We must see our emotional human blips for that they are
LAST WEEK I had an interesting conversation about emotional wellbeing in business and how important it was in ensuring that business flourished.
It makes sense that if the people in the business are well and happy, they are more likely to work well, make better quality decisions, have better relationships with clients and colleagues – and the consequence is that the business does well. After all a business is only as good as the people in it. Interestingly, the person I was speaking with made the link between my legal career in employment law and what I do now – it’s funny how the dots eventually join up isn’t it?
It is true that I saw more than my fair share of situations where the relationship had broken down so irretrievably that only the tribunal could sort it out.
When I reflected on this, it struck me how many of those cases started with a misunderstanding of human emotion. We are unable to leave our human nature at the business door, it’s part of us. As hard as we try, if we are upset about something at home this is inevitably going to seep into how we are at work.
As humans we react, get fearful, we worry and we get stressed. However, so often we expect those around us to be in a constant state of calm and happiness.
In many ways our human emotion is a little like driving on a motorway, you can be happily driving down the road but then the road bends, or there is traffic, you may get distracted – or for no reason that you know of, you end up on the rumble strips. You get that awful noise, the car judders, you realise what you’re doing and you steer to get back on track.
When we are grounded and in that beautiful clear state of mind, that’s like driving on a clear road; however, when our state of mind drops and we start to experience insecure, fearful, stressful thinking, it feels unpleasant.
When we are in that state, we believe that our circumstances are creating how we are feeling (such and such is stressing me out) and that what we are thinking is telling us about the true state of our circumstances (x, y and z is going to happen).
Yet the truth of the matter is, when our mind settles we see the situation completely differently and what we had experienced was simply that we had been on the equivalent of our emotional rumble strips – we were off track.
Understanding this can be a game-changer for any relationship – but particularly at work. So often we take someone’s behaviour when they are ‘on the rumble strips’ too seriously, we hold onto it, attribute it to their personality or judge it negatively.
However when we start to see that it is more of an indication of where someone is, rather than who someone is, we become more compassionate and understanding. We view them more as someone who is in emotional fear or pain, rather than reacting to the content of what they are saying.
Knowing that we’ve all simply been on the ‘rumble strips’ enables us to see it for what it is, an emotional human blip, leaving us able to get back on track and able to continue with our journey together.