The only way to change someone's mind is to connect with them from the heart.

MANAGING and LEADING through your emotions.

In the workplace, as a leader, the ability to control your emotions with your team, customers and superiors is an essential skill to continuously succeed in both your own persona; career, but as a leader and mentor to a group of individuals.

Self awareness and consciousness is extremely important to maintain level mindedness if you are charged with leading a team or a project.

Emotional hijacking is when your emotional brain takes control, subverting your rational thinking responses.

Extremes of emotion can trigger emotional hijacking, such as a panic attack in which your emotional response actually bypasses your thinking brain and produces a super-quick instinctive response.

While this is happening, it is very difficult, even impossible, to think straight because the part of the brain you think with is inhibited. 

These are your amygdalae at work, behaving in their primitive way to protect you. They are designed to ensure your survival, rather than for problem-solving in complex situations.

People who experience panic attacks are well aware they are not acting rationally, and this causes further upset, but there is little to be done to forestall a panic attack because it's not the rational part of the brain that deals with this emotional response. 

We tend to think of leadership as something you do externally. The good leaders are the ones who are comfortable in their own skins. They understand what they are about -- they understand their purpose in life and their strengths. They have a level of comfort with themselves that leads to a level of comfort with others. 

- Dan Pink

Emotional hijacking happens to people every day to varying degrees, and it does not have to manifest itself so obviously as a panic attack or a loss of temper. Our society and the frantic way in which so many of us live our lives mean we are often “living on our nerves”, and can therefore be teetering on the edge of being emotionally hijacked for hours at a time, especially when we are in stressful or potentially aggravating situations that have gone awry in the past. In this situation, our emotional synapses can be firing in preparation for a major attack.  

In the workplace, emotional hijacking can cause all sorts of problems. Relationships can be damaged and productivity halted. Confidence in one’s own abilities can be undermined, or in that of our working colleagues.  You can tell when you are experiencing an emotional hijacking because you start to feel drained, frustrated, irritated, angry, sad, fearful, or any emotion that really has no place within a professional working environment. It can happen quite subtly, even as you are talking to someone who appears not to be listening.  

That mounting sense of frustration that you feel means you are already being hijacked by your emotions. It may never lead to an emotional outburst as such, but if you are feeling any emotion where you know you shouldn’t be, you’ve been hijacked.  

What is especially telling is how long it subsequently takes you to return to a normal state of mind where your professional activities can carry on unimpeded. As long as your mind keeps returning to the cause of your upset, you have still not been fully released from the emotion.  

One of the best ways of being able to reclaim your equilibrium is to be aware of what is happening. The best way to ward of a hijack in the first place is to spot potential triggers the very second they appear. If a colleague has a habit of winding you up to the point that you feel emotionally hijacked, you have to learn to condition your response back down. Replacing anger with humor can help.  

The following three simple steps can help fend off emotional hijacking in the workplace: 

Manage yourself – Take a few deep breaths and face your anxiety, anger, frustration, or whatever emotion you are feeling. This provides the opportunity to practice your emotional response ability. Think about how exactly you would prefer the situation to progress, and make sure you keep that as a focus. Try also to understand where your colleague is coming from, so that you can anticipate the worst they can throw at you, and also try to understand their point of view so that you can establish some common ground.  

Manage your team – Make sure you ask for clarification about any matter you have to deal with. Lack of understanding, or being confused, can cause immense frustrations. Make sure all parties know how you want to be involved and that you want your input to be valued. Don’t be shy about asking questions and challenging ideas and methods you object to. This may cause a little friction initially, but is preferable to your being emotionally hijacked by regret once the moment has passed. Regret or shame at not taking appropriate action can lead to an emotional hijacking that can last for days, and that may even negatively color the way you view yourself on an ongoing basis. Some people spend their entire lives emotionally hijacked.  

Enlist support – If you really feel that you are making every effort but are being consistently undermined, take it up with your superiors. Bring everything out into the open. Remember that, by their very nature, hijackings are sudden events. Scheduling time when the problem can be addressed can help to remove the surprise element from the situation. You are taking control.  

? Comment below if you've ever experienced emotional hijacking in the workplace and how you've worked through it to maintain a calm, collective demeanor in day to day panics and emotionally charged interactions.

#scottsthoughts

Scott Douglas Clary, MBA

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