How to improve your emotional agility at work

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah Ellis.

Helen Tupper: I'm Helen Tupper.

Sarah Ellis: You're listening to the Squiggly Careers podcast.  Every week, we talk about a different topic to do with work and discuss practical ideas and actions to help you find your way through our Squiggly world of jobs and careers.

Helen Tupper: Today, we're going to be talking about a topic, and I guess a bit of a concept called emotional agility, which is something that has been written and talked about by Susan David.  I've read the book and Sarah's watched the TED talk, and Sarah's done a survey on this, so we've probably dived into it a bit too deeply for our 30 -- we've talked about it extensively, so we've going to try and rise above all of our exploration and curiosity and questions so that we can get really focused and practical for you about this topic of emotional agility, because we do think it's really, really important.

So maybe if I start, Sarah, with a simple definition of what it is and what it isn't, and maybe if you do the why it's important, and that should hopefully help us to create some clarity.

Sarah Ellis: Set us up for success, yeah.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, clarity for us at the very least.  So a definition of emotional agility then that we're going to work with in the context of the podcast, so it is about being aware of and understanding our emotions and then choosing how to respond to those emotions in a way that helps us.

So rather than responding by default to what we might be thinking or feeling, it's really about choice.  Susan David says that, "It's the ability to come to your inner world, your thoughts, emotions, experiences and self-stories with courage, compassion and curiosity rather than maybe feeling defensive or responding in a default mode". 

The opposite of emotional agility is emotional rigidity, and that's where we get really attached to thoughts and processes that hinder rather than help us.  So hopefully that gives you a bit of an insight into what is it and what it isn't.

Sarah Ellis: I think it's useful for two or three different reasons; the first is that, with all of the uncertainty and change that we experience day in, day out, I do think there probably just are more emotions now in terms of the work that we do.  Positive emotions, negative emotions, but there is this sense of everything that's happening around us is likely to trigger emotions in us, so how we choose to respond to those is really important for us for our development, for how much we enjoy the work that we're doing.

I think, in the environments that we work in, perhaps traditionally there were one or two mindsets; there was either the, "We should all just get on with it mindset", which is maybe you ignore or avoid emotions, there's no place for emotions at work and everyone just keeps moving forward as one; or there's the, "Oh, we should be relentlessly optimistic, upbeat and positive", which also doesn't feel realistic, but also it doesn't feel like it reflects our experiences at work either because things don't go well all of the time.

When we have emotional agility, what psychologist, Susan David, and lots of the other researchers that have done work into this area have found is that you're less stressed, you make fewer mistakes, you're more innovative and it improves job performance.

So there are lots of reasons to believe here as to why this is useful.  I don't think it's easy; I don't think this is an easy thing.  There are not quick fixes that we can say, "Well, if you do this three things, brilliant, you'll just have -- it'll equal emotional agility", but I think there are some things that you can think about and start experimenting with that will start to make a bit of a difference.

Helen Tupper: I think the reason that you might want to do this, and the reason that you might want to keep listening is, if you're ever in a situation at work where you feel frustrated by your emotional response; you know you feel a bit out of a control of your emotions; you think, "Oh, why did I respond that way; why did I react that way?  That wasn't quite how I wanted to be", that's why I think it is a really useful topic.  If you can identify with that, then this is a really useful topic for you to listen on to now and take some practical tools away that might help you. 

To Sarah's point, it isn't easy, but there are some things you can do, it's just they're not super quick fixes.

Sarah Ellis: I love the way you said, "What might keep you listening…" almost like, by this point, everyone's just turned off; they're like, "This sounds too hard already!"

Helen Tupper: It sounds too hard!  We'll try and make it easier.  When we were talking about this, Sarah said, "It's not quite ten practical tips on productivity today, is it?" and it isn't.

Sarah Ellis: That's because we had to have about a two-hour conversation about it before we could even record the podcast!

Helen Tupper: So a couple of things then that might affect your emotional agility, and maybe some of these might resonant with you; so the first think that might affect your ability to have this emotional agility, to be able to reflect before you respond to a situation, one is the stories you tell yourself. 

As a bit of an experiment, in the book, Susan David talks about some situations and scenarios that it's useful to reflect on what your immediate response might be to these.  So, Sarah, you're going to be my guinea pig.

Sarah Ellis: I'm ready.

Helen Tupper: I'm going to give you a couple of scenarios.  Okay, what are your -- it's free association, so thoughts and feelings in response to these three situations.  Number one: meeting up with people from school for the first time in 20 years; go!

Sarah Ellis: No, thank you, and I don't want to, and that feels like a lot of pressure; I'd be really worried about it and self-conscious, don't know what to say.  I don't really like socialising at the best of times, so that just sounds like something that would make me very anxious.

Helen Tupper: That sounds awful, also very different to me; I'd be like, "Yay!  So excited!"  Okay, another one for you, number two: someone else who is succeeding in your team.

Sarah Ellis: Great.  I'd feel really happy.  I'd be like, "Brilliant".  I'd want to know more, I'd want to celebrate their success, and I would be interested in what has helped them to be successful.  So, is there anything I can learn from that; what have they done really well that we could share with other people in the team?  I'd be happy and want to celebrate and say, "Well done", and I'd wanted to know what can we learn from that success?

Helen Tupper: Okay.  Last one for you; a manager, who has not replied to a difficult or challenging email that you've sent them earlier in the week.

Sarah Ellis: A spiral of self-doubt --

Helen Tupper: Sounds delightful!

Sarah Ellis: -- would manifest itself.  It would have taken me a lot of bravery to have done that in the first place, and I don't like conflicts and I don't like confrontation, so that's already a hard thing for me to do and then, if somebody didn't respond, I would think they think I've done a bad job; or I've not said the right thing; or I wonder what they're thinking about me; or perhaps I'm not even important enough for them to bother, maybe they've ignored it.

Helen Tupper: Stop the spiral!  Stop now!

Sarah Ellis: So there you go.  So that would be a spiral of self-doubt.  So, what does that tell you about me?  What are the answers?

Helen Tupper: What does that tell you?  What are the answers?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.

Helen Tupper: Well, the answers are the stories that we tell ourselves about the situations that we find ourselves in can go one of two ways; they can go towards self-criticism, so, "What have I done wrong?  I'm not doing a great job here", you become very critical.  So, for example, assuming that meeting up with people from your school is going to be really a bad situation and you're going to feel bad about that; that was probably on the side of the criticism.  The manager, "What have I done?" that's become very self-critical.  So that's one way you can respond.

The other way that you can respond, which is more positive for your emotional agility, is with curiosity.  When you talked about someone else succeeding in the team and you were like, "Oh, what can I learn from them and what have they done?" as well as all the nice you said about congratulating them, that's more about being curious about a situation. 

Susan David says that how we respond to situations, the stories we tell ourselves, what we really want to do is spend more time being curious and open about the situations we find in, rather than defaulting to self-criticism because that's taking us towards rigidity.

So I guess, for everyone listening, maybe think through what your honest responses would be to those situations to almost see where your baseline is; on a scale of self-criticism to open curiosity, where are you sitting based on your responses?

Sarah Ellis: So I got one of three?

Helen Tupper: You did.

Sarah Ellis: That's better than zero than three, I guess!

Helen Tupper: Yes, it is.  What a curious way of responding!  Okay, so one of the other things that can be a bit of an impact for our emotional agility is how many hooks we have.  These are things that almost mean that we fall into the fixed, rigid thinking.  She calls it a premature cognitive commitment, ie we just default to a negative response.

A couple of common emotional hooks that aren't great; the first one is called "thought blaming".  So this is where you blame your action on a thought.  For example, "I thought Sarah was stressed today, so I didn't ask her for her help".  That thought, it's not evidence; it's not a fact, it's just that I've thought something and then I have created a whole set of actions that I might not have done based on a thought I've had.  So we blame our thoughts for the actions that we take.  That's one thing.  We don't really test those thoughts.

The second thing that be a bit of an emotional hook, that we get stuck in rigid thinking, is what she calls "monkey-mindedness"; this is internal chatter that can magnify a situation.  She says that some people who go round and round and round and round in their heads, they get obsessed with the push of the pass and a pull of the future, ie something's happened in the past that we -- it drives our thinking; we can't let go of it, or we get so obsessed with what something could do, we spend a lot of time thinking about it.  We're not very good at staying present basically and being with -- if we can't stay present, then it's very difficult for us to reflect on what's happening in the moment.  Those are the past and the future feelings that can drive us.

Then the last thing that can sometimes get in the way of us having emotional agility is outgrown ideas.  So, for example, maybe there was some point in your career where you developed an idea that if you're too assertive, then people won't like you.  It's maybe something that you learnt when you were younger, like that whole if you're bossy then that's not a good thing; these outdated ideas that somehow have hooked into your brain and that are now driving how you are thinking and feeling.  Those outdated or outgrown ideas can make us more rigid and unable to have the agility that can help us.

So the useful thing here is to reflect on whether, in terms of how you respond to a situation, maybe whether you are someone who avoids engaging with emotion; it's what Susan David calls being a "bottler", so you distract yourself with other things, you dismiss the emotion, you're just not engaging with it in any way; or maybe you over-engage, you're a bit of a thinker, a ruminator; she calls this being a "brooder", and that's the person who's probably doing a bit of the monkey-mindedness; you're making it too big in your mind.  Are you a bottler, Sarah, or a brooder?

Sarah Ellis: Well, we were talking about this before, weren't we, and I think we've realised that we're different to each other here --

Helen Tupper: What a surprise!

Sarah Ellis: -- which I can't work out whether that's almost like the ultimate worst combination or whether that's useful or whether it just is what it is.  We think, when we were chatting through our examples, that I'm more of a brooder; I was thinking, "I think I'm a bottler as well", but I think the way my emotions would manifest themselves is I would think about them a lot; I'd keep thinking about them; I wouldn't let them go, and probably, you can imagine, that might mean that I make something bigger in my mind than it perhaps is in reality.

So like, for example, if you and I have had a difficult conversation or if I feel like a meeting hasn't gone very well, I'll keep thinking about that and that'll stay in my head for a long time; I'll keep it alive for a long time.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, I won't do that.  My friend, Kay, says that I compartmentalise my emotions, which I think basically means putting in a box.  So I'm a boxer, not a bottler.  But I'll be like, "Oh, that's to do with that situation and I'm not going to think about at the moment.  That's going to get in my way if I spend too much time thinking on it".  The point is that neither of those things are helpful; me, avoiding engaging with the emotions is a rigid way of thinking that stops me learning, and Sarah overthinking the emotions is also not necessarily helping her to move forward and take action with it.  So neither of them are great.  What is better, Sarah?  What can we do that is better?  Help us!

Sarah Ellis: So, let's move on then to ways that you can become more emotionally agile.  I think it is really important to say that everybody experiences these times when we do become more emotionally rigid and more fixed in our thinking.

So please don't now beat yourself up and become -- or maybe you're listening and, if you're someone who moves on quickly, you're probably not doing that, or if you're like me, you could perhaps get into really worrying about, "Oh, am I managing my emotions in the right way?"  What we really want to think about is, well, what actions can you take in those moments where perhaps your emotions do feel difficult, hard, they're hindering you rather than helping you; what could you do? 

So what we've tried to summarise is almost three things to work through in the moment.  So, when you are having a tough emotional moment, what could you do?  So we're going to go through these three almost steps and we'll use an example as we go through because we found that helpful as a way to think about this, and then we're just going to finish by talking about a more proactive way as well of thinking about emotional agility.

This first bit, this is, in the moment, something doesn't feel very good; you feel quite emotional.  The first question, a coach-yourself question to ask is, who are you listening to and who is louder in your mind right now?  Is it your inner critic or is it your inner coach who is in charge? 

Often I think, when we feel emotional, we're not sure what those emotions are, but it just doesn't feel good or it doesn't feel right, is when our inner critic kicks in.  This isn't bad, and I actually like -- so Susan David talks about this idea of doubts as data, and our inner critics are doing what they're designed to do; spot things that make us scared and help us to feel safe.

So, at this point, it's not actually about going, "I'm going to ignore that inner critic", I think it's actually about noticing first of all that's who's in charge right now, having that awareness and then listening to what are you telling yourself?  So actually almost understand what is that inner critic saying?  So that's the first thing.

Most of the time I think, in these hard moments, your inner critic is more likely to be in charge.  Rather than ignoring or avoiding that inner critic or spending too much time with that inner critic, letting it keep going for ages and ages, just notice what am I telling myself; what are those self-stories that Helen talked about?

So step two, when you've noticed and heard your inner critic, is then to start to label what you're hearing as either facts or feelings.  The reason this is helpful is it helps you to see a situation much more objectively.  So, for example, Helen and I had a meeting last week that didn't go very well; I came out of that meeting and I felt emotional, I wasn't about to cry or anything, I wasn't that emotional, but it felt tough and it felt difficult.  I was frustrated; I couldn't really understand what had happened.  At that moment, we can't see the wood from the trees, and that's where facts and feelings can be really useful.

What I could then do then is think, "Okay, what are the facts of that situation?"  Helen and I hadn't had time to talk before that meeting because we'd had three other meetings straight before so we'd not spent any time together; that's just a fact.  The fact was the meeting happened, it went well, the people in that meeting got what they needed so, okay, that's fine too.  Those are all those facts.

How am I feeling about that meeting?  Okay, well I'm now, rather than just going, "Emotional", you actually get more specific, you think, "I felt a bit anxious during the meeting; I felt frustrated and actually maybe a bit stuck".  You go, "Okay, that's useful".  So you've just started to basically take a bit more ownership I think of your feelings and to drill down into them but also to make sure you seek the facts of the situation.  Particularly for me, I guess the reason this is useful is it also stops you magnifying things. 

Another way that I could see that situation is, "Well, that meeting was a disaster; Helen and I are a disaster when we're in meetings together", and you can quite quickly get to -- you can start to apply what happens in one instance into everything that you do.  Then you could start to question, "Maybe we're not very good at working together and maybe we're not the right people to run a business", and quite quickly, that spiral could really happen; versus perhaps, if you're Helen and you're someone who bottles that up, what Helen might have done after that meeting is gone, "Okay, that didn't feel great; I'm just going to move on to the next thing".

Helen Tupper: That was exactly what I did!

Sarah Ellis: I know it is!

Helen Tupper: It is entirely what it does!  So funny!

Sarah Ellis: Whereas I was having some sort of existential crisis and you just literally moved on to the next thing!

Helen Tupper: But the thing is, what would happen is, it would happen in another meeting and I would just go, "Oh, it's happening again!"  It's almost like the small bits or irritation would add up because I would never engage with the emotion, and it would almost just get bigger and bigger I think in my mind, because I'd just keep repeatedly seeing it rather than working through it.

It's interesting as well about the naming the emotions; it makes me think about me and my little boy, Henry, at the moment.  So my little boy is six; he gets quite frustrated just generally, and it comes out in little outbursts, and I've been doing a bit of a research on how I can help him, and one of the things that, in my research that I've been doing as a way of helping him has been basically getting him to name his emotions.  So I say to Henry now, when he gets really, really frustrated, I'm like, "Tell me what you're feeling; what are the words?"

Sarah kindly bought me a book on emotions as well for children so that I could say, "Is it this feeling?" and it's so much better.  We can now have a conversation about, in that moment when he's like -- he just gets really, really cross, I say to him, "What are the feelings?" and he'll be like, "Angry, frustrated, upset", and I'll be like, "Okay, let's talk about that".  It's like the gateway to a conversation rather than just this big emotional response that actually, to be honest, neither of us can really understand.  So I appreciate we're not all a six-year-old, but I have seen that act of naming your emotions, how it really helps you move forward rather than just the, "I'm feeling a bit emotional".

Sarah Ellis: I also think it helps you to appreciate and have empathy with each other because you might just come out of a meeting and feel like, "Oh, that didn't go well", but that doesn't really help you, whereas actually, if we're both really clear about, "Well, what are the emotions that you are feeling?" naming those, you start to see, "Oh, okay, well people experience the same situation in different ways"; then you can actually understand the other person so then you can find a way through things.

So the third step then, and this is where you to get into responses and your behaviour, and probably until this point, it's more about your mindset, and then, at this point, I think it's then going, "Okay, so what are you going to do with that knowledge and that awareness that you've gained?"  This is where we really want to think about how we respond and does it align with our values?

So Susan David describes the relationship between emotional agility and values, and she says, "Emotions change like the weather, but your values stay still"; I'm slightly précising there but I thought that weather analogy was a really good one.  It was like, well your emotions will change all the time, within a day can actually change quite dramatically, but your values, they're core to you; they're what motivates and drives you; they're stable, and you can keep coming back to them.

If you use your values as a way to guide your responses and the behaviour that then you take, that then feels very consistent with how you want to show up; you're much more likely to feel good about what you then do.  So just to give you an example, so my four values are achievement, ideas, learning and variety.  When I was thinking last week, "This meeting didn't go well", I was feeling some of those emotions; I was saying I was feeling like anxious, stuck, etc.

Now, because I am somebody who would just overthink things, my inclination, particularly as an introvert, is to not say anything and to stay in my head; almost that's my comfort zone; just keep thinking about it, nothing will ever change but I'll just keep thinking about it.  In some ways, you sort of luxuriate I think in that because that's your natural personality, whereas actually if I say, "Oh yeah, but those are my values, ultimately what motivates and drives me, I'm not going to learn anything from that situation unless I do something about it".

That doing something about it is, I need to have a conversation with Helen to tell her this is how I'm feeling and so that then we can figure it out so that we can both get better, so that I can get better so that we can both get better.  Ultimately, I'm so motivated by learning, and probably a bit of achievement there because I think, "Oh well, if we learn then we'll get better and then we'll achieve more", and then achievement's my number one value and then I really start to think, "Well, maybe I could have a conversation with Helen; maybe I could…" because it feels hard. 

This is hard because you're probably going against I think the easy option.  I don't think this is ever easy to choose to respond in a way that perhaps doesn't feel as natural, but if it aligns with your values, I think that's the gentle nudge, or perhaps sometimes a slightly harder push, that we need to respond positively and usefully and in a way that makes us feel good.

So, fortunately, I was brave enough to have that conversation with Helen, and I do appreciate it's easier for us because we do, most of the time, get on very well; I feel like this podcast is making us sound like we don't, but we do!

Helen Tupper: We do.

Sarah Ellis: I'm so glad that I did because then straightaway, as we've described, it forces Helen to then acknowledge those emotions, because actually she didn't feel like it had gone very well either, but she wouldn't have talked about it either because she would have just moved on to the next thing. 

Then, quite quickly, we could say, "Oh well, why not?" and, "Oh, actually we have noticed this before and it's not changing so what else do we need to try out; what could we experiment with?"  It felt really constructive, and we both then said, I think within 24 hours, we're so glad that we've got to the point in our business together where we can have those kinds of conversations because I'm not sure, even a year ago, we would have been able to do that. 

So, at this point, you finally get to, after everything we've talked about, 30 minutes in --

Helen Tupper: That it might be okay!

Sarah Ellis: You get to the payoff.

Helen Tupper: The values thing, it really resonates with me.  So two of my values are about growth and energy and if I think about, "Well, if my default response is to bottle and avoid engaging with emotions, then that actually does not align with my values because, if I do that, I'm not growing".  If I think about that situation that we were in in that meeting, even though I've tried to put that into a box and avoid it a bit, it didn't feel like great energy.

Sarah Ellis: No.

Helen Tupper: It didn't feel like great energy in the moment; I didn't like how that energy felt for me, and that's one of my values.  So, if I come away from a situation and I think, "Well, how was that default emotional response; how did that align with my values?" and, if it didn't, it makes me go, "Well, that's not what I want; I want energy; I want growth; I've got to do something different in order to get that".

So, yeah, it definitely works for me too and that, yeah, I think ultimately we just got better at being curious about our emotions now; rather than self-critical or even critical or someone else's emotional response, we're much better at going, "Oh, why did you feel like that, and why was that?"

Sarah Ellis: I think what could be really useful for this topic is having a few go-to coach-yourself questions, and perhaps I'll have a go at putting a few of these together over the next couple of weeks for people and share it on our Instagram; we're just @amazingif; asking questions like, "Am I approaching this situation with curiosity or am I being self-critical or critical of other people?" 

I think that, to me, is like, "Oh".  If I just keep asking myself that question I think it would prompt positive action for me.  I think there are probably two or three things, like, "Have I worked out what the difference between the facts and the feelings of this situation are?" 

Just keep going back to things that can help you to work through these situations that are quite short and quite simple, but then just get you, very quickly actually; we did this within half a day probably; get you to a much better place and a place of learning and development.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, absolutely.  I think acknowledging the emotions is just so important.  One smaller thing I think which then we've talked about, but I do think it's really practical in terms of how emotional agility can help you on an almost more day-to-day basis really, which is with how you think about your goals.

So when we set goals for ourselves at work, rigid thinking creeps in when we start to do goals because we think we have to.  So when we're making these assumptions, like, "I have to get promoted in order to be successful; I have to be involved in that project or people won't think I'm doing a good job", whatever it is, those "have to" types of thoughts and feelings that actually might influence the goals that we set for ourselves.

Whereas emotional agility becomes more part of the way that we work and the things that we do when it becomes about "want to"; "I want to get involved in that project so I can, I don't know, learn, grow and develop; I want to build a relationship with that person because I think they'll be a really meaningful stakeholder for me and my career".

It's just about thinking about your goals from a position of what you want to do and why you want to do it rather than what you're feeling like to have do to.  Anything that feels like you have to do it or you should do it is a bit of a signal that there might be some emotional rigidity behind that, whereas emotional agility is a thing that informs what we want to go and do.  So it's small but might inform your goal-setting going forward.

So that's where we're going to leave this rather big topic today.  We've tried to make it as practical as possible, so hopefully it's made sense to you and you've been able to take away some things that you can reflect on.  As Sarah said, we'll try and get you a few coach-yourself questions. 

We would really love your feedback.  Let us know; has this resonated with you as a topic?  Can you see any of these behaviours in yourself?  Maybe you're a bottler or you're a brooder.  Let us know; you can just get in touch with us at helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com and we would love to get your feedback on this topic whether it's about the mindset, the facts and feelings or the acting in the ways that align with your values, or maybe just some of those smaller goal-setting things.  We hope there have been some actions that you can take away from today.

Sarah Ellis: So for next week's podcast, we've got something slightly different for the next couple of months for you.  We've got our third series of our Ask the Expert interviews, which will be going live next Tuesday, and we're going to do them slightly differently.  So we're going to do one week of an Ask the Expert; so next week you'll hear myself interview Celeste Headlee talking about the art of conversations and listening.

Celeste's TED talk is one of my, I think it's in my top three I would say, certainly top five, just because she talks about the ten ways basically to have better conversations.  She's previously been an MPR Radio host and she's just really practical; she's got great ideas.  She was a real joy to talk to and I think it'll be perfect for the podcast.  I would anticipate this will be a really popular episode.  So that's coming up next week.

Then, the week after, it will be back to Helen and I talking about a topic, and then the week after that, we'll have another Ask the Expert.  So we're going to do a week of Ask the Expert, a week of Helen and I talking, just to try something new out and to keep things mixing up and interesting, hopefully, for you all.

Helen Tupper: Also just a quick update for anybody that applied for our Squiggly Career Advocate Awards, thank you so much for your application.  We've had hundreds of different applications, and Sarah and I have now got a bit of a job to do with reviewing all of those, but I can't wait because I'm very much looking forward to reading all of the stories that people have shared with us; and we will be announcing our advocates at the end of April.

Sarah Ellis: So that's everything for this week.  As always, thank you so much for listening, we really do appreciate it, and we'll speak to you again soon.  Bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye, everyone.