Emotional Interpretation .. The Attribute That Causes More Workplace Discord Than Anything Else

The one area that we need to talk more about when it comes to coaching and workplace engagement is the concept of emotional interpretation. Often people will react based on how they feel often adjusting or misunderstanding the message that is provided to them. Emotional interpretation is when somebody is triggered, or they react to a situation emotionally. How often do we say something where people get upset only to understand later that someone meant it a separate way, or they may have misunderstood it? Let me give you an example. In one of our client sites, we had a manager provide some feedback to a team leader. The team leader looked okay during the meeting yet about 10 minutes after the meeting began telling other people how that manager attacked her. She had said things that factually were not true, that he was attacking and raising his voice and really being mean spirited. When in fact I personally was in the meeting and there were never raised voices. There was never even a frown within the meeting. She felt a certain way and her emotional interpretation became her reality. The worst part of it is often when we emotionally react to things, we feel the need to share it with other people often to get it off our chest, to avoid the stress build up, to calm ourselves down. The reality is she shared this with three other people and the worst part about it was she was not factually correct.

?Two attributes that really battle one another, especially when there are conversations where there are disagreement or discord, and that is emotional interpretation and factual correctness. When we are factual, we tend to be more correct and when we're emotional, we can take things out of context, not because we are bad people, rather we have not developed the self-awareness to really listen to the message, take time to reflect, and not emotionally react and ask ourselves "what have I learned from that message?" What have I learned from that perception? What am I going to do successfully to counter that perception I may be giving off? These steps seem so simple, yet it first starts with self-awareness.

If we immediately react emotionally, we cut our minds off from learning. We cut our minds off from understanding the message provided to us. Let me give you a further example. Think about somebody who interrupts you all the time and says the words “yeah but.” When somebody says the words "yeah but", they are typically reacting to what is being said and not listening to what is being said at the same time. If we can practice controlled cadence of listening, reflecting, taking time to ask ourselves, honestly, what we can learn from that message and what we can do to successfully counter the perception that may be provided to us. Emotional interpretation will decrease, and communication and coaching effectiveness will increase.

?Steps to practice avoiding emotional interpretation:

1. ?Ask for feedback where you have an opportunity to improve. This makes it easier for the person to provide you feedback as well.
2. Listen with no reaction … this is awfully hard for people to do yet it is during this step that most people have their revelations because they are typically dying to react with some countering point which becomes the teaching moment.
3. Say thank you for the feedback.
4. Wait two hours and then journal or write down two things you learned from that feedback. This step is critical. It is not about what the person agrees or disagrees with in terms of the feedback rather, what they learned from the feedback.

After such practice sessions it is imperative that leaders ask people two fundamental questions that continue to drive the process of understanding emotional interpretation and building self-awareness:

1. ?What have you learned about yourself you are positively committed to improving?
2. What are the specific steps you are going to take going forward to facilitate continuous improvement and change as it relates to emotional interpretation?

When you combine practice along with these coaching questions it will accelerate greater communication and understanding of one another which leads to greater reception of feedback and coaching.

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