The Art Of Managing Emotions

Ajay: How’s everything at your startup?

Friend: Can’t complain…I guess.

Ajay: Not exactly what I expected from a young budding entrepreneur.

Friend: Well, the problem I’m facing, it’s a little difficult to explain and probably more difficult to understand.

Ajay: Try me.

Friend: You know that when I started this company I didn’t want it to be a stressful workplace for my staff. I wanted people to feel belonged. I wanted myself to be a really supportive and empathetic leader. 

Ajay: I’m sure you are.

Friend: I understand what big a problem stress at the workplace is. So, I listen to my employees and try to address problems by taking their emotions also into account. And yet, in the recent survey conducted by our HR, a lot of employees felt that their feelings were not rightly addressed. 

Ajay: First of all, kudos to your well intentions. Now coming to the problem, it is indeed a complex one. I feel the missing element here could be emotional agility.

Friend: Agility?

Ajay: Yes, it’s something I read about a few years back. You mentioned earlier how stress is common at workplaces. But stress is a generalised term. To solve the problem, we need to go beyond it, take a more nuanced approach and be agile in our understanding.

Friend: I don’t understand.

Ajay: Imagine an employee who is angry with a team approaches you. You try to address his anger. But is anger the only emotion he is going through? Is he sad? Anxious? What exactly caused his anger? Was he disappointed by the other team’s performance? Or did they offend him? Did he get irritated with some of them slacking off? 

Friend: Wow! It never occurred to me to go this deep.

Ajay: This way you are not just looking at ‘anger’, but more precise emotions like anxious, disappointed, offended and so on. This kind of precision in understanding emotions will help you a great deal in interacting with your colleagues and taking the correct approach. Psychologists call it labelling our emotions. It’s not easy, but it’s not unachievable either. Try it out and make your office that happy place you wanted it to be.