At this point, everybody knows emotional intelligence matters in the workplace. Yet there are two aspects of emotions that make it hard for people to exercise their emotional intelligence. First, most people are still not completely clear about what emotions actually are. Second, even when we understand emotions conceptually, it can still be hard to deal with our own emotional states.
To tackle the first problem: emotions are interpretations of feelings. While in everyday speech, “emotion” and “feeling” are often used interchangeably, psychologists distinguish between them.
The feelings you have (what psychologists call affect) emerge from your motivational system. You generally feel good when you are succeeding at your goals and bad when you are not. The more deeply your motivational system is engaged with a situation, the stronger your feelings.
The motivational system, however, is not that well connected to the brain regions that help you to tell stories about the world. In order to make sense of what you’re feeling, you use information about what’s going on in the world to help you translate those feelings into emotions – emotions help to guide your actions by giving you explicit feedback on how well you are currently achieving the goals the motivational system has engaged.
Often, that interpretation is easy. If you are crossing the street and suddenly have to leap out of the way of an oncoming car, it is clear that the strong negative feeling you are having is fear from nearly getting hit by the car. If a colleague compliments you on a job well done, it is obvious that the positive feeling you are having is pride.
But things are not always so clear. You might have a bad interaction with a family member before getting to work. As the day wears on, you may interpret your negative feelings as a frustration for the project you’re working on rather than lingering negative affect from the events of the morning.
Many people try to power through their negative feelings rather than attempting to understand them. But this is a lost opportunity. Emotions provide valuable information about the state of your motivational system. Ignoring them is like driving around lost, not only refusing to ask for directions, but refusing to consult the map or the GPS, or even to look out the windshield. You will still be moving forward, but who knows where you will end up. Conversely, paying too much attention to your feelings is also bad. That’s like staring at your road atlas without ever turning on the car: you can’t get anywhere that way.
When you have negative feelings, slow down and pay some attention to what you are feeling and to help you understand why you are feeling the way you are.
When you find yourself stressed, anxious, or angry, take five or 10 minutes for yourself during the day. Sit alone and breathe deeply. The deep breaths help to take some of the energy or arousal out of the feelings you are having. That can help you to think more clearly.
Then, start to think about some of the events of your day. Pay attention to how those thoughts influence what you are feeling. Are there particular events that increase or decrease the intensity of those feelings?
You may not completely understand the source of your feelings the first time you do this. Over time, you will become more adept at paying attention to when and where you start to feel bad.
Of course, once you have figured out what is bothering you, it is time to plan a course of action. If you keep thinking about things that bother you, you run the risk of solving nothing, while getting yourself more upset. Instead, use your knowledge about the source of the bad feeling to figuring out how to deal with it.
Finally, if you are really upset about something, hold off on actually executing your plan until you have given yourself a chance to calm down. Responses that seemed like a good idea in the moment may seem less ideal with a cooler head.
Being willing to understand your feelings will have two benefits in the long-term.
First, it will help you to discover some of the aspects of your life that trigger negative feelings. That is useful, because you don’t want to misinterpret your negative feelings and attribute them to something else. For example, you would like to be in a situation in which you can recognize when events in your personal life are spilling over into work and are causing you to feel badly about the work you do.
Second, by understanding the sources of your own emotions, you will become more expert in understanding the people around you as well. We often ignore our own feelings, and then also ignore those of our colleagues.
Once you can better understand what emotions are, and where your own emotions come from, you’ll have a much better ability to practice emotional intelligence.