Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Calm Before Think: Mastering Emotional Management in Professional Settings
Transcript
- Speaker 1 (00:05): Welcome to, it's All Your Fault On TruStory FM, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most challenging human interactions, those involving high conflict situations and the people involved in them. I'm Megan Hunter, and I'm usually here with my co-host Bill Eddie, but he's in New Zealand for a few weeks and he's left his laptop behind. So Bill and I are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute, where we focus on training, consulting, coaching classes, and educational programs and methods, all to do with high conflict. Today I'm joined with a very special guest, Cherolyn Knapp, one of HCI's high conflict experts, and I'm thrilled to have you here today, Cherolyn. Hi everybody. In today's episode, Cherolyn and I are going to talk about emotions and how to manage them mostly in the workplace, but it will apply everywhere. So before we start, please send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast, where you'll also find all the show notes and links. All right, Cherolyn, welcome back. We haven't seen you on the podcast for a Speaker 2 (01:25): While. Thank you, Megan. It is always a pleasure to be here on It's All Your Fault podcast, and I want to say how often I tell people do you know about the podcast? And when I'm teaching courses for HCI or doing coaching or mediation work in the workplace work that I do, I often tell people to go listen to the podcast. There's just so much good information there. Speaker 1 (01:53): Well, thank you. We of course, appreciate that. So if you wouldn't mind just share a little bit about what you do and your background. Speaker 2 (02:01): I live on the west coast of Canada, and I am a lawyer by trade, and I was involved in civil litigation for 15 years before I became a mediator. And then for the last five years, I've focused primarily on workplace and other types of conflict involving people, but a lot of workplace and organizational work. And so my work takes me in workplace investigations when there've been allegations of bullying or discrimination or harassment or other types of misconduct. And my work also takes me into mediation when people, individuals, or professionals or teams aren't able to function any longer. I also do some one-on-one coaching with people to help them, whether it's improved their conflict skills or address leadership concerns or that kind of thing. And then I also really love working groups and teams, and I teach new ways for work for coaches and new ways for work for leaders through the High Conflict Institute. And that is a really enjoyable thing that I get to do is to bring these skills to other people. Speaker 1 (03:16): Those two courses that you teach for us have been growing like crazy. In fact, the leaders course for managers and supervisors and anyone in any type of leadership and any type of organization have been coming to that course and learned a lot. And I think the feedback we've received has been extremely positive because it truly is, like we say at High Conflict Institute that we help you find the missing piece, P-E-A-C-E. And the piece sometimes is just outside of someone's grasp or outside what they know. A lot of us just don't know what we don't know, but we want to. And this class fills in that piece. So it's been fantastic and been really happy with that. Speaker 2 (04:04): Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we built that class for leaders who are dealing with difficult behavior on their teams or not really understanding what's happening on their teams and wanting some tools for how to navigate a workplace where there's been high conflict behavior. So it's, yeah, the people who've been through that course have been really enjoyed it and enjoyed meeting each other too because they get to build those skills together. Speaker 1 (04:30): Very nice. So in that class, in new Ways for work, whether for leaders or for coaching and all the work we do at High Conflict Institute, we talk a lot about emotions. It's kind of interesting because you think, of course there are a lot of emotions involved in conflict, and often we think of course the most common one being anger or sadness, shutting down and that kind of thing. But we kind of think of it in a different way. And I think in the workplace often, I guess we're kind of trained to not, at least in the past, to keep your emotions at home. Right. Speaker 2 (05:10): Yeah. Interesting. I've heard people have said this to me before, and I've also maybe experienced this myself. We may allow ourselves to express our emotions in a different way with the people we're closest to than we would in a workplace environment that we're trying to maintain a professional veneer at any rate in workplaces and organizations we're involved with. But don't you find, Megan, do you find that people are experiencing their emotions differently these days? Speaker 1 (05:42): I think so. And the younger than us, generations are way more focused on emotions. I think maybe we're kind of starting to come around that corner a bit and realizing that it can't be all about emotions. And on the other end of the spectrum, it can't be not about any emotions, right? Speaker 2 (06:03): Pretending like, oh, well just leave your emotions at home and whatever you're going through, check that at the door. That's not who people are. If we're upset about something at home, we bring it into work and vice versa. But I think one thing the High Conflict Institute taught me was to distinguish between the feelings we feel versus feeling them in a reactive way. Speaker 1 (06:28): Okay, let's explore that. Speaker 2 (06:31): So through working on myself as a human being, I'm learning more about my own emotions and that it's healthy, it's important and healthy to have emotions. And as we understand who we are and maybe some of the difficult things we've been through in the past, starting to name those emotions and finding ways to express those in a healthy way that's all good and healthy. Part of being human beings, what's troublesome and what causes more difficulty in workplaces and professional relationships is when the emotions are getting the best of us. So when we go into reactive mode, like that fight, flight, or freeze mode, it's not like we're really in touch with what these conflicts emotions are that we are feeling. It's just that simply we are redlining and we've gone into fight, flight or freeze reactive mode where things start to feel about life or death. That's all good if you have to save lives, being able to be in reactive mode and act without thinking, that's important when we have to do things in an emergency. But a lot of times in workplaces, things are not an emergency. And so finding ways to dial down, get out of that reactive mode so we can then deal with the issue at hand. I mean, that's something that a lot of people are struggling with, I think. Speaker 1 (07:56): Yeah, I agree. We hear a lot about it. So let's talk a bit about what unmanaged emotions are. So what we teach is that high conflict situations typically involve someone that has a pattern of extreme behaviors, all or nothing thinking blame and unmanaged emotions. So I think a lot of people don't always understand fully what that means because we've all blown our stack once in a while. It's not unusual to have maybe had an angry outburst at some point, but there are some who it seems that when something doesn't go to plan, when something doesn't go my way or as expected, then there's a very large emotional reaction. They're very upset that they didn't get the assignment they wanted. They're very upset that their manager didn't understand or didn't fully communicate something. So it becomes really big. So let's talk a bit about what unmanaged looks like. Speaker 2 (08:56): Yeah, one way that it looks like. So here's how I think about it. Yeah. I've had times when I got upset, something got under my skin or pushed my buttons and I got upset and it took me a bit to come down. So you sort of think about you have this physiological reaction where your heart starts to beat faster and your breath rate and your heart rate picks up, and you kind of go up this sort of like the jagged line of a graph line going up, and you spend some time at the top of that, at the top of that graph line for a little bit, and you're not really thinking straight. So that's normal. That's a normal part. But for someone who has a real hard time regulating or managing our emotions, they might stay up there for an extended period and have difficulty coming down. And so if everyone, the listeners can think for a minute, by the time they got upset. And how long did it take to hoof get to the point where you felt like yourself again? Was it sometimes it's a few minutes, a few hours or might take till you get a chance to sleep on it and the next day you start to kind come back to your normal self. But someone who doesn't regulate well, they sort of stay up there for an extended period of time. What do you think? Speaker 1 (10:17): Yeah, it's interesting. I was thinking we should get some research about what that amount of time is. I was just thinking of that over the past couple of days when people are in that very heightened, unmanaged emotional state, can it last for several hours? I wonder if at the peak it's maybe five minutes, maybe 15 minutes. I don't know that it lasts longer than that. At the peak, I'm thinking, I think maybe five minutes or less, I'm not sure. And then over the rest of the day, still upset, still coming down. You still have cortisol, I suppose, trying to filter through your system. And then you said something really important about the sleep aspect and overnight can help us kind of reset. And you wake up the next morning and all of a sudden it doesn't seem as important for most people. And for some involved in high conflict disputes, there may be some of that insight, but for others there may not be. So if we're working with someone who's in that peak state of emotion, something has really not gone their way and they've had this massive blowout or they've yelled at someone, they've thrown something, they're just so frustrated and you can see it. They're tensed up, they're just angry. What do you do as a leader? Speaker 2 (11:40): Yeah. Well, I think as leaders and also as coworkers and anyone in a workplace, we've all heard you and Bill say this, a lot of times emotions are contagious. And so we need to start by remembering that as human beings, our emotions crossover to each other and we pick up on other emotions really well, almost like wifi, would you say? Yes. It's almost like wifi. Speaker 1 (12:07): It's not intentional. Speaker 2 (12:08): No. It's just like, it's just the vibe that's there and you pick up on the energy of the people around you. And I think all of us has, to the extent that we are able to manage and regulate our own emotions, something that I like to think about is, am I going to mirror someone else's emotional contagion and pick up on their sort of chaotic or disruptive emotional outbursts or displays, or am I going to be the mirror for other people around me? And that's something that I say to people in, oh, I like that. That's a nice flip in coaching. It's like, and if it's an off day, we may find ourselves mirroring somebody else. But then to sort of notice one of the key parts about this work, this work in dealing with ourselves in conflict and understanding how high conflict operates, is to start by noticing. Speaker 2 (13:06): And when we notice and go, oh, I'm having one of those physiological responses and my thoughts are rushing, what do I need to do right now? I'm the mirror. What does that look like? So if I'm the mirror and I'm going to try to disengage from that other person's energy that I'm finding difficult, I got to breathe. The very first thing after I notice is I really need to stop and take some breaths in a slow way. And by doing that, we actually send our brains a signal that it's okay that we can get into a commerce state. So that's my first strategy always, is to stop and breathe. Speaker 1 (13:52): So you're that person on the other side of someone who's having a large reaction to something very heightened emotions. And it does spread. I mean, you can feel that tension, that energy. So there's a lot ways you can calm yourself before you respond. And that's one of the main things is you have to stop and breathe. Like you said, it's the stopping piece that I think we as humans have a hard time doing. It's really hard to just stop ourselves because especially when we're at work, we're in problem solving mode and especially as a leader, but it extends across the board is we're in problem solving mode. So we want to immediately just go to logic and problem solving, which is probably not going to work. And it's why I teach a little just a reminder is calm before think you have to get someone else calm. Speaker 1 (14:48): So stop, take that breath, be the mirror, those little mirror neurons in the other person's brain. Hopefully we'll pick up on that. So what are some things you don't want to do in those moments that either for yourself or for the other person, or let's say you have a team you're working with and there's that one person that's really upset being disruptive. Now the whole team's kind of on red alert, you're feeling a little bit funky yourself and you're upset with this person. If they would just stop, I sure would love it. Or if they would just go away, it would be wonderful. But is there a way we can help people pass through this? Speaker 2 (15:31): So I'd say if we can gain access to our calmer self, then that gives us access to some other things. So if we can get out of whoever we are in this scenario, if we can be getting out of our reactive mode into a calmer state, then you've got some quick choices that can be made. Well, I think the thing that's coming to mind though is calm doesn't mean rollover and play dead, right? Calm doesn't mean stop inhabiting the space. It doesn't mean shut down and be a turtle in your shell and hope that the situation passes, but it also doesn't mean be a saber-tooth tiger and start showing your fangs and start trying to scare the person that's bothering you away. Hopefully, we're trying to just inhabit the space and the space, whether that's the meeting or the interaction or the conversation, whether it's in person, in a workplace or in a video meeting. Speaker 2 (16:34): And then we want to think about quickly, okay, what are my options right now? And so from the comm space, you've got actions, access to think about options. And now as you say, I love that calm before think because really what we're doing, what are my options? Well, I can stop this meeting right now, or I can set a limit and tell someone we're going to move on from that conversation right now and come back to that privately. Or it's important that we engage with each other professionally. So we've got the option to set a limit or set an expectation with people, but we can't, and I don't know if you've ever tried to do this. I can think of a time professionally when I was quite upset. Someone had been really sort of pushing my buttons maybe on purpose, and I found myself in this meeting, standing pointing, telling this person that I was going to be the one to decide. And it was just, oh, it was the wrong thing to do. So I would like to say that I would not do that again. And it's been a lot of years of learning of how to navigate my own difficult when they happen, but it's from staying calm that we can then figure out what do we need to do from an assertive place to take charge of the situation. Speaker 1 (17:59): And I think we think it'll take a lot of time. I mean, the thing in the workplace time is money. And if we have to take this time to work on people's emotions, help them manage their emotions or manage the emotions of a team, that it's contradictory to getting work done. But actually I think if you pay attention to the emotions of the team or of the individual, it's a time investment. It's a little bit of a paradigm shift here, a little bit of time spent on that. And it's just a little bit meaning if I stop myself when there's that upset person coming at me and I figure out what to do, and then I help them, let's say I helped them calm down and then focus both of us on what to do, guiding them into next steps or whatever we do is at the limit. Those are the time savers. Speaker 2 (18:54): Sure. Because it's that 80 20 rule, isn't it, that oftentimes it's how well in any situation, but it's like 20% of the people are going to take 80% of our time. But also we might think to ourselves, I'm in the middle of this project or this meeting or whatever, we don't have time to stop and attend to this. But in reality, if we can take a little bit of time to ground ourselves and center ourselves, then we can use our thinking brains to figure out what to do. Speaker 1 (19:26): And it's only a second or two, honestly. So the time it is just remembering to do it, it's something we have to do, and it's an investment that it doesn't have to be this big thing that you do as an organization or as a leader or as a coworker or anything. It's just this must be a piece of what we do in our organizations of any kind if you do this little extra piece. So Speaker 2 (19:55): Let's talk about how, let's talk, because I think, so we've talked about breathing, but if we're going to take time to get all of us into our calm, assertive self, so how do we get there? And I have another couple of ideas to share with listeners of how to do that, dad. One of which is, so when we're in our heads and we're upset and we're maybe in a really difficult interaction and we realize we've got to get it together to be able to think it through and know what to do, one positive way to get out of our heads and into the moment is by thinking about our five senses. And this is another thing that we can do. We don't have to get up and take a break and leave the meeting. We can actually just sort of do it quietly on our own instead of thinking a lot of thoughts and freaking out. Speaker 2 (20:49): We can just take a moment and connect to, okay, what's one thing I can see? Well, at this very moment, I can see a painting in my background that's someone who I care about painted for me. So that's something I can see. What's something I can hear? I can hear my voice inside of my head. What's something that I can smell and what's something I can taste and what's something I can touch? And so by moving from our thoughts and feelings into our five senses, it can be a very quick hit of getting us back into the present, back into our body so that we can then move forward and do the work that we have to do. So that's one tip Speaker 1 (21:32): That's called grinding, and it's a really useful tip if you can remember to do it, even just write it down. And it makes me think, I use this once on a safari in Africa. I know, oddly enough, but we were out on a safari drive and witnessed a pride of lions, about nine lions take down two big water buffalo, and it's not instant. It was Cape Buffalo. Yes. Yeah. Cape Buffalo, 45 minutes. And then we all came back to the lodge for dinner, and we were sitting around a single long table together, and one young woman was just highly disturbed by the whole thing. Our nerves were right there. So her emotions were way up at the top. And so as we're waiting for our food to be served, I said, touch your glass of water because it had ice in it, and there was condensation on the side. What's that feel like? Oh, it's cold. I'm like, okay, what's the food smell? And I have to say her husband, I mean, she calmed right down, needless to say, and her husband said, ma'am, I think you just saved my marriage. Speaker 2 (22:36): Oh, wow. Speaker 1 (22:37): So meaning I taught him a skill. But that's how powerful it can be. Speaker 2 (22:42): Yeah, it can. And I can think of a situation that happened to me where, and this has happened more than once in fact, where in my work as a workplace investigator, I have to interview people about things that have happened that are really upsetting to them. Speaker 1 (22:56): And is that nerve wracking for you? Speaker 2 (22:59): Yeah, it is. You can kind of start to catch and start to feel the same really distressed feelings that other people are feeling. And I've said, you know what? Let's stop and breathe together. And it might not be what they were expecting from the person who came to interview them, but we'll just stop and do some breathing and just take three deep breaths and then guess what? The conversation continues. Whereas if I didn't stop and take those breaks with people, we might both get to a situation where we couldn't move forward. So there's one other tip that I want to suggest to people to think about, and this is something that is also in the new Ways for workbook that we teach in the New Ways for Work Coaching Course and is to make a state do positive self-talk for yourself. I don't know about you, but I've got a pretty active voice inside my head that's pretty good at Trash Talk, right? Speaker 2 (23:59): It's good at, oh, look how this is someone someone's really out to challenge you right now and it can get going and get me going. And a lot of us really, that voice is pretty active. It says negative things to us, and it's really, its job is to look out for danger and alert us to possible threats, but sometimes it gets us going. And so it's to actively stop and sort of coach yourself, say positive things to yourself, what take your time, you've got time to do this, what needs to be done? And to talk to yourself like that. And even to use your own name, not just to say, oh, I've got this, but to say, Cherolyn, you're good. You've got this. You know what to do. You know how to get yourself into a comm state and you can figure out what's needed to move this forward. And so that can be a very powerful tool for helping us getting to that commerce state we need so that we can then do the thinking or the processing or the setting of limits or things that we need to do to deal with a difficult situation. Speaker 1 (25:07): Yeah, I love that talking to yourself is, I mean, while it may look crazy if you're saying it out loud, which we can keep those as private thoughts in our own minds, and I think it really helps a lot. And sometimes I don't want anyone to think that while these are very speedy and efficient tools and helpful tools, there are times we get emotionally hooked, particularly if we feel under attacked, our senses are really picking up on some dangerous behavior or some threatening behavior or something. And in those moments, your brain's going to be escalated and your thinking brain will be offline. And in those moments, I know I felt like I just can't think of a thing to say or do, I'm just, and that's true. Fight or flight, you want to get out of dodge. So in those moments, it's okay, forgive yourself. Speaker 1 (26:06): If I can't think of something right now, that's okay. And maybe that's when you decide to take a break, unless it's a situation you have to handle in the moment. But in those moments, don't overthink it. Just stop for a second and do, like you said, take a deep breath because that will start to reset the whole process and get your mind back and then follow that up with some self-talk. And one of those statements might be, and we talk about this a lot on the podcast, this isn't about me, and we're not saying that it's necessarily about the other person, but right now there's this high conflict tension or some kind of stress. And these tips that you've shared, Cherolyn are useful in any type of upsetting moments, any upsetting situation. It doesn't have to be just high conflict, and sometimes conflict will feel high conflict to some people while it doesn't to others. True. That's Speaker 2 (27:06): True too. Speaker 1 (27:07): Yeah. So let's wrap this up. Talking about new ways for work coaching. I know you've done some one-on-one coaching with that as well as teaching it to other coaches. What successes have you seen in helping others like Coachees learn to manage their emotions? Speaker 2 (27:25): So working with people who may struggle with managing emotions, flexible thinking and blaming others and behaviors that don't work in workplaces is quite rewarding, actually. And the feedback that I have received from people is when they are able to practice the emotional management and develop those skills, it's kind of like flexing a muscle. If you don't practice it and you don't lift the weights, you won't be able to rely on those muscles. But the feedback that I've received is that when I am feeling more relaxed, I do have access to better problem solving skills. And that to me, that is so very gratifying to hear. But that's the first place that we start when we're working on coaching. Someone who's struggling with those things is to say, well, let's work on the skills to help you be calmer so that then you can handle conflicts in a way that isn't escalated. And that's going to be true for all of us, whether we're a person who handles conflict in a higher conflict way, or whether we're a person who works with somebody who handles conflict in that way. Speaker 1 (28:42): Yeah, remind yourself it's not about me or it is about me. If it's about me, I need to breathe. Speaker 2 (28:49): Yeah, we all do. We all need to start there. Speaker 1 (28:52): We all do. So yeah, so investing a little bit of time in these tools, it doesn't really cost anything. It's just adding it to your repertoire of what we do, whether we're leaders or coaches or employees or in any phase. So this has been great, Cherolyn. I'm really glad you joined. And I know we have a couple of new Ways for Work trainings coming up, so we'll put the links for those in the show notes. Those are for leaders of any type or coaches in any workplace or organization. And we'll put a couple of other books, some book links and things in the show notes. So please check them there. Speaker 1 (29:41): And we do thank you for listening today. Next week we will be focusing on borderline personality disorder, both in teens and in adults. It's, I think, going to be really fascinating. We might have a very special guest. So in the meantime, send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. And until next time, keep learning and practicing. Be kind to yourself and others and keep breathing while we all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing peace. It's All Your Fault is a production of TruStory FM Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins and Ziv Moran. Find the show notes and transcripts@truestory.fm for high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.