Mariya Arshaluysyan is a certified leadership coach for female managers. Mariya's professional journey in leadership started over 15 years ago when she decided to pursue a PhD. When Mariya was appointed to her first managerial role as a Head of a Training and Consulting Center while a University lecturer she realized that leadership is a transformation process that cannot happen in a classroom.
You must have heard many times that emotional Intelligence accounts for around 90% of what sets exceptional leaders apart. This is thrilling to know – it gives you some certainty about what to focus on in your leadership development journey.
However, this may also stress you out, because building emotional intelligence may seem like a long, overwhelming journey.
It requires building personal and social competence and embodies 4 areas:
Self-awareness
Social awareness
Self-management
Relationship management
As popular as Emotional Intelligence may sound, interestingly enough, according to the statistics, only 36% of people can identify their emotions.
This number does not look very promising, but let’s be honest, no one was taught in school how to handle emotions.
We had to deal with emotions as we went through life, by relying on our personal traits and by picking up “bits and pieces” along the way, from our family, environment, and cultural landscape.
Yet, there is some good news.
Even though women and men handle emotions differently, according to Daniel Goleman – women are more empathetic, and men are more confident when dealing with disempowering emotions, among leaders in the top 10% of performance, both men and women are equally emotionally intelligent.
The reason is it takes a lot of habit-building to get to the top 10%.
So, it is possible to build emotional intelligence, regardless of gender. No more excuses!
Remember, learning to deal with emotions confidently can become your superpower in the increasingly uncertain world we are living in today.
Firstly, it will help you take control of your emotional regulation and reasoning ability when dealing with challenges.
Secondly, it will help you avoid decisions made in an emotional state.
Thirdly, it will help you regulate your team’s emotional states in the right way and keep them engaged.
Fourthly, it will develop your creativity and make you more resourceful. According to the social psychologist and the author of the "Broaden and Build Theory" - Barbara Fredrickson, when we maintain positive states, our mind opens up to new possibilities and ideas and finds better solutions.
The purpose of this article is to provide you with specific insights and tools that will lay the foundation for developing your emotional intelligence and will set you up for leadership success.
The emotional journey of a first-time manager
As a manager, you will most frequently face these two types of challenges:
Dealing with your own emotions – you want to be in your best shape and bring consistent results.
Dealing with the emotions of your team – you want to keep your team in their best shape, motivated, and engaged enough to help you bring consistent results.
The importance of managing your own emotions
You see the emotional journey of first-time managers is not that straightforward.
It looks more or less like this:
Excitement for the promotion -> Enthusiasm around the role and new responsibilities -> Pressure of increasing expectations -> Surprise accompanied by stress due to the amount of effort needed to build trust and navigate expectations of the team and the senior leadership -> Anxiety or frustration for increasing expectations -> Overwhelm with the high workload -> Self-doubt and reduced confidence -> Stress/Analysis Paralysis ->Fear of things going wrong-> Lack of focus -> Self-doubt -> Worse quality of decisions
Note, I didn’t even include situations like lack of alignment with the senior leadership, value conflict/detachment from work, lack of trust within the team, or challenges in building authority.
This rather overwhelming emotional journey requires assistance. However, this fact is being rather underestimated by new managers as well as organizations.
Getting support from the very beginning will entirely shift the emotional journey and the performance outcomes for leaders, their teams, and organizations.
The importance of managing the emotions of your team
This is a common struggle for new managers, and I used to be one of them.
I remember the first time I had to deal with a frustrated team member, I was frozen. It was my automatic reaction to that type of “shock”.
Yes, I was shocked. My entire life, I had thought that showing emotions at work was neither professional nor appropriate.
There I was in a situation where on the one hand I didn’t want to judge a person for showing emotions and on the other hand I had to deal with the situation in a way that my team member would feel supported rather than demoralized or disempowered.
You see, the problem is it was not just me who didn’t know what to do.
Many new and not only new (!) managers feel lost when they see their team in disempowering emotional states (in tears, frustration, anger, anxiety, etc.).
The most common reaction I see is “We can take it later” meaning “We can take it when you calm down”.
Unfortunately, this “avoidance” reaction kicks in not because they are indifferent to other’s challenges, but because they do not know how to deal with emotions whatsoever.
Remember, only 36% of people know how to even name their emotions?
Below we are going to discuss tools and strategies to help you manage your and others emotions more confidently.
How to manage emotions more confidently
You see it becomes much easier to build your emotional muscle if you start understanding the nature of emotions.
Let’s take the most common ones described above in the emotional journey map of a new manager.
Stress. There is no such emotion as stress per se. According to Dr. Paul Ekman, stress is over-arousal of our emotional experience.
We experience stress when demands that come at us exceed the resources we have. For example, when we have limited time and a lot of work to deal with.
Once you know this, you can manage the levels of stress in different ways:
Map out everything you have control over (in your life and work) and can impact by investing your time and energy. This will help you be aware of unnecessary activities/discussions that steal your time.
Negotiate expectations with your stakeholders based on the priorities for the organization.
Prioritize where you should invest your and your team’s time and energy. Which project? Which meeting? Which deliverables?
Set boundaries around your availability by blocking your calendar at certain hours so you don’t get “pulled out” from work and distracted.
Anxiety. We feel anxious when we are uncertain about the future or the future outcomes of our efforts. It is not a signal that something bad is going to happen.
Once you know this, it helps you realize that anxiety is a natural part of your experience in the VUCA world and over time you stop focusing on it.
Fear. Fear kicks in when we are about to do something we have never done before. It turns on our survival mechanism and starts exaggerating the reality because our mind thinks we are going to be eaten by dinosaurs. It tries to protect us from stepping out of what is normal for us (our comfort zone). It also tries to save our energy.
Once you know this, the best thing you can do is ask yourself: “What is the worst thing that can happen if things go wrong?”.
Confidence. Confidence is not an emotion. It is a muscle, I would say. You build it over time, by taking actions and building the evidence of your capabilities in doing certain things.
Lack of confidence and self-doubt (in this case, imposter syndrome) is normal in your new managerial role because you have never done it before and don’t have the evidence that can prove your capabilities.
Confidence comes from knowing. Do you think you will start dealing with emotions more confidently once you have read this article and raised your awareness of emotions?
You bet!
5 truths about emotions which will uplevel your leadership career and life
1. It is ok to feel
You see emotions are a natural part of human experience. By embracing this fact, instead of denying it, you will be able to build self-compassion and empathy to support your team at a whole different level.
Emotions last 90 seconds, so just take a break and let them flow.
Needless to say, given our psychological setup, when you are triggered by something and your emotional part of the brain is activated (the amygdala in the limbic system) you are not able to think at all. The prefrontal cortex (thinking brain) simply shuts down by shutting down your reasoning ability.
2. You are not your emotions
It is normal for certain emotions to become a part of your identity if you keep experiencing them over and over again. It is not your fault though. It is just a trap you need to be aware of. You see when you experience the same emotion regularly, your body remembers it and starts kicking in the same emotion as an automatic response reaction to any situation. This makes you feel that you are that person, by default.
However, remember, you are not your emotions. By now means.
You are not an angry woman because you get angry often. You are a woman who experiences anger, frequently.
When you are hungry, you don’t judge yourself and say I am a hungry person. You understand that hunger is a natural physiological need that needs to be fulfilled.
Thinking of the emotions the same way will help you respond to situations differently.
Remember, your identity dictates your actions, and your actions lead to certain outcomes. When you accept yourself to be an angry person, your mind will automatically set up to behave like an angry person in any situation. You will then have more evidence of being an angry person. This trap is called a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Understanding this can help you break the loop and start looking at emotions not as a part of your personal identity, but as a natural attribute of a human experience.
As a manager, this will help you become less judgmental towards your team’s emotional breakdowns. It will also help you separate people from their emotions and behaviors.
3. Emotions are signals
Emotions are signals that something is not right and needs to be processed and addressed. Moreover, emotions are like a crying child that requires immediate attention, and you want to remember this.
Because what we usually do is the opposite.
We suppress emotions.
We neglect emotions.
We ran away from the emotions by distracting ourselves with something – usually, food, shopping, gambling, etc.
When we feel the “signals” but can’t quite explain what they indicate, we just keep ignoring them.
What we don’t know is when we ignore our emotions in the hope of dismissing them, they don’t disappear. They get stored in our bodies and keep “growing”. Then one day we collapse – not only spiritually and mentally, but also physically.
A laboratory study showed that negative emotions produce acid that destroys your cells over time by causing various diseases.
It is important that you pay attention to these “signals” in your managerial role. Sometimes it will be your gut feeling and you want to trust it and explore.
For example, one of the unexplained feelings I had in my managerial journey, was the strange sense of “misalignment”. Well, there is no such emotion as misalignment. But it was a circumstance that was triggering some sort of unease within me. When I was trying to “analyze” the reason for that feeling, scrolling in my head my decisions and actions, I would not find anything wrong, but I kept having the feeling that something was missing or was not okay.
After exploring the feeling for a while I realized I was having a value conflict. The decision that was made, was right from the company’s point of view, but it was against one of my values – transparency.
4. Emotions emerge out of unfulfilled needs
We humans have universal needs, regardless of our gender, nationality, and cultural background. In different periods of our life, we prioritize different needs. For a child, the need for love and safety are the most dominant needs. As a parent, the need for certainty gets a higher priority. As an employee, you need autonomy, connection, and appreciation. As a manager, you may need recognition.
When we get into an emotional state, it means we have a need that was not met at a particular moment. For example, next time when you deal with a frustrated team member who constantly has to deal with an increasing amount of workload, their need for certainty has not been met. Or perhaps it is the need for love and connection with the family that was compromised due to long working hours. Chances are they don’t even realize their exact unfulfilled need.
Therefore make sure to listen for needs when dealing with the emotions of other people. This will help you provide them with the right support.
5. You are the one responsible for your emotions.
It is a common misconception to think that someone else or something else is responsible for your emotions. This is how we tend to think; if they hadn't done that to me, I wouldn't feel this way. It's their fault. If the printer hadn't broken at the wrong time, I wouldn't be so upset.
This is another trap.
Emotions are not caused by other people’s behavior or circumstances.
Emotions are caused by the meaning we give to those behaviors or circumstances.
If someone is late for a meeting, I will feel irritated if the meaning I give to this situation is that they don’t respect my time. If I chose to think that something might have gone wrong otherwise they would have warned me of being late, I would feel worried rather than irritated.
Below are two types of exercises to help you manage your and other’s emotions.
Exercise 1. Here is what you can do for yourself when you are in a disempowering emotional state:
a. Go to a quiet place.
b. Regulate your breath.
c. Observe your emotion and name it: Anger? Sadness? There is a dominant emotion you are looking for.
d. Where do you feel it in your body (head, stomach, heart, etc.)?
e. Engage your senses: does this emotion have a color, shape, temperature, sound, smell?
f. Keep observing your thoughts – what is this emotion trying to tell you?
g. Think about what would be a more empowering meaning you could give to the situation that triggered your emotion.
h. Ask yourself what you need to do to release that emotion. You are the only one in control of it.
Exercise 2. Here is what you can do for your team member who gets in a disempowering emotional state:
a. Be there for them, keep quiet for a few moments, and give them some water, if it is within your reach.
b. Observe with acceptance instead of judgment (remember, it is ok to feel?).
c. If they keep sharing about their frustration/sadness/disappointment, “I understand” is the best remedy.
d. Even if you disagree with what they are sharing, let them talk. This way you help them heal and you will also get enough information to understand what exactly triggered their emotion and what is the need that was not being met.
e. Ask them what kind of support they need from you at that moment. Just to listen to them? Give advice. Coach them? if they need coaching you can refer to Exercise 1 above.
Start your journey today
Building emotional intelligence may feel overwhelming, but you don't have to face it alone. Take the first step by implementing these strategies in your career and life. If you're ready to embark on a journey of personal development and empowerment, book a coaching call today. Let's work together to elevate your leadership journey.
Mariya Arshaluysyan, Leadership Coach & Founder
Mariya Arshaluysyan is a certified leadership coach for female managers. Mariya's professional journey in leadership started over 15 years ago when she decided to pursue a PhD. When Mariya was appointed to her first managerial role as a Head of a Training and Consulting Center while a University lecturer she realized that leadership is a transformation process that cannot happen in a classroom. Mariya has been on a quest to learn authentic leadership transformation tools over the past years. Her mission: to help female managers become confident and fulfilled leaders.
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