Chapter 15
Improving Self‐Regulation
Lord, please give me patience. If you give me strength, I may need bail money.
—My sister Sherry
Have you ever gotten so mad that you just blew up? You didn't even think about it. It just came out. Ever eaten something when you weren't hungry? Even though you knew it was bad for you? Have you ever checked Facebook or Twitter 50 times a day? These actions are called compulsions. We get stuck in routines where we're compelled to act without really thinking.
The same thing happens when we get triggered. We can be compelled to act or make decisions without really thinking. When emotions are high, things can get ugly.
Self‐regulation is the process of managing your internal states to perform optimally. This includes your impulses, resources, and especially your triggers. Self‐regulation builds upon self‐awareness skills. Once you're more aware of the quality and intensity of emotions as they occur, you can begin to identify, recognize, and work with your emotional “triggers” and the circumstances that cause them to arise.
Self‐regulation isn't just stopping yourself from getting angry or yelling. It includes other important leadership qualities like being flexible, adaptable, resilient, and optimistic.
Most importantly, the practice of self‐regulation helps take us out of automaton mode where it's easy to be driven by our emotions. We get better at the things we practice. When leaders practice being angry, distracted, or short‐fused, they get better at it. With the help of positive neuroplasticity training, we can reach the point at which we are actually compelled to act a certain way. Here's an example:
When I worked in advertising, I managed the global relationship for our top client, a Fortune 30 technology company. The client's global marketing organization, starting with the CMO, was toxic. She had an enforcer who managed the $1.5 billion‐dollar annual advertising budget that was spent through our agency. Let's call him Mick. Twenty years earlier, Mick had been a mid‐level employee at a small West Coast office in our company. Like many folks who move client side, Mick had grown stale in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. Nonetheless, his favorite phrase was “I know that. I worked at your agency.” He used it to intimidate our team and have them back off of informed strategies if they didn't support his own ideas. The client's stock had been on a rocket ship for years and there were no PC police in his company. To our staff's thinking, Mick had some $50 million reasons to be a jerk and confirming he was great at his job.
By the time I arrived, Mick was already legendary for his anger management issues. He had an advanced way of attacking people. When triggered, he'd make cutting analogies that reduced his staff to tears. In one negotiation, a manager on Mick's team wasn't fully prepared. Mick began aggressively pushing the manager to share his research, proving the agency should do more work and cut its pricing. It was obvious to the folks in the room that the manager didn't have the information. He couldn't make the case.
Working with Mick was like watching a volcano preparing to erupt. It kept everyone on edge. I can feel it in my body as I retell the story. In this case, the volcano erupted. Mick raised his voice, stood, and leaned across the conference room table and began banging his fist at his direct report. “You're like my frickin' five‐year‐old. I tell him to take a shower and he comes back stinking. He goes through the motions, but he doesn't do the job. That's you. You're a five‐year‐old pretending you did what you were told. Get out!” The manager exited without a word. Mick then turned to me, “This meeting is over. The next time we meet, he'd better come with the right information. And you guys better come prepared to cut your fees.” I've negotiated over five billion dollars in agency contracts over the years. I've gotten used to bravado and faux anger. Mick's wasn't faux. He was triggered regularly by things big and small. He was prone to yelling. He was actually compelled to be that way.
I'd like to say this was the most uncomfortable of our meetings, but that wouldn't be true. The client's culture didn't just tolerate Mick's behavior. It celebrated it. Their macho, hero culture embraced the lack of self‐control. That encouraged others to adopt similar behaviors. When fighting it head on didn't produce results, we raised our global fees by 15% to accommodate the ongoing inefficiency, wasted time, and abusive nature of the relationship. As Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.”1
For leaders, there's always a cost to not being in control of your emotions. You will rarely be aware of the full cost. Employees will leave. Clients will change vendors. Vendors will increase their prices to adjust for the cost of doing business with an a‐hole. Developing EQ skills helps you take an active self interest in not being a Jerk. Don't be a Mick.
Recognize Your Triggers
Every leader can name a few people who trigger them. The employee who talks too much or the person who always misses deadlines. Without realizing it, we're compelled to see them in a certain way. They become personified triggers for us. It's easy to put them into boxes and label them a moron, clown, troublemaker, and so forth. It's easy to slip into an unintentional style of managing these folks. We can become short, sarcastic, or dismissive without even realizing it. When this happens, others come to know who your favorites are, and that creates a domino effect for a team's culture.
With practice, you can recognize your triggers as they occur. Triggers can take any form. In the body, you might experience shallow breathing, a rapid heartbeat or feeling sick in your stomach. In your emotions, you might experience a flight‐or‐fight response, an emotional outburst, the desire to do harm, or the feeling that you have been harmed. In your thoughts, you might slip into blame, being judgmental, feeling like a victim, or go right to conspiracy theories about what is happening and why. Get used to witnessing them to take back control.
Triggers can also take the form of the neighbor's barking dog, meatloaf three days in a row, and even our kids. The environment we find ourselves in (intentionally or not) can present a continuous source of micro traumas or external triggers. Mindfulness helps you recognize them as they occur. Once you're aware, you can bring control and self‐regulation to your response. Dr. Rick Hanson uses the double arrow metaphor. When we're triggered, we can't always help getting hit by the first arrow, but we can learn to stop giving ourselves the second or third arrows (through revisiting the triggers over time).
Being Hijacked by Your Emotions. Mick's example is only extreme in his meanness. Over the course of ongoing disruption and change, it's ordinary to be worn down and to act out of compulsion. When our actions are taken over and we're driven by our emotions, brain researchers call this an “amygdala hijack.”
Remember, the thinking brain involves more neural circuitry, so its response time is slower than the emotional brain. The more we're led by our emotions, the more we can get hijacked by them. Over time, we can become experts at jumping to conclusions, assuming the worst, and flying off the handle. That affects how we make decisions and how we treat others. Sound familiar? We all have a colleague who occasionally flips his or her lid. And the more they do, the more likely they'll do it again. Sooner or later, some people walk around with their lids flipped all the time. We all know co‐workers who are always looking for a fight, assuming the worst, and spinning up conspiracy theories at the drop of a hat. They've gotten good at being hijacked by their emotions because they practice like it they're training for the next Olympics.
Self‐regulation helps you move from compulsion to choice. Studies have even shown that people with more meditation practice had less activity in the amygdala (the brain's fight‐or‐flight mechanism) when triggered by negative distractions. The more hours of training, the lower the likelihood to be triggered.2
To be clear, self‐regulation is not about avoiding, denying, or suppressing feelings. As leaders, it's certainly not about hiding from what triggers us. It's about fluency, and being able to more comfortably translate emotion signals into conscious (kind) responses. It's about moving away from “shooting from the hip” and moving towards a more connected human response to management.
Practice Choice
A leading researcher in self‐regulation was the Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl. Frankl died in 1997 at the age of 92. Much of his work centered around the notion that we have power over our own feelings. In his book, Man's Search for Meaning, he explored the importance of finding meaning in all forms of existence, even the most brutal ones, so there's a reason to continue living.3 Perhaps Frankl's best‐known quote is, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.” In mindfulness and EQ training, this has come to be known as the “sacred pause.”
As a leader, wouldn't it be nice to pause time for a few seconds to be one or two steps ahead of everyone else? Just enough time to collect your thoughts and then respond in a calm, cool, and collected fashion. Well, with a little practice, this superpower will be yours. As ABC News Correspondent, Dan Harris put it, “This respond, not react thing is a game changer. And this is why you see all these incredible people, these really successful athletes and business folks and entertainers doing this thing (mindfulness). The Superpower of not being yanked around by the voice in your head is immeasurably valuable.”4
EQ Goes Way, Way Back
The notion that we can be compelled by our emotions is not new. The Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, wrote about it in his famous writings Meditations back in the year 170, “If you are distressed by anything external (or internal), the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”5 For anyone still thinking this meditation stuff is too woo‐woo, Marcus wasn't just an emperor and a leader. Dude was a warrior, too.
Make Equanimity a Habit
Meditations is still revered as a literary tribute to service and duty. In it, Aurelius describes how to find and preserve equanimity. Equanimity is another foundational element of mindfulness and describes a state of mental stability and composure in the midst of conflict. Think of it as taking things just as they are without adding or taking away from them. Picking up my prior example—Mick was a client who wanted us to cut our fees. Nothing more. Nothing less. However, the mind's normal tendency is to make things worse than they are. In this case, our agency employees could add stories about how important the client is, Mick is evil, what if we lose the global business, he doesn't like me, what if I lose my job, and so on. In doing so, we would make the situation worse for all concerned. Maintaining a sense of equanimity (balanced reality) helps you to keep your emotions in check. There is usually a big difference between what is actually happening and how our egos, emotions and the stories we tend to add to our circumstances make it all seem worse. It's compounded when we share that worse view of events with our colleagues who're dealing with their own interpretations, assumptions, and stories. The stories in all of our heads make business harder than it needs to be. Developing a sense of equanimity allows you to stick to what is actually happening.
Practice Working with Triggers
Leaders are kind of like air traffic controllers for triggered employees. If you accept this as part of the job description, you will have removed a very common trigger for leaders ‐ employees. You can also practice managing other triggers in the moment, any time. For now, let's explore this with something that's already happened.
Bring to mind a time when you were recently triggered. Pick something meaty enough to explore, but not too traumatic. For example, a work situation that left you feeling exposed and vulnerable. Something that includes a reaction that you later regretted.
Try to recapture the moment. You were triggered. What were you feeling in your body? What emotions were you experiencing? Did the flight‐or‐fight response kick in? Did you feel a sense of righteousness? What thoughts went through your head? What was your actual response? How did you feel about your response afterward? There's a good chance the situation is still impacting you right now. That's normal. Over time, it may have even become worse in your recollection than it really was. That's also normal, just the storytelling brain doing what it does so naturally. Is there anything you can do now to alleviate this trigger or any recurring ruminations? If so, take that action.
Stop, in the Name of Love
Now, let's check in on one of most powerful mindfulness techniques for self‐regulation, SBNRR. This acronym stands for Stop‐Breathe‐Notice‐Reflect‐Respond. This is a potent tool to interrupt the wandering mind and bring yourself back to a point of calm and focus. It is especially powerful when you've been triggered. Let's explore each part of the acronym. You can also use the example you just brought to mind if you like.
This is a deep dive into the SBNRR practice. In real time, you don't need more than a few seconds to catch yourself to create a more positive outcome. The most important step is to create enough space to move from being compelled to respond out of emotion versus choosing to respond. Or not.
You May Not Even Have to Respond
Oftentimes, leaders are invited into drama without warning. This can happen when an employee gets fired up and want you to take sides. Taking the bait can reinforce the wrong behaviors and it can be divisive. Try, instead, listening with your full attention as if hearing it for the first time. Witness what's happening. Ask a few questions and let the person know you'll thoughtfully consider it for a later discussion. This also gives you the opportunity not only to think, but to allow emotions to dissipate, as well as allow you to speak to others involved. Instead of being triggered, you can be the calm in the storm—the coach with helpful advice.
Now, let's revisit how your example situation could have been better using the SBNRR technique. Based on the feelings in your body, the emotions felt, and the thoughts going through your head, how could SBNRR have helped? Would your response be different? Would you even have responded in that moment?
Even a few seconds of the SBNRR technique creates enough of a pause and reflection to explore different choices, ask a few questions, and connect with the person, or interrupt yourself when you get stuck in unhelpful ruminations. Set an intention to try the SBNRR practice once a day this week.
Use Music as a Practice
You can use any single point of focus, including music, as an opportunity to train your attention and increase positive emotions.7 Use the lyrics as your point of focus. When you notice you're distracted, come back to them. Singing with others has also been shown to improve positive emotions, no matter what your musical ability is.8 I even find both practices help me to more deeply appreciate the message of the music and find inspiration for my own life.
During our CML Workshop, I play the a capella version of the song Under Pressure by David Bowie and Freddie Mercury for an attention training exercise. You can find it on YouTube.9 It's become one of my favorite songs. Bowie and Mercury cover the full range of human emotions from crushing despair through incredible hope. One of the last lines in the song dares us to change our way of caring about ourselves.
I get mixed reactions from audiences during this practice. A good 75% of participants enjoy it. They realize that, although they've loved the song (sometimes for decades), they've never really listened to the words. The song's emotional highs and lows are intense. The hints at losing friends to suicide are crushing. The message of hope and love and giving yourself another chance are powerful and uplifting. Most people miss all of it. They never focus on the words, the emotions, and what's at risk. This can also be true in our daily relationships. Too much of what's going on is background music to our own stories and dramas playing out in our minds. With focus, we can explore, appreciate, and be inspired by the day‐to‐day norms, events, and relationships in our lives.
The remaining 25% of participants have a visceral negative reaction. They actually get triggered by the song. One leader shared he couldn't take the song being out of key. Huh? Others felt like Bowie and Mercury were yelling at them. Some find the lyrics too depressing. This is intentional. And magical when you have a hundred driven leaders in one room.
Don't Worry, We're All Under Pressure
The other reason I love this song is that it relates to business. Being a leader means dealing with challenges like ambiguity, conflict, and influencing others. It can be easy to feel like we're constantly under pressure. That can be offset by the satisfaction of closing a big deal or the adrenaline rush from the pace of business. Our physical, mental, and emotional health are all intertwined. Using music, art, and other hobbies to practice attention training can make the experiences even more enjoyable and simultaneously give you the benefits of a meditation practice. Two for the price of one.
Moreover, this attention training can unwittingly inspire both confidence and kindness. Yes, that's right. When you're under pressure, you can be vulnerable to irritability, impatience, and meanness. Mindfulness practice can help avoid the modern business “trifecta” mentioned earlier: unmanaged stress, mood disorders, and substance abuse.10 This always makes things worse.
Some leaders worry that mindfulness can dull the desire to win. CEOs, leaders, and warriors throughout history have found the opposite to be true. We're practicing mental strategies for being cool, focused, and confident under pressure. That's not woo‐woo. It's a competitive advantage.