How To Deal With Emotionally Charged Situations

As a leader, it is essential for you to have highly developed people skills, especially when it comes to dealing with “emotionally” charged situations.

 

In today’s pressure laden workplace, tension, stress and emotions lie at the heart of virtually every situation. Interactions in the Boardroom and management meetings have become as heated as the Friday night fights. When leaders allow their tempers to flare and their emotions to influence their actions, the outcomes are certain to send a negative ripple surging throughout the organization.

You need only recall former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford barreling over a City Councilor during a city council meeting or the recent Parliament brawls in Turkey, Ukraine and Britain’s House of Commons – To be soberly reminded of the impacts of humanity’s negative potential, even at the highest levels of leadership. When emotions run high, leadership will all too often falter, thereby impacting performance, productivity and morale. 

The circumstance which I am referring to, serves as the basis for what the authors of the NY Times bestseller refer to as “Crucial Conversations”. As you have experienced, crucial conversations occur in personal life and business on a regular basis. These interactions range from conflict resolution, providing constructive criticism, policy and procedure, compensation, task assignments and differences of opinion, to name a few examples.

It is important to understand that there are three specific components that comprise crucial conversations, which consist of:

            ● The “stakes” are high (there is much at risk).

            ● Emotions run high (are emotionally charged).

            ● Opinions differ widely (lack of consensus).

In most situations, as can be readily understood, these crucial conversations and subsequent behaviors don’t usually fare well. Crucial conversations typically have a pronounced negative affect on personal well-being, organizational well-being and that of everyone else involved.

The unfortunate reality is that you find yourself in this type of conversational scenario on a regular basis. The salient question for you to answer as a leader is… “How can I remain in control of my emotions, while diffusing these crucial conversations?

As stressed by the authors of Crucial Conversations, it is necessary to be crystal clear about what is important in each given situation. This can best be accomplished by first determining what is “important” to you as an individual and as a leader. They suggest that you begin this process by answering the following questions:

            ● What do I really want for “myself”?

            ● What do I really want for “others”?

            ● What do I really want for the “relationship”?

After you have honestly arrived at answers for these three questions, take a few more moments to answer this final question:

            ● How would I choose to behave if I really wanted these outcomes?

 

Authentic leaders learn how to use this process to bridle their emotions for the greater good of all parties. Their ability to generate positive responses to these questions, helps them to reframe their attitudes about crucial conversations while taking personal responsibility for how they were initially feeling and reacting. Resultantly, calmer mindsets ensued which provided a more constructive foundation on which to engage the conversation.

A leader’s ability to become better grounded and appropriately focused, ultimately sets a more positive tone for the crucial conversation which thereby assists other participants to also engage with a more positive and expective approach.

The development of right attitudes, self-discipline and effective communication are essential competencies for leaders who want to remain in control of their emotions while handling and diffusing crucial conversations.

As your valued resource partner, we can readily assist your organization, its leadership and your people with the developmental training and processes that will help them to… Learn more… Do more… Become more.

Copyright © 2015 Developing Forward | Thomas H. Swank, CBC

Redefining Your Perspective

What exactly is it that you absolutely must (without fail) do today? An important report? Your presentation for this afternoon’s management meeting? Or perhaps a project deadline?

 

Like yourself, your people are also focusing on the things that they are responsible for, that as well must be completed today. They sweat the deadlines and potential consequences, just as you do, should they not measure up on this given day.

When you were growing up, your parents advised you repeatedly to “do it now”. The companion piece of advice that they also provided was “don’t put off till tomorrow, what you can do today”. More than likely, you have as well passed these words of wisdom along to your own children.

Throughout the years and course of your life, you have been repetitively taught to live and function in the here and now. I have no doubt that at some point one or more of your teachers told you to stop day dreaming, stay in the present and focus on your schoolwork. Moreover, the act of having been singled out in front of your classmates may have served to make you feel rather embarrassed.

The scenarios which have just been described have created a powerful set of habits and feelings that continue to influence your behavior to this very day. As a direct result of these patterns of influence, you and your people have been conditioned to engage in localized thinking and perspective.

Your predominant focus is that of being “short” term (local). In other words, you are primarily focused on what has to done and accomplished today, while being secondarily focused on what must be addressed in the next several days. i.e. Project deadline today… important meeting tomorrow morning… Johnny’s soccer game tomorrow evening and your mom’s surprise birthday party on Saturday.   

Much like your daily work tasks, you can only tackle so many at one time. Given the hectic pace of life and work, you and your people are typically so focused on everything that literally has to happen in the “now”, that it becomes increasingly more difficult to contemplate the “future”.

The inability of people in mass to think long term has become the new normal. This is precisely why according to “Investors Insight” that only 11% of the Baby Boomer generation are financially prepared for retirement. It is also why only 3% of people actually have real goals. In business, many once heralded household names no longer exist in the marketplace because they failed to see the big picture and the need to think long term. They ultimately failed due to their own short sightedness.

What I am attempting to call your attention to is the critical need for you, your people and your organization to shift to what astronaut and Colonel Ron Garan has come to call the “Orbital Perspective”. While logging 71 million miles aboard the International Space Station, he was awe stuck first by the view of earth from space, then secondarily by the fact that he was orbiting the planet below in an amazing feat of engineering that was the result of 15 nationalities successfully collaborating on earth and then in space.

For Colonel Garan, the opportunity to gaze from outer space, brought the earth down to size and diversity into a new perspective… that human beings need to apply the same spirit of collaboration and creativity to their everyday lives and work down here on the planet’s surface.

It is only when we stop to lift our heads, hands and hearts from our immediate tasks that we will be able to envision what opportunities lie in front of us, rather than what rests on our work bench and at our feet. We must first take time to look up, if we are ever going to truly see our potential future.

As Colonel Garan relished his crystal clear vision from space, the longer he observed, the more details of earth came into focus. While you may be earth bound, you can still experience something quite similar. Quite possibly, you have done this years ago and the experience has dimmed a bit over time.

On a clear night well after dark, go to a place where there are no outside lights to distract your vision. The look upward to the stars. Just relax, enjoy the view and be patient with yourself for a while. What you will soon discover is, that the longer you look, the more stars you will see and the brighter they will become. Such is the essence of your future, if you choose to see it.

Afterwards, simply know that this same principle works universally and that it will work for you, just as it did for Colonel Garan. Then adapt an Orbital Perspective to your life, your work, your people and your organization. Start looking up at the “Big Picture”, as well as focusing on a long term view of a new and brighter future. 

As your organization and people cease thinking locally and begin the process of thinking Orbital (globally), your collaborative efforts will lead you to share Colonel Garan’s belief that “There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth, only crewmates.”

For we are all here for the same reason and we all share a common purpose.

As your valued resource partner, we can readily assist your organization, its leadership and your people to… Learn more… Do more… Become more. 

Copyright © 2015 Developing Forward | Thomas H. Swank, CBC

Potential, Pinocchio and Truth

At this point in time and considering how often it has been shown, you have undoubtedly seen the Geico commercial which portrays Pinocchio as a bad motivational speaker.

 

As someone who is a motivational speaker, I would hate to begin my presentation with such a stereotypical cliché. With no pun intended, Pinocchio clearly points out what an abstract expression “potential” really is.

Moreover, the concept of potential is highly interpretive. How do you personally define potential? Is your definition for other people such as your children or those who you lead professionally conform to the same definition that you hold for your own self-potential? How does your organization define potential when it comes to its employees?

As you can see, there is no clear line in the sand when it comes to exactly what potential is. The concept of human potential is subjectively (and often unrealistically) linked to human expectation. This is often typified by employers who exhibit the corporate attitude “what can you do for me today?”. Then, there are overbearing parents who continually pressure their child to become a doctor or lawyer… because that is what the parent wants for the child.

While I can tell you first hand that throughout my life, other people saw my capabilities (potential) long before I did. Unfortunately, many of these people kept harping at me that “I wasn’t working up to my potential”. The problem with this approach was that it didn’t help me in any way to understand what this mystical potential was, let alone help me to utilize it. Rather than making me want to reach higher and work harder, in reality it made me feel inferior while sending a clear message that “I simply didn’t measure up”.

Thank the good Lord above… that He put some other people in my path along the road of life who not only saw my capabilities, they took the time to point them out to me and then proceeded to mentor me in learning how to develop them. While I could elaborate in further detail, those are stories for another day.

What I want to focus on in present time is the need to clarify what potential is. Confucius observed that “The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential… these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.”  

Winston Churchill believed that “Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking your potential”.

While these observations indicate that your will coupled with your continuous effort will help you discover what your potential is -- I have come to comprehend and to teach that your actual potential is simply your “capacity and need to do something better”. 

The reality is that every individual and every organization have the ability to better utilize their talents, abilities, skills, resources and assets to improve some aspect of their everyday performance.

Therefore, you, your people and your organization are already equipped (have the capacity) to make significant improvements (do something better) in actual performance. What remains for individuals and organizations to determine is where is it that you specifically “need” to improve.

What is the most important thing (top priority) that you need to change or improve? What skills and abilities do your people have that your organization needs that to help them use more often, more effectively and more successfully?

When you view the issue of potential from this perspective, there is far more clarity about what your potential is (what are you capable of doing better), where your potential lies (what skills, talents & abilities are on board and already available) and how to harness such potential (what is your most important need).

Making improvements to individual and organization performance along with identifying and tapping into your potential is a “process”.

As your valued resource partner, we can readily assist your organization, its leadership and your people with the processes that will enable them to… Learn more… Do more… Become more.

Copyright © 2015 Developing Forward | Thomas H. Swank, CBC