4 Steps for in-the-moment Emotional Agility
What to do when you’re stuck in a negative emotion and you need to bring forth more of your best.
I created this tool for leaders to have go-to questions that help to better deal with the world as it is, rather than getting stuck in how we wish it were different. Here’s your cheat-sheet and below are instructions.
These 4 steps help us to know if we need to deal with an emotion in a more agile way.
Pause and notice. Understand that emotions are data, not directives. But first you have to notice the feeling for what it is and label it. For example, feeling anxiety usually means we’re feeling uncertainty about the future. Feeling sadness may mean we’re dealing with unmet expectations. Feeling anger gives us data that we may be experiencing injustice.
Emotionally agile leaders still feel negative emotions, but they push further to link emotions to desired behaviors in order to achieve more of the impact they want.
Ask: I may be right, but is my response to this emotion serving me, my team, my organization? Sometimes just asking, “Is this helping or harming?” is enough to know that a different response is needed. This question gives you space to consider how your emotions are helping you (or not) to have wellbeing and be in good relationship to others.
Ask: Is what I’m doing workable in the long-run? Oftentimes we’re taking a short cut rather than dealing with an issue head on. For instance, maybe you’re avoiding a tough conversation at the expense of addressing an enduring issue or you’re binging on Netflix rather than giving yourself permission to feel what’s really going.
Ask: What’s most important right now? If you know your goal for that upcoming high-stakes meeting or awkward conversation then you’re better able to direct your emotions towards a more meaningful outcome. You’ll be more purposeful and wise about how to make your emotions work for you.
Ultimately, emotional agility is the practice of opening up to the usefulness of how emotions move yourself and others forward with greater motivation and togetherness.
