
Going beyond the numbers or facts:

Generally, we believe that "numbers or facts" are the real proof for making the right decisions. However, not in all situations, the facts or numbers will help us to make the right decisions. Instead, the numbers or facts lead us to make impulsive decisions and as a leader, we believe that we are taking logical right choices. We need to look at the scenario from the overall perspective.

For example,

In one of the client organizations, the worker's union put a demand to increase the compensation by quoting an absolute value per annum basis. By seeing that fact, the business head was immediately got angry and reacted to reject the proposal. Eventually, that decision led to the disturbance in the operations for some time. The disruption in the operations costs more than what the people put it as a request. Later, when the business head analyzed the demand in detail, he realized the impact was minimal daily compared to the losses they incurred.

The key realization is that the business head reacted to the mere fact rather than looking at the issue holistically in terms of the overall cost to the company, business continuity, and goodwill.

We may come across many situations in the workplace when we look at only on the number or facts, and we tend to react impulsively both positively and negatively. In either way, it would affect us professionally. It just needs awareness.

Let us discuss other methods in next week!

Impulsive reaction and decision making

 Impulsive reaction and decision making

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
 
  In continuation of channelizing the emotions for the positive outcome, one more emotional practice that needs attention is "Making Impulsive  Decisions or Reactions."

The impulsive decision means taking quick decisions without much thought about the consequences, implications to others, and self. Spontaneous reaction means quickly reacting to someone during the conversation without thinking about the consequence. It is simply all about "not thinking before speaking"

For example,

When a manager/colleague/ customer is asking for timeline commitment, without any thought or calculation, committing some timeline and realizing later that impossible to complete.

When somebody asks for your appointment tomorrow, you are agreeing for that, then later on realizing that you have some other commitments.

You can relate your experiences where you committed something without any thought and later troubled yourself to fulfill the commitment or asked for excuses.
 
Why do we make impulsive decisions? 

It is due to our inability to control our emotions, both positive and negative emotions in a particular moment or conversation. It is a state of mind, and it is challenging to be in a balanced state, but that is what most of the effective people use to display both in extremely happy or in extremely uncertain times. That we need to learn while growing up in the ladder.
 
Why should leaders not make impulsive decisions?

Taking an impulsive decision is not good for everyone, but especially it costs more for the people who are growing up and at higher positions. When you are young and make any impulsive decision, it would be seen as aggressive, over-enthusiastic, ambitious, and the mistakes are perceived from the perspective.

When at a higher level, when we react without much thinking and impulsive in making decisions in a business environment, it will affect most of the stakeholders.

I know one of my managers who had grown very fast in the early years of the career due to his impulsive way of making things happen. The same strength affected his reputation and growth when he was handling the managerial roles to manage both business and people.

We should not conclude that impulsive decision means taking decision slowly. It only means making decisions without thinking about the consequences.

But in reality, most of us are prone to impulsive reaction and decision making, and we need to strive to be conscious about it.
 
Let us discuss some of the strategies to channelize the impulsive reaction or decision making next week!

Monday 3 August 2020

Channelizing Anger

Channelizing Anger
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
 
We are aware that anger in the workplace affects the self and the environment as well. It is an outcome of our inability to cope up, non-acceptance of reality, and high expectation.

Some people are developing the capability to channelize the anger for positive turnout. Let me narrate one incident which i have witnessed some time back, and i learned a new insight as well.

I attended a public seminar in which all the age group people attended along with the family, including kids. The speaker is known for the "family wellness" subject, and he was invited to deliver a lecture. So i could see many married couples along with the kids in the hall.

The speaker was delivering the lecture. At some point in time, there were noises from the group of kids. There were chatting, playing, laughing despite their parents tried to control them. The interruption continued frequently, and some audiences got distracted towards the disturbance, and some people got irritated.

Having noticed the disturbance and initially got irritated with it, the speaker turned the audience and said," Let us focus on our objective." He then continued his speaking with enthusiasm and finished the lecture successfully in amidst of the disturbances.

In this incident, the speaker had choices to get angry with the parents like other audiences or asked them to move out of the hall. Knowing the targeted audience background and his purpose of delivering a lecture to them, he channelized his energy to convince the disturbed audience. He went ahead with high energy whenever he countered disturbance.

He put the purpose on a high level than on spending energy on low-level activities even though he has all the power to execute the choices at those moments.

The key lesson for me is that when we focus on petty things, we get angry frequently as the world is not perfect. When we divert our focus on higher purposes, some of the insignificant things cause anger can be avoided and channelized towards higher goals.
 
How can we apply this learning in professional life?

Whenever we are about to get angry with someone in a professional environment, we need to be aware of whether we are going to battle for petty things or shifting towards a higher-level purpose.
 


Monday 4 May 2020

Why is emotional management required in the workplace?

Why is emotional management required in the workplace?
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 
Emotional management at work is all about managing your emotions or feelings within yourself, expressing well, understanding other's emotions, regulating your response in line with both yours and others.

When we learn to master the emotions through awareness and practices, it brings the following personal and professional benefits.
 
  1. Being in a peaceful state  
  2. Feeling complete
  3. Being productive
  4. Taking timely and right decisions
  5. Enabling growth in the profession
  6. Nurturing a good relationship with others 
 For example, you might have seen some people who are qualified with educations and technical/functional skills (IQ), but not being happy inside, not achieved much growth in the profession and not sought after person. But some people without much educational qualification, low intelligence on technical/functional aspects are living a fulfilled life, having a good relationship with others and consistently grown in professions. The main reason for the contradiction is emotional intelligence (EQ) or emotional management skill only.
 
Even at the business level, some business is quite successful and grown consistently because the leaders are good at managing the emotions well at self-level and managing the people's feelings very well. People could be employees, customers, and other stakeholders.

Most of the organizational problems are related to people management only. The executive leaders who are good at managing the people well can drive the business results also very well. That calls for effective emotional management skills.

What is meant by emotions?

Psychologists suggest the six dominant emotions that we are experiencing most of the time, namely happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. Under each, there may be many sub-elements.

When we manage those emotions very well in terms of recognizing and expressing, we become a better person in dealing with emotions.

For example,

one of your teammates prepared a presentation which you suppose to present it to your customer. You are happy with the presentation quality. The way you are recognizing your emotions at the moment and expressing with others will have a consequence on your quality of self and relationship. Let us discuss the various scenario next week that will give you the idea of our emotional management.

Learning Emotional Intelligence

Some time back, i requested feedback on the topic to be discussed for our personal and professional growth. Some have expressed  the requirements indirectly the struggles they have at a personal level and the workplace as follows
  • dealing with the decision dilemma
  • managing the boss and the colleagues
  • how do we know we are on the right path?
  • developing charisma
  • improving interpersonal skill
  • managing the conflict and difficult people
  • overcoming stress
When we observe all the struggles, most of them are related to emotional management only.

Emotional management can be defined as the ability to recognize and regulate emotions in ourselves and others to make effective decisions.

When we are aware of ourselves in terms of our values, beliefs, strengths, areas of improvement, and if we learn to know how to deal with the emotions of others, we can become a better person. That awareness brings the ability to manage all the challenges in the workplace.
 
 For the last 30 years, the modern business world packaged emotions related aspects into a new theory, termed as Emotional Intelligence or Emotional Quotient and a lot of researches and books have been written on that subject. When we go in-depth of those theories and researches, one after study either supports or counters previous findings, and some of them are not considering cultural differences.

One thing I had realized that reasonable emotional management is already in our culture as we encourage more family systems and our ancient mythologies also insist upon emotional management. The Bhagavat Gita starts with the emotional conflict of Arjuna, and Krishna taught more to bring emotional stability as part of his teachings.
 
Hence, we need a holistic approach to look at our personal and organizational challenges in dealing with emotions from our culture, a combination of emotions, and a spiritual perspective. Also, to bring a transformation at an individual level on emotion management, just theory alone is not sufficient, we need to experiment, and self-realization is required.
 
With that context only, we are going to discuss "Emotional Management for Personal and Professional Growth" in the coming weeks with an in-depth explanation of some of the concepts, real-life examples, small actions, and sharing the personal experiences. We focus more on our discussions with reference to workplace challenges only.
 
Given below the broad area of coverage.
 
  • Knowing self – Strengths / Values / Beliefs / purpose /balancing in all aspects of life
  • Controlling and Managing our emotions for positive turnout
  • Achievement drive – self-motivation/ finding passion/ taking responsibility / being in energetic mode / Looking at the work and people from a karma perspective
  • Managing Others – background/understanding and  sensitizing emotions  /developing others
  • Leveraging relationship to achieve results – Leading change / Influencing / Building Team/ Improving communication
 
Look forward to your views and sharing your experiences.

Thursday 30 May 2019

Lessons learned on email communication.


Most of us might have come across the following situation in professional life.

"You might have received an email either from your colleague or boss or team or customer, and the mail content induced anger or frustration within you. Immediately you reacted to the mail by bursting all your emotions by way of words and pressed the sent button. Later on, you felt that you overreacted or subsequent mail communications led to friction in relationships or waste of time. In either way, you might have realized the incident should not have happened."

Some years back it happened to me to receive a mail from one of my clients, and I reacted very harshly in a reply mail. However, fortunately, due to some intuition, I kept in the draft without sending. I had given some time to read the contents again and again. Then I called the client over the phone, and to my surprise, the client responded to my call, patiently explained his views which were quite the opposite to what I interpreted the mail content. The problem was eventually solved and our relationship is continuing till now.

the key lessons I learned from the incident were 

1. Unlike in verbal  communication.we  may not understand the intention of the content in written communication. In verbal communication, we may understand the intention through tone quality to some extent. We need the patience to interpret the contents rightly.
2. We should avoid the temptation to react to mail communications immediately. Email as a tool is not for instant communication We can take time and respond.
3. Even the mail content evokes negative emotions; we can give some time to dilute the emotion Any problem is solvable if it is understood in the right perspective and good state of mind.

To sum up, we should not react to email communications while in emotionally feeling low. Take time and then respond for better relationships and quality of life.

Wednesday 21 February 2018

Never react when you are in disturbed state


     One day Buddha was traveling from one town to another town along with his followers. On the way, they took a rest and the Buddha asked one of his followers to get some water from the nearby lake.A disciple walked up to the lake and he noticed that some people were washing clothes in the lake water and also a bullock cart crossing through the lake.As a result, water became muddy and the disciple thought this muddy water cannot be given to Buddha to drink. He came back to Buddha and told that the water was muddy and not suitable for drinking.

     After a while, Buddha again asked the same disciple to go back to the lake and get some water. The disciple also went to the lake and found that mud was settled down and the water was clean enough to drink.So he collected some water in a pot and brought it to Buddha.

      Buddha looked at the water and looked up at the disciple and said “what did you do to make the water clean to drink? You just allowed it as such to settle down the mud.Similarly, when your mind is in a disturbed state, you cannot make use of it effectively for decision making or doing anything useful. 

      Most of our email communication or direct communications in professional life becomes annoyed or tuned out negative when we react it during our disturbed state. Give a little time to settle it down, your mind becomes in a positive state and you can produce results”

Wednesday 24 May 2017

What should do when you feel low ?

        

 Sometimes we are skeptical about the future and feel low about business growth or financial status or even professional improvements or quality of life.During those moments,“Possibilities thinking” may be useful to get confidence or overcoming the skeptic mindset.
        For example, observe any successful people from business, sports, media, politics, etc., You may realize that their background was ordinary or much worse than yours. How they became successful is that due to their self-belief.But before they believe themselves, they thought the possibilities of becoming successful or achieving something great.They believed in the possibilities of better tomorrow than today.That possibility thinking only made them successful.
        Similarly, look at the developments in all the fields like connectivity of the world through the internet, mobile communication, affordability of transportation modes, education, healthcare inventions, etc which was not imaginable a few decades ago. Today it has become reality as someone was thinking about the possibilities of changing from better to best.
         In essence, what was not possible yesterday becomes reality today and it is the result of possibilities thinking of humanity. Hence, when you feel low, think about new possibilities in your life either business turnaround, personal transformation or improving the quality of life, it will become reality with right actions!  

Wednesday 1 June 2016

Relooking at problems

     A rich man had many domestic related problems. To get solutions to his problems, he approached a saint and prayed for relief from his problems. The saint was quietly listening to the person‘s problem. The saint asked him to go out and pick up a pebble and he did so. The saint asked him to keep the pebble closer to eyes and look at the things around him. The seeker did so and replied he could not see anything else in his surroundings since the pebble obstructed everything. The saint had asked the seeker  to keep the pebble away from his eye and look again. Now the seeker  replied that he could able to see the pebble as well as other objects in the environment.

    The saint responded to the seeker, “Your problems are also like pebbles. When you look the problem very close and thinking on the same all the time, you could not see other good things in life. When you keep the problem away from you and look at the problem at different perspective, you can solve  problem as well as you can enjoy other things as well".

    In our life span, we may come across the problems in every moment, which may be tiny, insignificant and time specific. It depends on how we are looking at from a different perspective. If we introspect, most of the problems, we magnify as big and create panic within ourself. Just think about  a problem which you faced a year ago and how you responded to it and  realize the relevance or significance of that problem today.

It just requires  awareness on problems as they are part of life and how we look at problems makes a difference to our surroundings and us.

Thursday 28 April 2016

Executing an Idea

“Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.” - Sue Grafton

      Have you ever come across an excellent idea which you believed would  transform you or your career or your business to the next level? But at the same time, you are inhibited with the laziness, fear of failure, fear of criticism from others, fear of success or exposure (some people have  fear of success or exposure!!!!), Skeptical about the idea worthiness etc..Later point of time, you became to know that the same idea or similar one  was implemented by someone  and you started  feeling guilty of not executing.

      The reason as stated above, most of the time, we are blocked with doubts, fear of any kind, more importance to other’s opinion etc..This is primarily due to a decision dilemma about the execution of ideas.

How to overcome this dilemma as from my personal experience  

1. Spiritual perspective:

Since you only get the idea initially, that means, it is with SOME PURPOSE. Believe it and start to execute the idea

2. Emotional perspective:

Visualize the pain you will be undergoing when someone is executing a similar idea at a later stage. To avoid the pain, start to execute the idea.

3. Rational perspective:

Think about best and worst things may happen if the idea is executed and your capacity to handle the consequence.

Once you evaluate from the above perspectives, either you come to conclusion to execute or not. In both cases, you would be happy, as you are free from guiltiness. Your peace of mind is important .
Happy living!