Managing Emotions

Sitting close to Kevin Schultz means having an opportunity to talk to him regularly, apart from weekly 1-1s. Y’day he generally dropped by my cube to see how I was doing and somewhere discussion turned to range of emotions one display as a leader. He drew this scale 

Anger -> Disappointment -> No Response -> Agreement -> Joy

He says that there could be situations that a leader has to get angry and actually show it. However, it should be kept at minimum. He says “disappointment” must be used more frequently when things don’t go well. “No Response” is kind of an indifference – where an approach chosen or a decision made by a team member may not cause a big problem, but the person might not have “got it”, so you react by being indifferent.

I thought I’ll share this.

Do note that I’ve seen many people using “this person doesn’t “get it””. This is a dangerous position to be in. It is expected, atleast dealing with senior people, that you are in a position to assess what exactly the senior person wants even when the instructions may not be detailed. It can even be simple things like not using standard company template for ppt, put one gets labeled as not-getting-it. This is where self-awareness comes-in.

Changing the topic. The article titled “No, You Can’t Ignore Email. It’s Rude” by Adam Grant is going viral. The author argues that Being overwhelmed is no excuse. It’s hard to be good at your job if you’re bad at responding to people and says “Everyone occasionally misses an email. But if you’re habitually “too busy” to answer legitimate emails, there’s a problem with your process. It sends a signal that you’re disorganized — or that you just don’t care”.