Emotional Responses

We cannot be Vulcans, so how do we handle our emotions in order to provide value rather than create CLMs (or Career Limiting Moves)?

Transcript

Welcome back to my podcast Scaling Out!

Spock is such a cultural reference, I don’t really think he needs an introduction. The Star Trek character is well known for saying ‘It’s logic, Jim’ to his Captain James T Kirk. Everything that the Vulcans do is bound by logic and many times the lack of emotion is a blunt of many jokes in Star Trek movies & TV episodes.  But we are humans not Vulcans and we have emotions. Take for instance the term ‘passionate’, when this is a Company Value it suggests that employees must have emotional responses to the work that they are doing in order to be successful. However being passionate can also get in the way of career development. How?

Say you have a customer who as pointed out that the software doesn’t fit their needs.

Here are two very different responses:

1. You are so passionate about customer satisfaction, you take the time to research & develop a potential workaround. You spend time outside of normal work hours because you are that driven. This excites you & drives you to do even more. 
2. You are so passionate about customer satisfaction, you take your complaints to anyone that will listen. You complain about R&D, product management, product testing, product quality, etc. All of this is outside of your span of control & influence. You take this to your manager & its’ outside of their span of control & influence as well. You get frustrated and lose sight of that end goal – customer satisfaction.

See the difference? The emotional responses to the same problem point you in a trajectory that is either career advancing or career limiting.

In business, if we took out all emotion we would also be a joke punch-line like Spock, so I want to be clear that emotions in the work force are needed in order to connect with each other & our customers. Emotions happen, but the trick is knowing how to identify and correct it when necessary whether that’s within your reactions or your actions.

Here are three tips. 

1. Think thru how you are feeling about a potentially negative situation, take a time out.
2. If you write down how you are truly feeling. Save it, take a time out – go for a walk, and look at it later or even the next day. Consider the emotions that were running thru your veins.
3. If you want to write down how you are truly feeling in an EMAIL. Do NOT put it in an addressed email & run the risk of hitting send instead of save by accident. I know right? But I have seen it!!

And seriously, sometimes your manager is not your friend here. If you go & vent your emotions all to them it could still be a CLM (or career limiting move) even though you are just venting. This is a GREAT reason to have a mentor in another group or even company, the separation gives them more perspective on your situation than you are currently able to see.

In the next podcast, I’m going to change gears and share one of my favorite management books .. but get this it was written by a music teacher!

Until then, stay safe everyone.