How to Sidestep the Emotions and Patterns that Derail Your Leadership

We may think we’re in control of our actions and decisions — but so often our unconscious emotions are running the show. The path to true unemotional decision-making and grounded leadership comes from becoming skillful with your emotions.

Image by TLNT

Deep unconscious emotional patterns, which often come out as triggers at work, can be a portal to break through the areas where we keep ourselves stuck and make poor decisions. Let’s explore this concept with one of my clients whose name has been anonymized.

Jake had four hours set aside to revamp his company’s product roadmap and had cleared out all distractions for an afternoon of silence, deep thinking, and productivity. The entire engineering team — not to mention the whole company — had a lot riding on this. It was important for him to clearly articulate where his company was heading and how they were going to get there.

He settled in and opened up his laptop, and then felt the urge to check his email. At the top of his inbox, he was greeted with a message from an unhappy client complaining about their API. The email had been sent a couple of hours before and his team hadn’t responded to it yet. Logically his brain said, don’t do this. But of course, he did. And he didn’t just fire off a quick response. He went all-in on his response, writing a grandiose explanation, with thorough documentation of their company’s API. He offered to jump on a call the next morning and created a framework for his team on how to work through similar situations.

When it was all said and done, the client was appeased — but it cost Jake his afternoon and his new product roadmap. He had team members who could have handled the situation perfectly well without him, and yet, he couldn’t resist stepping in and intervening. In doing so, he failed to act in the best interest of the company. As a result, his team received the product roadmap four days later, delaying key direction for their top engineers, not to mention eroding trust from the individuals who owned this area of the business.

Our Coaching Session

Frustrated with himself, Jake brought the situation to the table for our coaching session the following week. He knew he’d made a mistake and he wanted to understand the patterns and emotions that were causing him to behave this way.

I suspected that there were some underlying emotional patterns and triggers Jake was unaware of that were driving his behavior, so I gently guided him back into the moment of receiving that email to see if we could identify what was going on under the surface.

One way to change our behavior is to change the emotional patterns and reactions that are unconsciously driving our decisions and actions. The process of identifying and getting to know these emotional triggers can start with going back to the moment where you made the mistake, identifying what emotion was present, and feeling it in the body. Emotions are patterns of energy in the body, and to process emotions, we have to connect our mind to what’s happening in our physical body. There are two simple questions that can help us tap into what’s happening emotionally:

“What am I feeling?”

“Where am I feeling it in my body?”

By asking these questions, you’re building a key skill known in psychology as Interoception, which measures your ability to perceive what’s going on inside your body — and essentially measures how strong the connection is between your mind and your body. When you’re able to link your mind to what’s happening in your body, you start to build the skill of appropriately processing your emotions.

Processing Emotions

After a few moments of tuning into his body and emotions, Jake noticed the sensation of fear in his neck and shoulders. As he listened, the fear seemed to be saying, “What’s going to happen if all our clients are upset? What will happen to the company if my teammates aren’t doing their jobs?” Both are valid concerns. We took note of them and continued breathing and paying attention.

As Jake stayed with the feelings of fear, he then started to notice anger arising, also in his neck and shoulders. But the anger had a different feeling and message than the fear, telling him, “Why (the fuck) is no one else responding to this email?! How did we get here? Why do I always have to jump in?” This was interesting, given that Jake had denied ever feeling anger and had told me that he was “not an angry person.” Once we started working together and exploring his emotions on a deeper level, we discovered that, like every other human being on the planet, Jake did feel anger. Once we were able to access the anger, we found that it had quite a strong voice.

Memories and Insights

After making adequate contact with both emotions, a memory flashed into his awareness. He was 12 years old having a panic attack after the administrator at his middle school accused him of skipping class, even though he was there. He was terrified of his parents’ reaction. Deep fears started to surface. Jake acknowledged that throughout his childhood, he had to walk on eggshells because his parents’ anger could be triggered by any little thing — and would quickly escalate to a 10 out of 10.

Staying with the fear, another insight emerged. Jake suddenly made the connection between his childhood fear of his parents and his drive to people-please. This had been playing out at work in his unwillingness to feel the disappointment, fear, anger, and sadness of letting clients down. That unwillingness to make contact with his emotions was then driving him to spend the vast majority of his time firefighting to appease clients in the short term, often at the expense of long-term planning and goals. It also led him to become a ‘hero’ manager, meddling in his teammates’ work and fundamentally disempowering them by sending the message that he didn’t trust them to get the job done.

Through this process of identifying and allowing the emotions to be there, the fear and anger started to dissipate.

How Long Does This Take?

In general, there is no hard and fast rule on how much time to spend on an emotion. Your main priority is just to make contact with the emotion that is present. When you make proper contact, you naturally have an experience where that emotion is free to do whatever it does — be expressed, provide insight or offer a message. This also allows you to have confidence that these emotions are not fully driving your behavior and important decisions.

How do you know when you’ve made adequate contact with the emotion? It’s a felt sense that can feel like hitting a baseball square on the bat, or a golf drive right down the fairway. You will know when you’re there. The emotion may start speaking — like in Jake’s case — and you may feel a release or notice a sudden clarity. Once contact occurs, don’t try to change the emotion or your state. If it changes by itself, that’s great. But changing, pushing away, blocking, or rejecting the emotion will likely only make it stronger. You are trying to have an open and allowing attitude, and that only occurs when you accept your experience without trying to change it. This could happen in a split second or minutes.

As a general rule, just say hi to emotion when it comes to your door. Don’t feel that you have to invite it inside, introduce yourself and let it stay for the night. Feelings can be like little kids that are demanding our attention. Provided we are relating to the child with some respect, care, and acknowledgment, we don’t have to spend hours indulging it and giving it everything it wants. If the emotion keeps coming back, then take some time to meditate on it. If it’s really strong, you might need to take it to therapy or a supportive friend or coach where you can do some deeper process to get to the root of what’s going on. If it keeps tugging, then you know that you need to turn towards it and give it more of your attention.

Wisdom Emerges

It’s truly astounding the inner wisdom that can emerge when we make contact with our emotions. This could be in the form of an image, a scene from childhood that needs healing, a message, or an insight. Understanding our emotions in this way offers an additional dataset to leverage when we are making important decisions and dealing with challenges in the workplace (and life). By being willing to make contact with his unconscious emotions, Jake can start to act more effectively as a leader and reclaim hours of productive time each week.

When we create the space to check in with our emotions and briefly feel them, they no longer control us. Now I’m not saying we should be constantly checking in on our emotional state. No one wants to be the person wallowing in their emotions all day, especially at the workplace. What we ultimately want is to be skillful when an emotion arises. It can be helpful to expect that emotions are typically present when you’re making an important decision, when you notice frustration, or when you are in conflict with someone. It’s counterintuitive but true that the path of emotional mastery requires you to get fluent with your emotions and understand how they operate so you (and your decisions) are not being run by them.

Most people aren’t even aware when an emotion arises and as a result, they get swept away by that emotion without knowing that they actually could have responded differently. By being willing to go through this process, we have an opportunity to make better decisions in challenging circumstances. When we feel threatened or triggered, we can use this process to get back to a balanced state before making our next move.

Ultimately we want our awareness, not our emotions, to be running the show. We are trying to put our greater awareness back in the driver’s seat — the same awareness that can step outside of conscious thought and emotion and make great decisions in business and in life.

How To Sidestep Emotions and Patterns That Derail Your Leadership

Here’s a simple process for making contact with unconscious emotions and releasing their grip so you can behave and make decisions in line with your top priorities. Try it out for yourself and let me know how it goes!

1. When you notice that you are triggered, pause and take three deep breaths.

2. Ask yourself ‘What am I feeling?’ Is it anger, sadness, fear, creativity, or joy?

3. Then ask yourself ‘Where do I feel it in my body?’ Is it in your neck, chest, belly, eyes, or shoulders?

4. Allow the emotion to be there without trying to change it. Accept that this is what you are currently feeling and that it’s ok.

5. Once the emotion no longer has a grip on you, utilize the insight that emerged (along with logic, intuition, and an understanding of your goals) to decide on the best path forward.