The Emotionally Intelligent Manager is about integrating emotions and thought. But emotions can be processed and understood at many different levels. We may believe ourselves to be including and processing emotion in an intelligent manner when we are actually just including emotion at a surface level or in a cursory manner.
In most workplace settings, emotions are simply not businesslike. This leads organizations to develop unwritten rules of emotions: which emotions are okay to recognize and which are not; which emotions are acceptable to express and which are not. The process of normalizing emotions, discussed by management researcher Blake Ashforth, can take a number of different forms, from active suppression of the emotion to reframing the emotion in a different light.
Therefore, we need to have some way of differentiating various levels of emotional awareness and processing. Strategies can range from the non-emotional to the emotional; emotion is integrated into thought but at various levels of sophistication and processing. We will first turn to strategies in which emotion is kept at bay and defended against. Then we’ll examine ways to include emotion in decision making and thinking.
Disengagement from Emotion
Sometimes, emotions are too strong and too painful to bear. In such cases, we have many options and we can have a great deal of control over how we experience emotion. However, certain strategies have a cognitive cost associated with them. For example, we lose details and data if we continually try to suppress the emotional experience.
Disengaging ourselves from emotion means that we are aware of and process only the nonemotional data. We deal directly, and only, with concrete data and information.
Avoidance of Emotions
We can simply turn away from the event, remove ourselves from the event, or not get involved in the first place. An example of this emotional avoidance strategy is when one avoids going to an emotionally powerful movie if the costs would appear to outweigh the benefits. Knowing that you experience very strong feelings when you watch certain movies, you can view only those powerful movies with a message that you want to, and are ready to, hear. As a matter of course, you shouldn’t go to horror movies or movies with gratuitous violence.
Emotional avoidance, like any emotional strategy, has its uses and its misuses. If we avoided all emotional situations, life would be fairly empty, and we would miss out on opportunities to learn, grow, and develop personally.
Denial of Emotions
If you can’t avoid a strong emotional situation, then you can engage in another emotion-limiting strategy: emotional denial. This strategy can be employed after you are exposed to a powerful emotional event in order to minimize its impact on you.
Many of us learn emotional denial strategies early in our lives. Some little boys are exhorted to “be a man” and are told that “big boys don’t cry.” Both boys and girls are sometimes taught to turn away from powerful emotional events and scenes.
As an adult, have you attended a presentation when a member of the audience said something indirectly insulting to the presenter? On many occasions, the presenter just smiles a forced smile, shakes his head, and proceeds. It is likely that the speaker is actively trying to deny and block out the surprise and the anger. Whether this denial strategy will be effective depends on many factors, the most important being that the underlying emotion behind the verbal assault be determined and the information communicated correctly analyzed. Was the audience member angry for some other reason? Is he frustrated about some aspect of the plan or trying to sabotage the presentation because his voice has not been heard?
We often selectively suppress our reaction to an emotional event. Perhaps you feel that it isn’t appropriate to show your feelings in front of people. You simply “bite your lip” or smile, even though you are very angry or very sad. You choose not to act, that is, you use your brain to control the impulse to show your emotions. But remember the cognitive costs of suppressing your emotions: you lose data and information. There must be a better strategy.
Engagement of Emotion
We can actively engage with emotion at various levels. Let’s examine different strategies for emotional engagement.
Emotional Reappraisal
Another way to lessen the power of a subjective emotional experience is to change the way we view it. If you are going to have a painful medical test conducted, you might see the procedure as a way to get or stay healthy and focus on the positives of the experience rather than on the negative aspects of the procedure. The process of prescribing emotions is similar. When we prescribe emotions, we recast the emotional experience in a way that is more acceptable to our workplace environment.
Emotional Acknowledgment
This is the Scarlett O’Hara strategy, named for a character in Gone With the Wind. One of her most famous lines is, “I’ll think about it tomorrow,” which Scarlett utters toward the end of the article (and movie), when she must confront death, devastation, and destruction, literally at her doorstep. The Scarlett strategy applied to emotion management is one in which you acknowledge the emotion but do not attempt to solve the problem. In this strategy, you recognize the emotion but then move on. This is the strategy to use when you want to seem like you’re in touch with the issue but cannot deal with it at that time. You indicate that you are in touch with the emotional component of a situation and then you quickly move on, out of that uncomfortable territory. (Of course, you may very well argue that Scarlett is an emotional avoider, but we like the term and we’ll use it to describe emotional acknowledgment, even though it may make you, and us, somewhat uncomfortable.)
For example, let’s say that your boss praises you for a top-notch job on a presentation to the team. She says in front of the entire group, “Joe did a superb job today. It looks like this team is meeting, or perhaps exceeding, all of its objectives.” Your reaction? Pay lip service and move on, perhaps saying something along these lines: “Thanks, Jill, that was nice of you.” At least you recognized the situation; you didn’t blow it off. Perhaps praise makes you feel uncomfortable. Perhaps you don’t want to get into this any deeper because you feel ill at ease.
Emotional Integration
If we are generally aware of emotion in ourselves and others, we can integrate emotion and thought, but our emotional strategy will be fairly basic. If we feel sad but wish to feel happy, we can manage our own mood or that of others. But we may not clearly understand and differentiate our feelings and may miss certain key bits of information.
We can also be aware of, and directly address, a specific emotion. Strategies that derive from this approach will be direct but also fairly basic. They may resolve the underlying problem, if the problem itself is a simple one.
The most comprehensive strategy of emotional intelligence coping must involve a good deal of processing of emotion at a deep and meaningful level. Emotional intelligence at its best will likely include the four steps of our Emotional Blueprint:
Identify Emotions
- Are you aware of your mood?
- How clear is it to you?
- Is this a typical mood for you?
- Is it okay to feel this way?
- How powerful is the feeling?
Use Emotions
- What is the meaning of the mood or emotion?
- What caused you to feel this way?
Understand Emotions
- What is the cause and the real issue or problem?
- What are some emotional “What next” questions?
Manage Emotions
- What is the desired outcome?
- What are possible actions to take?
- Ask emotional what-if questions to determine the efficacy of alternatives.