What didn’t you learn at school?
What didn’t your parents teach you?
What are we still trying to learn to do better?
FEELINGS & EMOTIONS
I’ve learnt more about feelings and how poor we are at expressing how we feel.
We can place the responsibility of on our parents – they haven’t, and many of us havnt’t learnt how to do this at school.
When I explore emotional intelligence with clients, I use ‘feeling’ words as prompts to help them articulate how they feel.
It’s difficult.
So, as we start to ‘return’ the workplace, it’s critical that we don’t view the ‘return’ through our own lens.
Where you might feel ‘confident’ & ‘connected’ about getting back together, your team may feel entirely different.
For example, a key member may feel anxiety.
And they may not tell you how they feel.
We’re not all articulate in expressing these feelings.
Our EMOTIONAL LITERACY as a nation, is poor.
Let’s talk Anxiety.
Anxiety is designed to alert us, to make sure we’re aware of what is dangerous to us. It also helps us adapt. Yet, it’s unhelpful when you can’t do anything and get’s in the way of daily living.
You can help your staff if you sense there is anxiousness:
Ask yourself – am I OK, how do I feel about going back to work
Ask others - seek out feedback if they notice your behaviour has changed
Ask others: How are you feeling? State feeling words to help identify specifically eg Anxious, cautious, eager?
I don’t know about you, but I am concerned that some people’s lax actions worry may tip us into another wave of the pandemic. So, I am cautious about my movements.
I talk about this, labeling emotions to help your others
How are you helping your team to talk about how they are feeling?
Do you have a high level emotionally intelligent team?
What activities do you have in place to help the team check in?
For example, The Emotional Culture Deck provides words to use to check in.
What do you do yourself to check in?
We tend to use emojis to label how you feel - It can help identify if the emotion is helpful or unhelpful.
Find an emoji which demonstrates these feelings:
Welcome
Grateful
Connected
Supported
Confident
Involved
Empathetic
Doubt
Alienated
ALONE
Hesitant
Judged
Anxious
Disconnected
How are you feeling this Friday?
What’s your emoji?