Wisdom in the Workplace: Developing Emotional Intelligence to achieve Personal Mastery

By: C. Sam Smith, Editor, Axxess News and Updates


(Dallas, TX, June, 2012)  How can an awareness of brain chemistry enable us to be productive team members? We can begin to understand how to become more focused on natural impulse-responses to negative workplace events. This will enable us to respond with more appropriate responses to reduce conflict in our day-to-day work environment. The end result is the cultivation of “Emotional Intelligence”, which is defined as the ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups.
This topic is of critical importance as we seek to develop the Learning Organization culture in our workplace environments.
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author and psychological researcher Dr. Daniel Goleman, in his 2011 book, “The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights”  has outlined the way to one of the critical outcomes of the Learning Organization, Personal Mastery, by highlighting the stimuli which cause us to enter into a “fight-flight-or-freeze” response triggered by our natural brain chemistry.  Goleman calls these events “emotional triggers” causing an unnaturally severe response because of the way these events can trigger the “fight-flight-or-freeze” reaction. Our internally produced stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline—kick into gear when our brains perceive a “threat”. Most of the time--there’s a big problem with all this: our brain often makes mistakes.  Particularly these mistakes occur in modern workplace life, where the “dangers” are symbolic, not physical threats. So we overreact in ways we often regret later.

Is there a practical methodology for avoiding workplace misunderstanding and conflict?
What causes our overreactions? Goleman outlines symbolic workplace occurrences which our brain perceives as threats—that cause us to get an emotional hijack overload.

Here are the 5 top “emotional triggers” in the workplace: 

1. Condescension and lack of respect. 
2. Being treated unfairly. 
3. Being unappreciated. 
4. Feeling that you're not being listened to or heard. 
5. Being held to unrealistic deadlines.

We all can very easily relate to these issues as having the capacity to cause our egos to rise up and want to defend ourselves. All but the most emotionally intelligent of us will naturally defensively react to these stimuli.
Goleman states that in an economic atmosphere with great uncertainty (like the current state of home health agency operations) there’s lots of “free-floating fear” in the air. Many people fear for their jobs, for their family’s financial security, and all the other problems that a bad economy brings. And this anxiety causes hijacks in workers who have to do more with less. So in such a climate there are many people operating day-to-day in what amounts to a chronic, low-grade “emotional hijack”.
It behooves us to become more educated regarding the chemical brain functions. This knowledge enables us to become more aware of our own reactions.
If these emotional hijacks are part of our workplace existence, then, in order to truly become emotionally intelligent, how can we minimize these hijacks?
• First of all, we must pay attention. 

• It’s better to realize what’s going on and disengage from the potential emotional trap into which you’ve realized you could be heading!
• This requires some practice but, start with monitoring what’s going on in your own mind and brain, and noticing, “I'm really over-reacting,” or “I'm really upset now,” or “I’m starting to get upset.” 

• Notice familiar feelings.

• It’s much better if you can notice familiar feelings that a hijack is beginning – like butterflies in your stomach, or a flushed face--whatever signals that might reveal you're about to have an episode. It’s easier to short-circuit it the earlier you are in the cycle of the hijack. Best is to head it off at the bare beginning.

What can you do if you are caught in the grip of an emotional hijack? 

• First, you have to realize you're in it at all. Hijacks can last for seconds or minutes or hours or days or weeks. 
• For some people it may seem their “normal” – people who have gotten used to always being angry or always being fearful. 

 But we’re talking about normal here.
There are lots of ways to get out of a hijack if we first can realize we’re caught, and also have the intention to cool down.

• One is a cognitive approach: "Talk yourself out of” the hijack. Reason with yourself, and challenge what you are telling yourself in the hijack –“This guy isn't always an S.O.B. I can remember times when he was actually very thoughtful and even kind, and maybe I should give him another chance”. 
• Apply some empathy, and imagine yourself in that person’s position. This might work in those very common instances where the hijack trigger was something someone else did or said to us. You might have an empathic thought: “Maybe he treated me that way because he is under such great pressure”. 
• Another is a biological approach…like meditation or relaxation to calm down our body.
•  My mother used to suggest that I count to ten before I responded to an offensive remark.
•  This is a very simplified kind of relaxation or meditation technique.
•  Practice makes perfect. Unless these methods have become a strong habit of the mind, you can't just invoke them out of the blue. But a strong habit of calming the body with a well-practiced method can make a huge difference when you're emotionally hijacked and need it the most.

Understanding and working through these “emotional hijacks” are important considerations as we seek to consider becoming more emotionally intelligent in the workplace…and that is a goal to which all effective agency managers and staffers can aspire. 


Remember, becoming emotionally intelligent is the only way to achieve true Personal Mastery, a worthy goal of all home health professionals.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Goleman, Daniel (2011-04-12). "The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights", pp.297-304. More Than Sound LLC.