Dealing with Anger

Dealing with Anger
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we outlined the importance of channelizing each emotion for positive turnout in the workplace and each emotion needs different strategies, now let us understand more about dealing with anger as an emotion.
 
When do we get angry at the workplace?

Most of the time, we do get angry when things are not going as we expect. Typically, the following are some of the scenarios we lose coolness or normal state and get into the agonized mood.

1. When someone repeatedly says something against our views, and we are in a situation neither to accept others' opinions nor in a position to convince others to our views.
2. When someone is pointing us for fault with or without logic, and we are in a position not to accept our failure openly. Also, not in a position to defend our case.
3. When we have higher expectations or standards on something or someone and, in reality, when we face less than expectation or standard, suddenly, the anger burst out.

You can think and relate some of your experiences where you get the anger.

In all the above situations, you can see some typical patterns as follows.

1.NON -ACCEPTANCE of the reality in a particular moment
2.Our INABILITY or lack of courage and skill to face (Helplessness)
3.Lack of patience to get the full picture
 
The internal pattern manifests outside either by way of shouting or abusing or hitting physically or going out of self-control.

Whether anger is bad all the times?
 
Anger is one of the natural emotions, and we can not outrightly say it is wrong. The anger becomes worthless only when it is used for silly reasons with the inappropriate people.

When anger is used for higher purposes with the right people, it turns out to be positive and the right people also perceive it in a proper perspective.

One of the best examples of converting the anger into the positive turnout would be Mahatma Gandhi's life as we read when he faced the humiliation by the British which turned out as anger. Instead of directing the anger to give it back either by way of verbal or physical violence against the British, he channelized the anger into a nonviolent momentum and created a new history.
 
When we read such a historical incident, we move on as extraordinary incidents.

But in a  day to day life, some effective people are good at channelizing their anger into a positive experience and let us discuss those real examples next week.!

(Appreciate your personal experience of how the anger impacts you at the workplace!)

 

Channelizing the emotions

Channelizing the emotions 
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we have discussed the first part of managing emotions in the workplace as "self-awareness, "the second part is "channelizing the emotions" for the growth.
 
What is meant by channelizing the emotions?
 
Every moment we are undergoing different emotions like happiness, sadness, fear, frustrations, anger, and so on. We have two choices in recognizing and managing emotions. Either we use it for our advantage or turn it for a disaster for us and our surroundings. Channelizing the emotion is more about how to recognize the emotion and direct it for betterment for us and the surroundings.
 
Why the channelizing the emotion is important?
 
When we do not know how to channelize the emotions, it hits us back by way of losing peace, losing focus on higher-level growth-oriented activities. Sometimes when we are not keeping the perspective right, the emotions affect our health as well.
 
Hence awareness is required to handle different emotions with different methods as we are dealing with a mix of both positive and negative emotions in everyday transactions with others.
 
For example,
 
In our workplace, predominately, we have the following emotions in our day to day interactions with our colleagues/team/boss and even with the customers.

• Anger (when the things do not happen  as we expect)
• Jealous (when some of our colleague's / competitor does well than us)
• Frustration (when we do not see the result for our effort, or someone does not recognize our work)
• Insecure (when we do not know the direction of future on job/business)
• Feeling low (we do not know what to do in a particular moment; less motivated)
• Irritation (when we work with the person whom we do not like to work)

You can add on the list from your experience!

Each emotion calls for different strategies to channelize the emotions and if we are aware, that will help us for growth.

Let us discuss each emotion and the method of channelizing in the coming weeks!

Aware of Life Balancing

Aware of Life Balancing
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
 

As we are discussing the importance of self-awareness in managing emotions, one more methodology of self-awareness is to be aware of your balancing status in all aspects of life.

Some people list up to 24 aspects of life. To simplify it, i classify the life aspects into six areas like professional growth, relationship, health, wealth, maturity, and social contribution, as shown in the below radar chart. We should progress in all aspects at the same pace. That is  Life balancing.

When you measure the current balancing profile status in each aspect, you become aware of improvement areas.


                                           
You can do self-assessment in each aspect and see yourself about balancing profile.

For example,

on professional growth, considering your education, experience, if you feel, you have grown in the professional front in terms of contribution, monetary benefits, and social status, rate yourself on the higher side and vice versa.

Similarly, on the health front, rate yourself depending upon your health conditions.

On wealth aspects, rate yourself on your capability on earning, saving, investment, and spending aspects. On relationship aspects, you can measure your relationship quality with your circle.

Likewise, in all the categories, do the self-assessment and measure your balancing aspects. If you find some imbalanced profile, that will give you awareness of the focus area.

When i administer this assessment in my workshop, the result brings eye-opening experience for the participants as i think this is one of the powerful self-awareness tools for self-awareness.

The point is self-awareness is the starting point for all emotional management in the professional environment.

More you are aware of yourself in terms of values, beliefs, strengths, areas for improvement, purpose, organizing self, better you are on emotional management.

Let us discuss more on channelizing the emotions in next week. 

Finding your Purpose

Finding your Purpose
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we have been discussing the methodologies of being aware of self, the last one in the effort of self-awareness is finding the purpose of existence.

Some people are gifted to aware of their purpose at a young age and channelizing their energy in fulfilling the purpose. For others, the purpose has to be realized by asking the question themselves continuously. It is not a one-time effort, and this pursuit of search is a life long exercise.

In my opinion, we need to explore the purpose of life in two layers to avoid the complexity, one at a spiritual level and another at a materialistic level.

Most of the spiritual masters mention that the purpose of life is to live happily and peacefully, or some refer the purpose is to attempt to break the birth-death-rebirth cycle. Have we reached that level of maturity in awareness and practice it? That is one level of exploration.

From a materialistic perspective, we need to be sure about the purpose from our service point of view. We need to ask question ourselves, "what is the purpose of my existence? What am I doing with my background, education, experience, passion, and am i living meaningful or impactful?  When you ask this question frequently, you will get some insights about the macro-level purpose, at least from a materialistic perspective rather than not being sensitive to life. That is another level of exploration.

The most significant benefit of knowing the purpose is that we get clarity on the sense of direction, clarity on our thoughts and actions. When both thoughts and actions are aligned, we move towards the mastering of our emotions at the professional front.

My experience is that the effort to find the purpose will make you understand yourself better.

Depending on the individual's level of evolution, he/ she chooses to explore the purpose either from a materialistic or spiritual perspective. That exploration brings more awareness of self!

 

Aware of Personal Values

Aware of Personal Values 
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we are learning some of the ways to be more aware of self, let us understand the power of personal values in decision making and managing our emotions in the workplace.

What is meant by personal values?

Values are things that we regard as very important for us. Some examples of values could be equality, honesty, learning, pride, effort, perseverance, loyalty, commitment, faithfulness, money, relationship, love, care, kindness, health, family, career and so on. Each one of us has some deep-rooted importance or values on the subconscious level, and it directs the emotions at an appropriate time.

We make decisions based on the values and we use them as a compass to enhance the positive emotions or to avoid negative emotions. When we have clarity on our core value, i.e., what is very much essential for us, that will help us to resolve any hidden conflicts, remove internal stress and outburst in any decisions.

For example,

You might have observed some people that they used to make quick decisions when it comes to career vs. family as they have clarity on what they want. Some take career growth over family, happy with that, and vice versa. Because they are clear about what is important for them, and they align the decision. When you force yourself to decide on against your internal value system, you get into the trap of value conflict, and that will affect your emotions severely.

A few years back, i  collaborated with a known person for the business. Within a month of working together, i  felt discomfort and developed internal stress as there was value conflict between us. I valued much on process, methodological working, slow  and my partner valued much on the result, speed and revenue generation. Within a short time, we closed the partnership deal. There is nothing wrong with the individual's choice of values; both are right. But when there is value conflict, it is not going to be beneficial to anyone in the long term.

You might have come across similar situations with your friends, family members, colleagues and the quality of the relationship is based on value alignment and value conflict.

The point is that being aware of personal values and value alignment is a very much important aspect for intrapersonal, interpersonal, and organizational harmony and growth.

When you are aware of your values, you will get clarity on your priorities and importance. This clarity will help you to make the right decisions and keeping your emotions in a positive mode.
 

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Action:
List down the important things for you and finally shortlist the TOP3 values. Check whether it is aligned with your aspirations and with others.
Finetuning and altering the values with the help of the coach will change the direction of life. 

Power of belief on emotions

Power of belief on emotions  
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)


 

As we are learning some of the ways to be more aware of self, let us understand the power of beliefs and values in shaping our personality and in managing our emotions at the workplace.

What is meant by belief?

Beliefs are the assumptions that we make about ourselves, about others and the world. There is no truth in that, it is not a fact, but we tend to believe it true. That is strange about the belief systems.

For example, some of us believe that some numbers are lucky nos. Say No 7. There is no logic, no fact, but we believe in that. That belief drives us to choose our vehicle no ending with 7 or choosing mobile no end with 7 and so on…. That belief comes from coincidental or experiences on many occasions, and we use to believe that is true. Those beliefs are driving us towards appropriate emotions and actions which propel for growth or limits from the growth.

Some of the  examples of beliefs we may have

More money, more fun
More money, more trouble
Meetings are wasting of time
My team will do anything for me
My team will never do anything without my follow-up
My intuition is always right
I am more productive in the late evening work
I will have stomach pain on Monday morning!

All the above may not be fact, but we believe it as truth.

How does belief impact our emotions and actions?

Whether the belief may be empowered or limited, it is impacting our emotions and actions.

For example,

I know one business head who firmly believes that his product quality is superior to competitors, and his business is surviving only because of quality. That is his belief, whether empowering or limiting belief does not matter. How this belief drives his emotions and actions is that he will never tolerate any people’s behavior, which is affecting the quality, and he never hesitates to invest for the sake of enhancing quality. That way, his belief is positively driving his emotions and actions. The customer is happy to work with him.

Another example is one manager strongly believes that he is the only person who can do his functional activity with perfection, and he also believes that his team members are not that much capable of executing well. Because of the belief, he uses to do all the job by himself and rarely he delegates. Even after delegation, if he finds poor execution, he loses his temper and creates havoc in the workplace. People try to avoid him.

In both examples, the underlying cause behind the behavior or action is the BELIEF.

The point is whether the belief is empowered or limited; it drives our emotions and behavior. We need to be aware of our own beliefs and able to classify whether it is empowering or limiting us.

Your awareness will help to take action to strengthen empowering belief or to eliminate limiting belief.
 

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Action :

Just write down your beliefs you are holding about yourself, family, team, profession, or your business and be aware of its nature, whether empowering you or limiting you!

That is the starting point to manage the emotions in the workplace

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Let us discuss more on beliefs and values next week

Understanding more about YOU

Understanding YOU  
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
 

As we are aware that self-awareness will improve emotional intelligence at work. Before going into the next methodology of self-awareness, let us understand the rationale behind every behavior at the workplace and the inner personality with the following framework.
 
               
What we see externally is only BEHAVIOR, and if we would like to improve the positive or negative behavior for betterment, we need to work internally. As shown in the framework, the behavior is an outcome of internal emotions or feelings, and the emotions are the outcome of attitude towards work or life or anything. The attitude comes from our values and beliefs about work or life or anything. What resides is our real inner personality.
Overall if you would like to improve the management of your emotions at the workplace, you need to work on inner personality.

Let me narrate my personal experience in changing the behavior at the workplace as it may not be appropriate to take common experiences. You can relate to your own experiences for understanding the concept better.

When I was working as a project manager, in one instance, the project deliverables were about to fail. I lost my temper, behaved rudely with junior colleagues, which was immature and not at all acceptable in the professional environment by any justifications. However, i could narrate the reasoning behind unacceptable behavior through the framework.

The unacceptable behavior is an outcome of my internal emotions like fear of failing in the project, in turn, losing personal creditability. The fear comes from the attitude of looking at the work from a self point of view. The attitude was if something committed, it must be done at any cost. From where this attitude comes from? It comes from the values and beliefs that i was holding about myself and work. I valued more of pride in achievement, commitment to deliverables, and i believed that the project is a straight line like an operational task. I  wrongly believed that plan should not have any uncertainties. All those beliefs, values, attitudes, emotions result in the behavior.

If i  want to improve the behavior, then i should look at my false belief about the project nature,  self’s unrealistic expectation, attitude towards self and work, then only unreasonable fear of losing personal value with one failure would disappear. Once the emotion of fear is in control, i  am in a state of reasoning the root cause of the failures. Then it would enable me to display more positive, balanced, mature behavior externally to the team.

The point behind the narration is that every one of us needs to analyze ourselves at a deeper level on every positive and negative behavior for the transformation.

It takes time and needs the patience to improve self. The more you do self-analysis, the more you become emotionally stronger in both personal and professional life.

Let us discuss more beliefs and values next week!
 

Self Awareness - SWOT Analysis

Self Awareness - SWOT Analysis
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)



 

Having discussed the importance of self-awareness last week, let us discuss some of the methodologies through which you can be aware of yourself better.

1. Self Introspection through SWOT analysis
2. Values and Beliefs clarity
3. Identifying purpose and passion 

 
First, let us discuss one of the powerful methods of knowing self is through SWOT analysis. As most of us aware that this SWOT tool is being used for business purposes, and it can be being used for personal development as well.

SWOT  stands for is Strength, Weakness, or area for improvement, Opportunities, and Threats. 

a brief idea about each element

 Strength :

Everyone has unique strengths. Identifying and leveraging is one of the aspects of self-awareness. Self can define strength by listing out all positive attributes or by taking reference from other's feedback or opinion as expressed frequently.

For example, you may be realizing that you are good at "thinking creatively," that is your strength. Or others also might have mentioned this quality many times. 
 
Weakness or Area for Improvement:
 
Weakness or Area for Improvement is quite the opposite of strength. Some of the areas which you may think to improve further or others might have mentioned frequently.
 
For example, you may be thinking that you are not good at listening. Some people might have pointed at your poor listening. You might come across many occasions you made the task complicated due to poor listening ability. Those are all clues that you need to improve further on listening skills.

In my opinion, there is no weakness in personal capabilities; it is only an "area for improvement." Anything can be improved over some time if we have awareness and take action.
 
Opportunity :
 
Opportunity is nothing, but when you leverage your strength, that will become an opportunity or the changes in the external world that will give you a chance to leverage.
 
For example, if you identify your creativeness as strength, what are the opportunities that exist to explore?
 
Threat:
 
The threat is quite the opposite of opportunity. When you are not addressing your area of improvement for a longer duration, that will become a threat to your survival or growth. Also, you can identify the change in the environment, and if you are not updated, that will become a threat.
 
The point is SWOT as a tool that helps you to streamline your thought processes to know yourself better. This analysis can be done at least once in a year that will give more clarity about yourself. I have been using this analysis myself for the last 25 years and finding useful.
 

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Action plan

Identify your strength, areas for improvement, opportunities, and threats in your personal and professional areas that will give you some level awareness about you.
 

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Initially, articulating seems to be difficult, and this analysis is an iterative process.

Self Awareness

Self Awareness
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

The first step in improving emotional intelligence at the workplace is self-awareness. Self-awareness is more of knowing self in terms of strengths, limitations, beliefs, values, purpose, passion, and feelings/ emotions at a deeper level.
 Why is Self-awareness required?

When we are aware of ourselves, we choose the right field to play to win and be prepared to improve.

Let me give you some real examples which will bring more understanding about the power of self-awareness in personal and professional growth.

1. One of my known business heads realized that he frequently stuck in a meeting and not able to ask the questions to his team. That is the moment of self-awareness of his limitation. After realizing that, he has been consciously learning the art of questioning in different circumstances.
2. One of my colleagues who was working as a senior manager identified his strength lies in people management than in detailed engineering. That moment of realization made him shift into a general management area and been successful for the last decade.
3. One of my friends recently identified his limitations in dealing with the online webinar format of learning, particularly on listening ability and coping up. Now he is working on improving the listening capability as suggested to him.
4. Personally, when i became aware of my limitations on my writing skill without grammatical errors, now I am using grammatical software to improve the writing quality and still working on it.
 The real problem is not with the strengths or limitations, but not aware of those strengths/ limitations and leading a suboptimal life with suffering self and others.
When you know more about yourselves, it will improve your leadership effectiveness and relationship qualities.

But the strange fact is that most of us think that we know about ourselves very well. That is not TRUE. One of the studies conducted by Carnegie Mellon University researchers among the leaders of many organizations found that only 15 % of the people are aware of themselves very well and remaining either overestimated or underestimated themselves.

When I was working in an organization, as part of the leadership development process, the HR team asked me to rate myself on some of the leadership attributes. Also, they asked my peers and junior colleagues to rate me on the same attributes. To my surprise, in all the attributes, I have rated high about myself than others. That is a blindspot. That is the moment of self-awareness about myself.

We will learn the structured way of knowing ourselves in the coming weeks, and as of now, to get an overview of your judgment about yourself, suggest you take the following action this week.

 

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 quick action on self-awareness 

• Reach out 3 people who are very close to you and know more about you. They can be your partner, colleagues  &  friends.
• Ask them to give feedback on TOP 3 POSITIVE qualities of you and TOP  3 AREAS OF LIMITATIONS of you as they feel.
• Summarise the responses and calibrate yourself on what do you think about yourself and others' feedback are matching or not.

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Pl do not get into justification or defend. Just be aware of yourself.
 Self-awareness is the first step in improving your emotional stability and leadership qualities.

 

Indicators of Low Emotional Intelligence (EI)

Indicators of Low Emotional Intelligence (EI) 
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

How to measure our current emotional intelligence level?  Many agencies in the market are administrating psychometric assessments to measure EI level and it is up to the individual to take it if it is affordable, keen on the quantitative metrics, and the development plan.

Alternatively, let us reflect on some of the habits that we demonstrate on a day to day activities. Those habits will give some ideas about our current capability of managing emotions and the gaps to bridge.

Given below, some of the habits/behaviors in the workplace. If you relate more points with your behavior, then you need to realize that you should work on emotional management aspects.

Some of the indicators of low emotional management skill 
 

1. Accepting to other’s obligation to complete a task by saying YES, then internally feeling bad about ourselves for not saying NO and finding difficulty to complete the task as per commitment and developing internal stress.
2. Getting into arguments for silly issues with colleagues or external people even though they admit the mistake. Just to prove our stand, keep on talking.
3. Criticizing others even though we do not have a direct influence and not relevant to personal, professional, business growth. ( For example, by  criticizing the player’s performance who are actually in the field or criticizing the people who are in the hot seat and no way we connect with them and no way they can hear our voice.)
4. Frequently losing coolness and shouting in high decibels with colleagues, junior colleagues, and at the end of the drama, the purpose is never met!
5. Taking “Impulsive decisions” due to overjoy or anger or frustration which sometimes backfires by way of monetary loss, time loss and the friction in the relationship.
6. Not having the patience to listen to others, interrupting with personal views.
7. Blaming others when things go wrong and not realizing the self’s contribution to the failure
8. Frequently going in a self-sabotaging mode for all the failures without logically analyzing the causes.
9. Not able to focus and prioritize. Keep on changing the priorities or even jobs or business.
10. Not able to look at the issues from other’s perspectives and more self-centered.

You can add the list based on your experience and relate your selves.

We need not regret today’s level of managing emotions effectively as it is the effect of many variables like your values, beliefs, awareness of self and others which we discuss later with counteractions. But awareness is essential for progress.

Moving towards higher-level emotional management is possible with awareness and practice.

Let us discuss more on this aspect.