Our Choice to React or Respond

We are raw. Our emotions are cut to the quick. This new way of working, and even existing, isn’t easy. For some, we have been in our homes, obeying #StayAtHome orders, while juggling working in rooms not originally meant as office spaces, and family members who are used to being apart during the work and school day. Others are essential workers who have just as much juggling – although different. Our children's Summer camps have been cancelled. Many of our cities are being torn apart by injustice and unrest. It is a lot.

 

These raw emotions and how we deal with them, play into our emotional intelligence (EQ). Having high EQ skills takes on new and different meanings than it has in the past. Before the pandemic, you usually had the opportunity to meet face-to-face and in person to discuss matters.  Now, we are meeting on the phone, over video calls, and we are more reliant on shared documents and email.

 

Let’s say that our Self-Awareness, the first tenet of EQ, is pretty high these days. We recognize when we are being short with colleagues or family and we feel it. What are we feeling? We are feeling the emotions that we have left unchecked. Those raw emotions that we may not be dealing with appropriately. This is coming from the second component of emotional intelligence – Self-Regulation, or Self-Management. We are aware, and we are letting the raw emotions take over. I am seeing it more on social media as friends and family members are letting emotions draw an actual divide between them.

We need to stop. Take a breath. Then respond. When we don’t take a breath and we allow ourselves to react – we are allowing the raw emotions to control us. By choosing to stop, breathe and respond, we are in control. Of course, we are ALWAYS in control. We might be giving control to our emotional brain, the limbic brain. The limbic system in our brain houses the amygdala - the oldest part of our brain, which wires us for fight or flight responses. This is a good thing when we are being chased by a bear. It is less effective in achieving a desired outcome with a team member or family member. It shows up as aggressive, or dismissive.

 

You might be saying, I am pretty calm these days and don’t feel a lot of these triggers, but I am sure noticing my team members having shorter fuses with one another. You probably have high Self-Regulation and likely high Social Awareness (the 3rd tenet of EQ) because you are thinking of others and paying attention to others’ cues.

It is a good time to check in with people. Ask how you can help? Maybe we need to push the call back to a 1:10pm start instead of 1:00pm, to make sure everyone can attend. We could conduct one-on-ones that are meant to just talk, or just listen – and not to accomplish a business objective. Having secure social awareness allows for you and your team members to connect or continue the connections you made prior to COVID-19.

 

The final EQ tenet is Relationship Management. Strong relationship management skills show up when you are able to take all of the other three areas of EQ and blend them together to look at the relationship as a whole. While working with a colleague the other day, I could tell she was really struggling. She took something I said, read it as a really big project that would be expensive and sarcastically laughed it off saying she didn't have time or budget to take it on. Initially I was ready to let my own emotions fire back.  I took a breath, realized her emotions were coming from a place of fear of not being able to ramp up the business we had both lost. I calmly explained what I meant in a different way. I reminded her I am a partner and in this project with her. When you have strong Relationship Management skills, you are tapping into your own emotions, reactions and another person's social cues, to manage the current conversation.

 

As your area starts to open back up, possibly clean-up, and new challenges emerge with our local favorites managing the new restrictions, remember to take a pause, take a breath, and look for ways to respond to our emotions and those of others.