Coach and Grow with V

Managing Your Emotions at Work

• Virginie de Malavois • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Welcome to the "Coach and Grow with V" podcast, where we empower professionals to excel in their careers. In this episode, we delve into the crucial topic of Emotion Management at Work.

Drawing from years of intensive study and practical experience, V explores the intricacies of understanding and navigating emotions in professional settings. Discover the underlying dynamics of emotional responses and why mastering them is pivotal for success in your career.

Join us as we uncover strategies to effectively manage and express emotions, fostering a positive and productive work environment. Gain invaluable insights into enhancing emotional intelligence and strengthening interpersonal relationships in the workplace.

Whether you're a seasoned leader or an aspiring professional, this episode equips you with the tools to cultivate emotional resilience and thrive in any work scenario.

Tune in now and unlock the secrets to mastering Emotion Management at Work with V.

Let's elevate our professional journey together.

References:
Finnish research team reveals how emotions are mapped in the body:
https://www.aalto.fi/en/news/finnish-research-team-reveals-how-emotions-are-mapped-in-the-body

Authentic Living: Embrace Your True Power:
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/coach-and-grow-with-v/id1698183388?i=1000641883426


Welcome everyone to another empowering episode of "Coach & Grow with V"! I'm your host, V, and I'm thrilled to dive deep into a topic that is close to my heart: emotion management at work.

A few years ago, while I was in the C-Suite of a global company, I experienced one of the worst moments in my professional career. I fell into big tears in front of the leadership committee.

The meeting started well. We rented a nice boardroom to be away from the office and find more creativity there. We were ready to tackle the day and discuss the upcoming year's strategy, budget, roadmap, and so on. 

The night before, I did not sleep well at all for no particular reason. So I started the day with a lack of sleep (which I later realized was one of the reasons I reacted that way).

I was in an okay mood, not in my usual ‘we gonna nail it’ type of mood, which is characteristic of my personality. I am always the most optimistic person in the room. Optimistic and also realistic.

The meeting started, and within the first few minutes, I knew that something wrong would happen to me. It was just a feeling at the beginning. I was sitting in the back seat (which again is not like me), listening to what the others had to say, and out of nowhere, I felt that my entire body was reacting to a mundane comment from one of my colleagues. I felt that the tears were growing from my stomach to my eyes, and boom, I fell into tears.

I was so ashamed that I left the room, went to the bathroom, and could not stop crying.

That particular day has been on my mind for quite some time. What happened to me? Me - usually the strongest, fearless person in the room. No, no, there is something wrong.

Months and years have passed, but I kept that somewhere in my brain, as I needed to understand what happened.

I have spent the last few years studying and analyzing my own emotions and others. Why do I feel a certain way in a particular circumstance? What triggers my emotional reactions? How can I prevent others from feeling uncomfortable at work?

In this episode, we will discover what emotions are and the typical responses to them. We'll explore why it's important to manage your emotions at work, along with some tips for expressing and embracing them.

Let’s dive in. 

1- What emotions are?

Whether or not, you're consciously aware of it, there is always a physical feeling associated with an emotional feeling. There was a research study done in Finland in 2014 that showed the most common emotions trigger strong bodily sensations in a pattern that is consistent across culture, gender, and age. 

In the study, 700 men and women of all ages from Europe and Asia were shown videos that were meant to elicit strong emotional responses. And then they were shown pictures of human bodies on a computer and asked to color the parts of the body, where they felt activity increasing or decreasing. In the image, there were 4 colors: blue, yellow, orange, red, and black. You will find the link to the study at the bottom of the episode information.

The blues represent decreased activity and yellow, orange, and red indicate increased activity. Black represents the places that felt neutral.

The takeaway is that an emotion is a physical sensation, that your mind interprets as a feeling. This physical reaction is linked to your nervous system and the stress response. 


You are probably familiar with the ‘fight, flight, and freeze’ theory. The fight, flight, or freeze response is how the body responds to perceived threats. It is involuntary and involves several physiological changes that help someone prepare to: fight or take action to eliminate the danger. flee, which involves escaping the danger. freeze, which involves becoming immobile.


It's important to understand that your emotions are linked to your body and your nervous system. And that's important for two reasons. 

  • First, you to know that the wiring between your body and the part of your brain that is associated with the stress response is involuntary. You aren't weak or sensitive, you’re just human. 
  • And second, understanding emotions in this embodied way allows you to bring awareness to these involuntary processes and be able to regulate your nervous system and emotions, so you don't feel so out of control. 

So think of an emotion as a physical sensation influenced by your nervous system, that your brain interprets as a feeling. There's no stigma, just wiring. 

Now you understand why we should talk about regulating our emotions rather than managing them. Emotional regulation is about having a choice over what emotions you have, when, and how you express them.

Let’s dive into the second part of our episode, what are the typical responses to our emotions?

2- What are the typical responses to our emotions?

Have you ever been in a situation where your coworker is slacking off on yet another team project? And before you know it, steam is coming out of your ears and you're saying something harsh you wish you hadn't said. I know, it is imaginative, but I am sure you have a similar situation in mind.

The last place we want to be emotional is at work, right? But it happens all the time. When emotions come up, most of us either ignore them or get overwhelmed by them. Sound familiar? So let's say today you receive feedback from your manager that the presentation you gave wasn't well-received by the client. As you listen to her, you notice that you have an unwanted feeling. Maybe you're embarrassed, scared, or just uncomfortable, but you're not sure why. 

When unwanted feelings like this appear, most people tend to ignore them in one of four ways, a concept named 'the four Fs' by author and coach Jay Fields. Let's unpack them. 

  • So the first F is to Figure it out. If I can figure out why I'm feeling the way I'm feeling, then I can make the feeling go away. With this reaction, you start perseverating and analyzing the situation on what went wrong. And that might sound good for improving your work, nevertheless, it won't calm your emotions, and if you're stuck in your emotional response, you'll be more focused on how not to feel whatever you're feeling and less capable of creative and adaptive thinking. 
  • The second F is Fix it. This is about changing something in your external environment to avoid feeling. Let's say you feel insecure about your relationship with your client after the presentation, and you ask your manager to take you off the account. It's like you're thinking, "Well, if I can change this external scenario "that's causing me to feel insecure, "then I won't have to feel that way." 
  • The third F is Fool yourself. If I can't Figure it out, or I can't Fix it, then I'm going to pretend that whatever the thing is that's bothering me doesn't bother me. For example, if you felt shame or embarrassment when your manager told you about that presentation not going well, fooling yourself would be thinking, "Whatever, they don't know what they're talking about," or, "I don't care about that project anyway." Because it seems like there's no time to have the feeling or it's not the right place to have the feeling, you talk yourself out of having the feeling and you just put your head down and get back to work. 

These first three responses are all ways of ignoring the feeling, which is to say, you are disconnecting from yourself. 

A different way to think of this is you're having a feeling that is a heart and a body experience, and you're trying to come at it from your mind to Figure it out, to Fix it, or to Fool yourself entirely that it's not happening. There's a disconnect there. 

  • The final F is Flip your lid. When you Flip your lid, the emotion takes over entirely. Rather than you pushing the emotion away, the emotion pushes you off your center. You get the feedback, and tears start to well up. You can't seem to keep it together or say something coherent in response, or maybe you find yourself running to the bathroom to burst into tears. This is exactly what I experienced a few years ago. 

None of these typical responses help you to feel effective and competent at your job. I invite you to consider then what you typically do when an emotion shows up at work. Does your response change depending on what the emotion is? Take time to consider this, because knowing your current relationship with emotions helps you to discern how to better manage them in the future.

Let’s move on the the third part of today’s episode. Why is it important to manage your emotions at work?

3- Why is it important to manage your emotions at work?

Now more than ever, we're being encouraged to be our real selves at work, to not be split into a home self and a work self. Being your true self, being who you are, being authentic. If you want to learn more about it, you can listen to the episode Authentic Living: Embrace Your True Power. You will find the link to the study at the bottom of the episode information.

Being our real selves at work is great because it's an invitation to be a human being, which means we'll be better able to authentically connect. 

But, I also recognize that it's challenging, in that, showing up as our real self means that we also have to acknowledge that our emotions show up with us. And look, there's nothing inherently wrong about an emotion. It's just that we don't have much skill in navigating how to be with them, especially at work, and especially when it's in a charged situation, and especially when some sort of crisis appears, that you never thought would have come up. 

Most companies don’t realize how central emotions are to building the right culture. They tend to focus on cognitive culture: the shared intellectual values, norms, and assumptions that set the overall tone for how employees think and behave at work. Though that’s incredibly important, Harvard Business Review research shows that it’s only part of the story. The other critical part is emotional culture, which governs which feelings people have and express at work.

If you think about it for a few seconds, we are privileged to be able to express ourselves the way we are, to show up the way we are. Not long ago, people and companies had a different mindset where everybody should wear the same type of clothes, and hide their feelings so as not to be seen as weak or useless. Let’s embrace our emotions!

Last but not least, in part 4 of our episode, I will share some tips for expressing and embracing your emotions.  

4- Some tips for expressing and embracing your emotions.

A couple of years ago, I was slated to animate a conference just days after a family tragedy that had left me grieving. I got on stage and I welcomed everyone. And I said, "I'm really happy to be here with you and I want you to know I'm grieving a loss, and I'm telling you because I know that I'm wearing my grief as a tenderness, that I'm sure you can see, and I might even tear up at times for no apparent reason. I don't need anything from you, I just didn't want it to be distracting, and then I went on with my presentation. 

Years later, I still receive comments from people who were there on that day. Not out of concern for how I was doing, but out of gratitude for being transparent in a way that didn't feel sticky. And that let them in on what was true for me so that we could stay connected through our time together. 

It was a real learning moment for me, about how to appropriately share emotions at work. 

Whether or not you should share emotions depends. 

  • If you're sharing your emotions because you want your coworker or your client to reassure or validate your feelings, I wouldn't recommend it. 
  • If you're sharing because you're trying to create trust and a genuine connection, I would. 

How do you know the difference? If it feels like you're off your center and you need your coworker to help make it better, or you're venting and saying something like, "Oh, you wouldn't believe what happened." You're probably asking them to reassure and validate you, and it can be lovely to share your feelings and have a coworker make it so you don't feel so alone, but that's not their job, it's yours. When you look to coworkers or clients to take care of your feelings, things get messy boundaries get blurred, and emotions end up getting a bad rap. 

We've all worked with a toxic person, the grump who brings you down, the short-tempered person who lashes out, or someone who is emotionally all over the place, and you never know what you're going to get. Working with other people's emotions can affect your ability to be effective at your job as much as trying to manage your own emotions can. Do you have a colleague or client who keeps on doing that, and it annoys you? I have so many names in mind!

On the other hand, if you're aware that you're feeling something that might be making you off your game, or cause you to show up in a way that people aren't used to experiencing you. Then it would be useful to let people in on what's going on for you. That doesn't mean that you should share the story behind it all, just share your experience. 

In the example of me on the stage, I didn't mention one word about what I was grieving. I was simply transparent about how my feelings were influencing my embodied experience and my behavior. 

So the next time you find yourself wanting to vent or share your emotions at work, pause and check in with yourself. Are you off your center and needing something from the person you want to share with, or are you present to and managing your own experience, and just wanting to be transparent so you can create an honest connection? There's a really big difference between the two and how people will experience you.

If I had followed those tips, I would never have gone to the bathroom in the first place, and no tears would have burst.

Wrap up

Though you now have information and practices that can help you effectively manage your emotions, please be patient with yourself. Don't expect that overnight you'll be able to manage your emotions, especially the bigger or more difficult ones. But what you can do overnight is commit to putting this information in these practices into play. 

Commit to trying to stay with yourself when your emotions get uncomfortable.

I'll leave you with one last thought. You know, all this talk about practice and regulating and emotional intelligence, at the end of the day, it's simply about having a relationship with yourself. It's about paying attention to your own experience, and about growing trust that you can be empathic to yourself and make yourself feel better.

 If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to leave a review and share it with your fellow truth-seekers. Your support means the world and helps us spread the message of authenticity far and wide.

Until next time, keep growing, keep shining, and keep being authentically you. Have a wonderful day!