Managing and reducing stress through emotional self-awareness
Posted on November 18, 2008
Filed Under Stress |
To be a successful manager, you need to be self-aware. Some people find the process of becoming self-aware extremely stressful. As a psychologist, I’m always sensitive to the fact that people think I am psychoanalysing them. The worst experiences are usually at social gatherings.
In therapeutic setting, helping patients become self-aware can create stress for them. How many of us really understand our own values, motivations, and drives? When I coach chief executive officers, one of the first things I do to increase their effectiveness in the organization is to help them become self-aware. I work on the assumption that self-awareness increases the capacity to confront, manage and relieve stress. This is particularly important in relationships where one or both parties have limited self-awareness and are unable to negotiate a meaningful communication space.
The concept is referred to in the literature is emotional intelligence and credit goes largely to Daniel Goleman for his work in this area. I believe that your work life and your personal relationships are made more effective through a high degree of emotional intelligence. Leaders with high self intelligence earn more money, have high producing and profitable departments and organizations, and are more successful overall. So my simple argument is become more self-aware and you increase your effectiveness and, probably, your capacity to manage and relieve stress.
People who are able to understand themselves well and adapt well to the emotional demands and social interactions of their work and personal environment are regarded as having high emotional intelligence.
There is some great research on the effects other people’s feelings have on you. The focus of research attention has been on the brain’s limbic system. When people are in meetings together they seem to share each other’s emotions in some form of osmosis. It takes two hours for these feelings to permeate others. So there is a constant flow and exchange of emotional feelings in the workplace.
There is one research study which produced amazing results. Just sitting two people together in one room and allowing them to talk with each other, with their individual heart rate and blood pressure levels monitored, showed that within 5 to 10 minutes their heart rate and blood pressure were almost identical. And the same outcome was noted when they just sat together and didn’t talk! How spooky is that?
If this is true, just think of the effect that other people are having on you or you are having on them when you are stressed and unaware of your own emotions. Consider how important it is for you to become more emotionally self-aware so that you can recognize how you are feeling and what the impact of your feelings are on others around you. Have you noticed that when someone becomes extremely angry in the workplace most people don’t know what to do. They become anxious and often withdraw. Then they experience feelings of emotional turmoil. None of this is healthy. And what if the person expressing that anger enjoys the tension and stress they create in others? How healthy is that workplace?
Let us assume that you have a high or very high emotional intelligence. What does that mean? It means that you probably have a fairly positive self-esteem, you are probably very happy, you probably maintain good relationships and understand people quite well, you manage life’s stressful events and challenges well and you are probably handling virtually all aspects of your life very comfortably. This sounds like a very positive picture, one that we would all like to be a part of, don’t you agree?
I hope this brief introduction to emotional intelligence gives you some understanding of how important the concept is in your daily life. There are five parts of emotional intelligence and we measure: understanding ourselves, understanding others, being adaptable, general mood, and stress management. There are often great variations in an individual’s profile on these five dimensions. Some people can be high on interpersonal understanding and have very limited self-awareness. Of course it makes life much more interesting for the purpose of this article, the most important issue is how well people manage stress through self-awareness.
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