How to quickly dissolve negative emotions for calmer workplaces.
By Declan Noone
In her book ‘10:10:10 – A Life Transforming Idea’, Suzy Welch introduced 10:10:10 as a device that helps you own your decisions while making your life more deliberate. As a device, it forces you to come to terms with what is important to you. In other words, it helps in providing you with a simple methodology that helps give you a greater perspective to your context which influences your decision making. It is a tool that I have found incredibly useful and powerful over the last number of years since I was first introduced to it. As Suzy herself states, it causes a shift in mind-set, moving away from a reactive mind-set to taking ownership of your decisions centred as a human being.
Defusing Negative Emotions
I have found another use for 10:10:10, one that helps mitigate the impact of my emotions on my behaviours and decision making.
When we talk about emotions, I always point to renowned researcher Barbara Fredrickson, who refers to emotions as “multicomponent response tendencies that unfold over relatively short time spans.”
Negative emotions are such an essential part of our survival as a species. Once upon a time, once we ventured outside our dwelling or cave, everything in our environment posed a potential risk to our lives. Negative emotions were and remain an integral part of our Fight, Flight responses or indeed if we are overloaded we can Freeze. Research has shown us that negative emotions have an impact on our physiology, as the heart pumps blood to our major muscle groups robbing other parts of our body of this vital fuel. The brain is equally impacted, as it now is expected to function with less blood. Consequently, our sight narrows and our hearing is diminished. We can all relate to this, as when something that causes fear or anxiety happens, we tend to become fixated on it and have difficulty paying attention to what is happening or being said around us. Think back to a particularly negative feedback session. What do you really remember aside from the negative, did you tune out, did you find yourself catastrophically thinking of worst possible outcomes?
Emotions are contagious. In the workplace we experience this multiple times on a daily basis. If those around you are angry or annoyed, you sense a level of anxiety as a result. If you colleagues are laughing and happy you tend to feel joy and happiness. I always find a perfect example of how contagious emotions are in the workplace is the impact of gossip. Gossip is rarely, if ever positive, we tend to complain about something that has happened or we believe is about to happen. We complain about individuals, how they interact, the decisions they have made and their impact on us. Meeting with colleagues for coffee or lunch where gossip is fuelling the conversation we tend to unconsciously allow ourselves to take ownership of the baggage that someone else has brought to the gathering and carry that with us well after the group has dispersed. So we carry the positive or negative emotions with us and carry them into the next room or gathering we are part of. They are contagious!!
How to defuse
Emotions fuel our subsequent behaviours and decision making. When we feel a negative emotion it is particularly strong and usually results in a behaviour or decision that is reactionary rather than constructive and considered. In that moment, how can you diffuse the stranglehold a negative emotion has on you and its impact on your behaviour and decision making? Well this is where 10:10:10 can help you gain some much needed perspective and place both the emotion and what has happened in perspective.
Rather than rigidly adhering to the 10 minutes; 10 months; 10 years that Suzy Welch references, why not place what has happened in a 10 minutes; 10 hours; 10 days or whatever time frame works for you?
How will I feel and what will I do as a result in
10 Minutes
10 Hours
10 Days
Consequently, is it all that bad what has happened? If you pause to reflect, you are more likely to engage the slow brain[1], the more logical and rational part of the brain. Pausing also helps diffuse the immediacy and strength of the emotions you are feeling. Consequently, you are more likely to Respond rather than React. Your behaviours are more considered and constructive and the language (words) you use tend to be more orientated towards achieving a positive dialogue rather than adopting a defensive posture.
In Serrano 99 our Positive Leadership programmes introduces participants to the Positive Leader Toolkit. We provide participants with the opportunity for positive self-development focusing on emotions, empathy, compassion and behavioural decision making linked to pre-identified life skills and it includes enhanced capacity building in the form of use of design thinking, project management, team building, leading change and communication skills.
[1] Book: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, 2011
