Managing Negative Emotions on the Job

In this helpful Harvard Business Review article, Susan David (Harvard University) and Christina Congleton (Evidence Based Psychology) describe how leaders can most effectively manage negative thoughts and emotions. The conventional wisdom holds that leaders should be cheerful and confident and suppress negativity. “But that goes against basic biology,” say David and Congleton. “All healthy human beings have an inner stream of thoughts and feelings that include… anxiety about priorities, jealousy of others’ success, fear of rejection, distress over perceived slights… That’s just our minds doing the job they were designed to do: trying to anticipate and solve problems and avoid potential pitfalls.” 

Problems arise when leaders do one of two things: buy into their negative thoughts or deny them. Neither of these strategies works, but some people keep using them. An example of the first: Cynthia has a high-powered job and two young children. One nagging voice in her head berates her for not being better at her work; another voice tells her to stop neglecting her family. “Cynthia wished that at least one of the voices would shut up,” say the authors. “But neither would, and in response she failed to put up her hand for exciting new prospects at her office and compulsively checked messages on her phone during family dinners.” 

An example of the second: Jeffrey is a rising star in his office, but he’s often angry at bosses who disregard his ideas, subordinates who don’t follow orders, and colleagues who aren’t pulling their weight. He’s lost his temper a couple of times, but mostly he bottles up his anger, which makes him even more upset.

There’s a better way to deal with negative emotions, say David and Congleton – a way that alleviates stress, reduces errors, boosts innovation, and improves job performance. They call it emotional agility:

• Recognize a pattern. Have you been hooked by unproductive thoughts and feelings? A sure sign of this is rigid and repetitive thinking, like Cynthia’s broken record of self-recrimination. “You have to realize that you’re stuck before you can initiate change,” say David and Congleton.

• Step back and label your thoughts and emotions. The thought, My coworker is wrong – he makes me so angry becomes I’m having the thought that my coworker is wrong, and I’m feeling anger. “Labeling allows you to see your thoughts and feelings for what they are,” say the authors: “transient sources of data that may or may not prove helpful… As Cynthia started to slow down and label her thoughts, the criticisms that had once pressed in on her like a dense fog became more like clouds passing through a blue sky.” 

• Accept them. Take ten deep breaths and open up to the feelings: pay attention, let yourself experience them, and examine the reality of the situation. “When Jeffrey acknowledged and made room for his feelings of frustration and anger rather than rejecting them, quashing them, or taking them out on others, he began to notice their energetic quality,” say David and Congleton. “They were a signal that something important was at stake and that he needed to take productive action… The more Jeffrey accepted his anger and brought his curiosity to it, the more it seemed to support rather than undermine his leadership.” 

• Act on your values. Once you’ve stepped back and gotten unhooked from negative thoughts, you can act in ways that align with your core values. “Are you taking a step toward being the leader you most want to be and living the life you most want to live?” ask David and Congleton. “Is your response going to serve you and your organization in the long term as well as the short term?” 

In a sidebar to the article, the authors provide a list of core values developed by Miller, Baca, Matthew, and Wilbourne at the University of New Mexico. David and Congleton suggest scanning the list to identify the values that resonate with you in a challenging situation: Accuracy, achievement, adventure, authority, autonomy, caring, challenge, change, comfort, compassion, contribution, cooperation, courtesy, creativity, dependability, duty, family, forgiveness, friendship, fun, generosity, genuineness, growth, health, helpfulness, honesty, humility, humor, justice, knowledge, leisure, mastery, moderation, nonconformity, openness, order, passion, popularity, power, purpose, rationality, realism, responsibility, risk, safety, self-knowledge, service, simplicity, stability, tolerance, tradition, wealth.

“Emotional Agility: How Effective Leaders Manage Their Negative Thoughts and Feelings” by Susan David and Christina Congleton in Harvard Business Review, November 2013 (Vol. 91, #11, p. 125-128), no e-link available

From the Marshall Memo #507