Self-Management
Self-management happens when we begin to use our awareness of our feelings to manage ourselves. Building on the base of self-awareness, we use that information to control and manage our emotions. Self-management is the ability to control our emotions so that they don’t control us. That is the simple but powerful truth about self-management. We need to use what we know about our emotions to control and manage those emotions and our behavior. This includes techniques that help us to regulate our emotions, to identify and prevent emotional triggers, and to identify and prevent thinking that can lead to emotional breakdowns.
Why is it important to manage our emotions? The alternative is not very attractive. Individuals who don’t manage their emotions in the business world are called rage-aholics and drama queens. They cause others to sigh, roll their eyes, even leave the room in fright, and respond themselves with anger. It should go without saying that if you cannot manage yourself you cannot manage others. No one wants to follow someone who is not in control of himself or herself. The stereotypical boss who is valued because he or she uses whatever means necessary to get the results from a team is a relic of the past.
I had a caveman manager like that for several years. He was a loose cannon; a rage-aholic who survived only because he achieved results. I worked for him on a couple of large projects and he had the same modus operandi—to berate people, run roughshod over them, and intimidate them into performing as he wanted. And it didn’t matter if you were on his team or somehow in the way of his success. He treated everyone the same.
In fairness to this manager, the stakes were high, and it was a high pressure job. We were involved in recovering red projects, that is, projects that were failing. The environment was very stressful. That said, the end did not justify the means. There were better ways of achieving the results. The manager simply was not able to use any other means because he did not have control over his emotions.
When I worked for this manager years ago, he was valued by the organization for the results he was able to achieve. These days, I don’t think that organizations tolerate or want that kind of behavior. They want positive results, of course, but are unwilling to sanction caveman-like methods that reflect a lack of emotional self-control. PMs and leaders today are expected to be in control of themselves and their emotions.
That is not to say that anger doesn’t have a place in business or in project management. Channeled productively, anger can move us and our project team members better than any other emotion. The key is to have control over anger, just as we need to control all of our emotions. That is all part of self-management.
PMs and leaders of all types need to control themselves and manage their emotions. They cannot afford to let their emotions overtake them and dictate their behavior or they will find they aren’t leading anyone for very long.
The Emotional Intelligence Model for Project Management
In Figure 4-1, we show the emotional intelligence model for project management and the domain of self-management. As shown in the diagram, self-management includes the single competency of self-control. Self-control is the ability to be in control of our emotions so that they do not control us.
Self-Awareness Precedes Self-Management
Self-awareness is a necessary predecessor to self-management and self-control. After all, if we don’t know what we are feeling it can be difficult to do anything about it. Awareness can be a big help when it comes to managing negative emotions. When we are feeling a negative emotion, we can often disarm or control the impact of that feeling just by being aware of what it is and why we are feeling it.
For example, if I feel scared before a meeting with an important client, I can often calm myself simply by naming the feeling and acknowledging the reasons for it. Once I realize that I am scared, I can do something about it. Almost anytime I am doing something important, I am going to feel scared. So when I feel scared, I simply remind myself that this means it is important. Meetings scare me because they are important. Recognizing that I am scared because the meeting is important to me is usually enough to calm me and remind me that my feelings (fear in this case) are serving me.
Figure 4-1: Emotional Intelligence Framework Showing Self-Management.
Self-Control
What Is Self-Control?
Self-control is the ability to remain composed in spite of our emotional state. This does not mean forcing a smile when we are sad or angry. It does mean registering sad and angry feelings, as well as controlling our reaction to those feelings. For most PMs, managing the negative feelings is going to be the biggest priority.
Negative Feelings Can Cripple a Team
In a team environment, negative emotions can be crippling, especially when they stem from the leader. This environment provides plenty of opportunities to practice self-management. Emotions can run rampant on projects where the stakes are high for both individuals and organizations.
Projects can be stressful due to the constraints placed on them. Deadlines are usually aggressive if not downright unrealistic. Budgets are often set without regard to the work required. The scope of work can be unrealistic or subject to interpretation or negotiation. They often involve doing things for the first time. Many PMs take the success or failure of the project personally. These factors can place a lot of pressure on the them. PMs need to learn to manage their own stress and calm others by their example.
All of this can cause negative emotions in the project team and the PM. Negative emotions can poison the project environment, especially those emanating from the leader. Anger, disappointment, rage, sadness, and fear all need to be monitored and managed so that they don’t impact the rest of the team. That doesn’t mean stuffing these emotions, dismissing them, or pretending they don’t exist. It does mean managing those emotions.
There is nothing like the pressure of an intense project to bring out the best and the worst in us. Any tiny crack in our emotional foundation is brought to light and often, when exposed to heat and pressure, it will result in unpleasant side effects. Tough times tend to reveal our true emotional nature.
If we don’t manage our emotions in the project environment, very bad things can happen. In addition to poisoning the atmosphere of the team, we can get a reputation for being out of control. Others may avoid working with us and our team. We may have a difficult time retaining the best resources, and we will tend to attract team members who are comfortable working in negative environments. Our team members might quietly try to sabotage the project. Our relationships with stakeholders will suffer.
I have been there myself. Sadly, I have lost control of my emotions on a project more than once. Sometimes the consequences were no big deal, and the project moved on. Other times, my lack of emotional control hurt me and my team.
In one particularly painful example, I was managing a large international project. I had a poor relationship with one of the team leads working for me. The relationship had deteriorated to the point where it was adversarial. There was an ongoing battle of wills about this team lead’s travel to the client site. It culminated one day when my team lead sent me another travel request via e-mail. I was incensed and had reached my breaking point. I was also feeling under pressure due to some criticism from the client about the project team’s performance. Without thinking about my reaction or waiting to calm down, I replied to the e-mail in a terse and critical way. The team member was angry about my response and escalated it to my manager, who called me to ask “What gives?” It was embarrassing. Worse, it led to a painful, formal investigation that dragged on for two months.
Of the many mistakes that I made in this situation, the main one was that I responded inappropriately out of anger. I should have calmed down, evaluated alternative courses of action, and then chosen an appropriate response. I also should have been addressing the underlying relationship breakdown that was the undercurrent for the issue. As it was, I responded too quickly and emotionally, without thinking. I was not managing myself. The e-mail response was the single event that I wish I could have taken back.
In this particular situation, the e-mail and the formal investigation showed that I needed to manage myself better. When the investigation had run its course, the individual felt he could no longer work for me and left the project. That turned out to be very helpful to me and to the overall project. It was something I wish I had addressed sooner and directly.
Self-Control Is for All Emotions
As noted, self-control is critical for negative emotions because they can poison the atmosphere in a team. But we also need to exercise control over our expression of positive emotions.
Consider a situation in which you are happy and excited over the achievement of a significant milestone just prior to a meeting with a team member who is upset about a conflict. Exhibiting your positive emotions would be inappropriate in this discussion, just as they would be in a situation when someone has just received bad news, such as a death in the family. As the PM, you may need to dampen your excitement or happiness in such situations.
There are lots of opportunities for emotional self-control on a long project. In fact, being on a prolonged project can be like riding an emotional roller coaster. The longest project I ever managed was three years. During that time, the team went through a lot of emotions. We reached six major client milestones and numerous minor milestones. We kicked off new years, new phases of the engagement, and new initiatives. As a team of nearly 100 people, we experienced promotions, demotions, firings, resignations, the births of babies, marriages, and deaths in our families.
Over the course of that project, it was important that I managed my emotions. I shared the excitement of reaching important milestones with one part of the team while sharing sadness over the loss of a key resource in another part of the team. I also had a team lead who lost his father and father-in-law within six months. It was critical that I managed both the highs and the lows during this time.
The larger the team and the longer the project, the more likely it is that you will have a wide range of emotions at any one time. As the PM and leader of the team, you have to be balanced and not go to extremes. This requires a high degree of emotional self-control.
Self-Control Helps Us Avoid Emotional Breakdowns
An emotional breakdown is an involuntary response to an emotional situation. We are “losing it” when we have an emotional breakdown. Road rage is an extreme form of emotional breakdown. Individuals who experience road rage become unpredictable and out of control. Unfortunately, we don’t see a physical sign like the one in Figure 4-2 warning us of impending emotional breakdowns.
While road rage may be unheard of in a project environment, emotional breakdowns are not. The stress and strain of everyday life can cause emotional breakdowns. Add to that a challenging project environment and the likelihood of emotional breakdowns is very high.
In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman uses the term “emotional hijacking” for these breakdowns. He contends that our emotions are hijacked by our primitive neurological systems. These systems were designed for our protection and survival. They also set us up for emotional hijacking, which is an extreme form of the fight or flight response mechanism.1 Let’s take a closer look at what is involved in an emotional hijacking.
Emotional Hijacking
If we were to diagram it, an emotional hijacking might look like the picture in Figure 4-3 below. When we get a stimulus, which is generally either people or events, it will either lead us to a swift emotional reaction or to a thoughtful response.
Figure 4-2: Warning of Emotional Breakdown Ahead.
Respond Don’t React
Ironically, the same stimulus can cause us to have either a reaction or a response, depending on our emotional state and our interpretation of the events. Consider the case where you are driving on a highway. If someone were to cut you off, you may have either a reaction or a response. If I am in a good mood and not in a hurry to get somewhere, I might just give a wave to someone who cut in front of me on the highway. This would be a response, something that I chose. If I were having a bad day, fighting with my wife, or had just received a critical performance review, the same exact scenario might lead me to an automatic reaction.
Figure 4-3: Respond, Don’t React.
Figure 4-4: Thinking Brain and the Amygdala.
The difference between these two alternatives is what happens in our brain. We actually have two brain systems—our primitive brain, made up of the amygdala and the limbic system, and our thinking brain, made up of the neocortex (see Figure 4-4). Our primitive brain is hardwired to react to specific threats. This is the fight-or-flight fight response which is there for survival. When the amygdala is under a heightened state of alert, it can go off with little provocation. Properly stimulated, the primitive brain causes us to react without engaging our neocortex or thinking brain. The primitive brain is faster, and it can actually prevent the thinking brain from engaging. Literally, we act without thinking.
Thinking Brain and Amygdala
Whether we call that an emotional hijacking or emotional breakdown, the result is the same; our emotions have taken over, and we are not in control. Emotional breakdowns are involuntary. We are reacting to an event without control of our behavior.
The alternative approach is to choose a thoughtful response, which needs to come from the neocortex. How can we think about a response if the neocortex is slower than the primitive brain? The key is to calm the amygdala and slow things down long enough to allow ourselves to think. We need to stay cool.
The best PMs tend to stay positive and unflappable no matter what comes their way. I am jealous of those men and women. For my part, I have to continually strive to do better and better in this area.
I once hired a project leader based on his stated ability not to lose it. I knew that I felt under pressure on this particular project and that I needed someone who would remain cool. In the interview, he said that he prided himself on “staying one degree cooler than everyone else in the room.” That was critical for us on this particular project and his statement got him the job. We worked well together for two years and during that time, true to his word, he was usually one degree cooler than everyone else.
What is this ability to stay one degree cooler than everyone else? This is what some experts refer to as emotional resilience. Emotional resilience helps us to maintain calm when others are losing it.
Not everyone is able to stay cooler than everyone else. In fact, many people experience some sort of emotional breakdown during work. Each person may have one breakdown that is more likely to occur than any other. Here are some examples of emotional breakdowns that you might see in a project environment:
1. Angry Tirades
Whether at work, in public, or in private, we have all seen someone explode with anger and blast someone else. We may know individuals who are likely to explode. Perhaps we even avoid certain people for fear they will blow up on us.
2. Door Slamming
Not able to take any more, a person leaves the room and slams the door behind them. Our modern offices today are more likely to be open cubicles, so instead of door slamming, you might hear phone slamming or mouse slamming.
3. E-mail Letter Bomb
Our modern office tools make sending an angry e-mail easier than ever. This is a common way for people to vent anger on a project. Most of us have probably sent something we wish we hadn’t, or we have seen others do it. It’s not pretty, and it says a lot more about the sender than the recipient.
4. Withdrawal and Isolation
This is when people pull away, avoid meetings, and perhaps even dodge specific people on the project.
5. Holding Grudges and Getting Even
Holding grudges often comes in response to unfavorable decisions being made, criticism received, or some other perceived slight. This type of breakdown often results in a secret vow to get even. A score may even be kept of who is winning and who is losing. This breakdown is especially harmful because it may be secret and it can go on for a long time.
6. Criticizing
This breakdown results in criticism intended to hurt another. Unwarranted criticism often comes from individuals who are feeling insecure, threatened, or emotionally vulnerable. Criticism is often the response to the hurt we feel. Criticism may be buried in helpful sounding remarks or it may be out in the open. Either way, the impact is the same.
7. Sarcasm and Inappropriate Humor
Sarcasm is a red flag for emotional breakdowns as discussed in Chapter 3. Both sarcasm and inappropriate humor are learned responses to situations in which we don’t want to address the truth directly.
8. Playing the Victim
Playing the victim is also one of the red flags for emotional breakdowns that we discussed in Chapter 3. When people play the victim, they act powerless and not responsible for their actions. They will blame someone (or perhaps the entire world) for their situation and their actions. This is disempowering to the individual and unacceptable to the team.
How many of these emotional breakdowns do you experience? Look at the list and reflect on last week, last month, and last year. Have you had more than one of these? Do you experience all of these or have one or two preferred breakdowns?
My own common breakdowns include e-mail letter bombs, criticizing, sarcasm, and inappropriate humor. I have become aware enough to eliminate many of these responses from my repertoire, and I have the grace and peace of mind to not go down on myself if I have a relapse. I just say “There I go again” and try to determine what caused the emotional breakdown.
If you are having trouble identifying your emotional breakdowns, try getting some input from others. Take the time to ask your peers, team members, or your spouse how they see you. They will be glad you are investing in yourself and you might be surprised to learn more about yourself from them.
Emotional Breakdowns May Be Preceded by Emotional Triggers
Specific emotional breakdowns may be traced back to emotional triggers. An emotional trigger is a situation, external stimulus, or activating event that leaves us vulnerable to emotional breakdown. Triggers are not necessarily the cause of the breakdown, but they serve as a catalyst or provide fertile ground for a breakdown.
One way we can protect ourselves against emotional breakdowns is to identify the emotional triggers that immediately precede breakdowns. By sensitizing ourselves to what leads to the breakdown, we can break the cycle.
Adele Lynn identified the following ten emotional triggers in her book The EQ Difference: A Powerful Plan for Putting Emotional Intelligence to Work.
• Moods and attitudes of others
• Pre-thinking or foreshadowing
• Dwelling
• Personality
• Hot words/hot buttons
• Perceived criticism
• Physical environment
• Illness or physical conditions
• Situations2
You may recognize many of these emotional triggers at work in the project environment.
Moods and Attitudes of Others
Most of us are vulnerable to the moods and attitudes of others. When others are feeling down or angry, it can have a negative impact on us, leaving us open to an emotional breakdown.
This has been the case for me as a result of growing up with an alcoholic father. In my childhood, I was acutely attuned to the moods of my dad. It was one of the ways I tried (unsuccessfully) to control my chaotic home environment. If my dad was in a good mood, I could let up and relax a little. If he wasn’t, well, then I was on edge and always on the lookout for some kind of trouble.
Do you take your cue on how to feel from how those around you feel? Do you get bummed out when your boss is angry or sad? Do you ever say “Well, I was in a good mood until you called me” or something like that? If this applies to you, consider taking the following actions to understand and begin to protect yourself from emotional breakdown:
1. Who Is It?
Try to evaluate whose moods make you feel the most vulnerable. It could be your spouse or your parents. Perhaps, like me, you are vulnerable to your boss or other authority figures. Determine who it is that causes this trigger for you.
2. Why Is It?
If possible, try to understand why you feel vulnerable. Is it because you grew up with a parent with addiction or boundary issues? Or is it because you want so much to please your spouse or fear the loss of their love? The cause may be easy to understand, or it could require some help from a trained therapist.
3. Cut the Cord
Try to desensitize yourself to the moods of others as much as you can. Envision yourself with this key person who is in a bad mood. Practice laughing a little and saying “Wow, you sure are in a bad mood today” or something similar.
4. Don’t Take It Personally
Don’t personalize or try to control how the other person feels. They are responsible for their feelings, just as you are responsible for your own. If they are reacting to something you said or did, let them have their reaction. Don’t walk on eggshells when you are around them or try to cushion the blow of what you say.
For some people, just becoming aware of the connection between the breakdown and the moods of others can be enlightening. It is the first step toward choosing different, healthier responses.
Prethinking or Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is when we predict negative outcomes or events in the future. For example, when we experience some critical issue that threatens to delay our project, we may predict that our client is going to be upset or, worse, that the project will be cancelled.
Some of us, myself included, have a tendency to anticipate the worst. We may even pride ourselves on being able to see the worst in every future situation. But in the project environment, this can be both a deadly poison to team morale as well as a trigger for emotional breakdown.
Chicken Little was one of those who anticipated negative future events. Chicken Little interpreted a small piece of evidence (a falling acorn, I think) to mean that the entire sky was falling. Of course, the sky was not falling and eventually Chicken Little learned a valuable lesson—learn more about emotional intelligence.
Before you e-mail me about proper risk management for a project, let me distinguish between unhealthy foreshadowing and proper risk planning. PMs need to address risks, as well as to have a healthy skepticism about potential outcomes of tasks and projects. They need to be able to challenge overly optimistic estimates and outcomes and help the team plan for risks and the unexpected. That is all a part of being a good PM. That is not the type of negative foreshadowing I am discussing.
Behind foreshadowing is fear, which leads to irrational thoughts. For me, it became apparent as I worked with a coach that I was predicting negativity in the future. I began to see that I frequently talked as if I was about to be fired or cut from the project team. I often tied this to some negative vibes I was picking up or news that I heard. My coach helped me to see that it was irrational and unhealthy and could even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. When I lacked self-confidence and acted out of fear, I was short and critical of others. This in turn reduced productivity and caused others to question my leadership. Fortunately I was able to break the cycle and avoid being fired.
Here are some steps you can take if you find yourself foreshadowing:
1. Identify the Pattern
The first step is to identify the pattern of negative thinking. First, keep a journal of your negative predictions and track the outcomes. Second, check it out with your boss. This will only be possible to the extent you have an open relationship with your superior and trust it will not backfire. Third, develop a trust relationship with a friend or coworker and use that person as a sounding board. Check out your thoughts and negative predictions and ask what that person thinks. The more objective that other person can be, the better. Someone that works for you is less likely to be objective than a spouse or a peer.
2. Interrupt the Foreshadowing with Logic
Once you see the pattern, try to interrupt it with logic. Be patient; this can involve some level of internal strife. When my coach began to point out my negative thinking to me, I resisted. I was vested in seeing the negative, and I wanted to continue as I always had. I was mired in it, and it was comfortable. It took time to recognize that after two and a half years on a stressful project engagement, I wasn’t on the verge of being fired.
It also helps sometimes to say “There I go again” when you catch yourself predicting negativity. Laugh aloud and say “Whew, glad that isn’t really going to happen.”
Breaking a pattern like foreshadowing can be difficult; in particular if you have done it for as long as you can remember. Remember that change is possible and with change comes a tremendous payoff.
Dwelling
Dwelling occurs when we become fixated on one particular thought, remark, event, injury, or outcome. Our minds obsess and that incident becomes the focus of all our attention. We become stuck. This dramatically impacts our performance and leaves us vulnerable to emotional breakdown.
Have you ever found yourself dwelling or obsessing over something? If you have, you know that you cannot perform well as a PM. It reminds me of the behavior of my computer when it is busy doing something else in background when I am trying to use it. Even the simplest task can be slow. The program may say it is “not responding” and will sometimes even crash. That is probably how you appear to your stakeholders when you are dwelling and obsessing and they need something from you.
I have fallen prey to dwelling and obsessing on a minor scale. My mind got stuck on something and then just churned away. It was not enough to prevent me from being effective, but it did keep me awake at night on several occasions.
I have also had people who worked for me become so obsessed and stuck on things that they were unable to perform at acceptable levels. In one particular case, it began to affect his interpretation of events. He began to misinterpret things that were said, to take every comment as a personal attack, and to become overwhelmed. No matter what was said, the team member seemed to hear “You are not good enough.” This was not actually the case, and it caused him to become ineffective.
Let’s hope that you do not suffer from dwelling and obsessing on that same scale. As PMs, we can easily become obsessed with our performance and that of our team, as well as on the success of the project. Here are some ideas for dealing with this behavior if you find yourself falling into that trap on your project.
Become Aware
First, be aware of the behavior and see it for what it is. Sometimes it is enough to simply acknowledge it in order to break the cycle. If you have a tendency to dwell and obsess, become alert to signs that you are getting sucked in.
Get Clear
Take action to be clear or to get over it. Whatever the hurt, it probably tracks back to some injury caused by someone else. What do you need to do or say that would help you feel okay? This might mean having a difficult conversation with someone about their behavior. It is amazing how often taking a simple but courageous step can relieve us from the obsession.
Recharge
If you find yourself dwelling or obsessing, evaluate whether you are getting enough rest and downtime away from the project. Some time away may help to keep your emotions in check. Also, invest in hobbies; in particular those that involve other people. Try also taking regular vacations that are long enough to allow full relaxation.
Break the Link
If a particular person is the root of your obsessions, try to get as far away from that person as possible. While not as effective as getting clear, it may help to eliminate the obsessive behavior.
Don’t Try NOT to Think About It
Sometimes, if we are consciously trying not to think about something we find we cannot stop. Instead, dedicate a specific time to dwell, obsess, and worry about it. Limit this time to something reasonable like ten to twenty minutes at the end of the day. You might find that having a specific time set aside for dwelling allows you to get it out of your system and then put your mind back on what is important.
Relax
Try relaxation techniques, such as breathing, prayer, or meditation. These can often break the cycle.
Tease Yourself
If we take ourselves too seriously, we often set up conditions that lead to obsession. Try teasing yourself about how silly you are being. Sometimes you can acknowledge the behavior and poke a little light-hearted fun at yourself.
Seek Professional Help
If you are unable to break the cycle on your own, it might be helpful to enlist the help of a professional. Your mental health and professional performance is worth whatever it costs to eliminate dwelling and obsessing from your life.
If your mind is dwelling and obsessing, you will not be open and available to work on your project, and you won’t be much of a PM or a leader. Do what you need to do to remove obsessions; this will also protect you against emotional breakdowns.
Hot Words and Hot Buttons
The focus of the following section is on triggers that affect many of us: hot words and hot buttons. A hot word or hot button is a word or issue that triggers a specific and undesirable behavior in us, leaving us open to threats.
I recently had a team member whose hot button was failure. He was acutely attuned to feelings of failure and was on the lookout for that condition. This stemmed from the fact that he perceived himself as a failure. No data supported his feelings of failure about himself. Those feelings came from an internal sense of inadequacy that no amount of striving would overcome.
Whether it was rational or true, the individual had this sense of failure about himself. He also projected on me that I was saying he was a failure. I did not feel this way about the man and valued him as part of the team. However, the words I used triggered him to feel like a failure. When I told him that I did not believe “the team would succeed” using a particular process, he heard “you are a failure.” My style of challenging people to perform at a higher level backfired; all he heard was criticism. It would have been more effective to congratulate, acknowledge, and give recognition. This very capable team lead eventually had an emotional breakdown.
Give Yourself a Checkup
Think for a moment about the hot buttons or hot issues that trigger you. Are there any specific concerns that you tend to react to or that cause you to blow up? Do you think that others avoid bringing up issues to sidestep an argument with you?
Here are some things you can do if you want to understand your own hot buttons.
Get a Second Opinion
One quick way to get more input on your hot words or hot buttons is to check with someone you trust. There is no substitute for including others in your analysis and getting honest and accurate insights. More often than not, when we suffer from issues, it is because we are trying to work it out on our own. As noted before, this input could come from a spouse or significant other, a trusted coworker, or a coach or mentor. Ask them if there are issues that they feel they cannot discuss with you.
Go Beyond the Hot Button
Once you know you have a hot button, take steps to determine the underlying issue and feelings (e.g., feeling like a failure, lack of self-confidence). What is really going on for you? If you are struggling with self-confidence or inadequacy, perhaps you need to focus on that issue rather than the actual hot button or hot word.
As with the other emotional triggers, it may help to laugh at ourselves when we find that a hot button has set us off. We may also need to seek professional help.
Criticism and Blame
Criticism and blame can often be triggers for emotional breakdown. This is particularly true when the criticism is unwarranted, particularly if we feel that we were not fairly treated or were not given a chance to explain or defend ourselves. The criticism doesn’t even have to be real; perceived criticism can also trigger an undesired response from us.
Criticism and feeling blamed have been a problem for me in the past. If I thought someone else was being critical of me, I would feel deflated and depressed. The criticism hurt because it resonated with what I already felt about myself. I was my own worst critic. My discussions with others leads me to believe that this is very common and that many people are their own worst critics.
Unfortunately for me, my past response to criticism or blame was to freak out and immediately turn around and blame someone else. When problems occurred, I was often short with people, I lacked tact and empathy, and I immediately would dig in to figure out exactly who was responsible for the problem. This led to some ugly confrontations on past projects. This has been one of my most common emotional breakdowns.
The good news is that over the last few years I have learned to deal with criticism in healthier ways. Here are some of the ways I now deal with criticism and blame.
My Own Worst Enemy
With some work I have learned to recognize when I am being my own worst critic. Only rarely do I find that others are criticizing me; more often it is just me. If I can eliminate the voice in my head that criticizes my work, I can overcome the feeling of being criticized.
Look Ahead
Anticipate situations where I will feel or be criticized by others. Often, I know ahead of time when I am vulnerable to feeling criticized. If I do, I can visualize criticism coming from others and then practice healthy reactions. One healthy reaction is to calmly turn around and ask the critic what is going on with them or why they feel the need to criticize.
Check It Out
In some situations, we perceive criticism that is actually not criticism. Check it out to determine first if it is actually criticism and, second, if that criticism is meant for you. Sometimes we may be reacting to comments or feedback from others that is meant to be helpful and not critical. Instead of personalizing someone’s comments as criticism or blame, check it out. Ask the other person what they meant by their remark. If you receive true criticism, evaluate what part of that criticism you can use. Discard the rest.
The New Wheaties
When I was a kid, Wheaties was called the breakfast of champions. A former coworker taught me that feedback is actually the breakfast of champions. If we want to be champions, we need to be open to feedback. We may even need to go so far as to seek it out.
Could Be Just Them
Sometimes we need to be reminded that other people have their own opinions and that doesn’t make them right. Also, many people, myself included, are not that good at providing constructive feedback. So before we overreact to some comment from someone else, we need to consider the source. More often than not, criticism says more about the person who criticizes than the one receiving the criticism. Sometimes we need to ignore or discount the feedback from others.
Doesn’t Change Anything
Remember that even if true, criticism and blame do not make you a bad person.
Set a Mistake Quota
Mistakes are part of being human, and we all should expect to make them if we are growing. If you are not making mistakes, you are not trying hard enough. You may want to consider setting a quota of mistakes each day or week. I used to joke with a project team that we would strive to make only new and very creative mistakes. We certainly should not make the same mistakes, of course, but our focus should be more on success than on not making mistakes. If your goal is to not make a mistake, you will be too cautious to be effective at anything.
Finally, I would like to refer to the words of Theodore Roosevelt and his view of critics. Though these words of his are often quoted, they are worth repeating.
Physical Environment
Our physical work environment and specific situations can leave us vulnerable to emotional breakdowns. This should not be surprising. Imagine how you feel when you are in environments that are hot, cold, noisy, cluttered, filthy, or isolated. If we are not physically comfortable, we may be vulnerable to an emotional breakdown.
There also may be specific situations that leave us emotionally vulnerable. For example, I feel vulnerable when I am in a large crowd of people. I also find that the winters in Chicago cause me to feel vulnerable to breakdowns. Chicago in the summer is a tremendous playground. However, in the winter it is more like Gotham City. The days often seem cold, gray, and so dreary that they suck the life out of you. It can really make you appreciate the few sunny days we experience during the winter!
Illness and Fatigue
Illness and fatigue can also leave us vulnerable to an emotional breakdown. Like our environment, they can leave us feeling less than our best. When we don’t feel well or are extremely tired, we let down our guard and become vulnerable to emotional breakdowns. An extreme example of this would be individuals experiencing some type of chronic pain. It is hard to show grace and not react emotionally when you are experiencing chronic pain. In a similar way, fatigue can leave us vulnerable to a breakdown. I know that if I don’t get enough sleep and let myself get run down, I risk making emotional mistakes.
The idea of the triggers is to be aware of the conditions for failure and see that as a sign of risk. I can mitigate the risk, when I recognize it, by taking immediate action to remove myself from the situation. This might include stepping out of the building for some fresh air or going home for the day. This could be getting something healthy to eat or going to the gym.
Stinking Thinking Can Cause Emotional Breakdowns
There is one more type of emotional breakdown, and it is caused by the way we think. As strange as it sounds, we can affect the way we are feeling based on our thoughts. It is through distorted thinking that we set ourselves up for an emotional breakdown.
This distorted thinking is also called stinking thinking. We can literally think ourselves into feeling bad and that can leave us vulnerable to an emotional breakdown. Just when things seem to be going well, our mind convinces us that things are falling apart. It seems that we self-sabotage. Negativity, despair, and global thinking are the keys themes that I notice. See if you can relate to any of these or if they are causing emotional breakdowns for you.
1. All or Nothing Thinking
With all or nothing thinking, we see things as a total failure if they fall short of perfect. We see no good in an imperfect situation.
As an example, consider what happened to me recently on a return trip from Washington, DC, to Chicago. My class in DC finished early, and I sprinted to the airport with the hopes of catching an earlier flight. As it turned out, I was able to leave on a flight that was one hour earlier. However, I had to give up my first class upgrade and sit in a middle seat in coach. I felt a sense of loss and was angry as I flew from Washington to Chicago in that center seat in economy class.
When I arrived at home that evening and my wife asked me about the trip, I said it was awful. Although I did get home earlier than planned, I considered it a bad trip because I did not get everything I wanted. I was unable to see beyond the fact that I gave up my first-class seat. Beware of all-or-nothing thinking. If you find yourself doing this, try to turn it around and affirm what went right. Try to recognize that things (and people) will never be perfect.
2. Always and Never
Another form of stinking thinking is when we see one negative event as a never-ending series of defeats or failures. The clue to this type of thinking is when we use words like always and never. This sounds like my daughter when she says “We never get to do anything fun.”
Do you use words like always and never? When you and your project team need to work through a weekend, do you find yourself thinking “We always have to work on our weekends,” or “I never get any time to myself?” If someone else gets promoted, do you think “I never get considered for better jobs?” When we use the terms all or never, we are choosing to be a victim of circumstances and viewing life as beyond our control.
The key to breaking this type of thinking is to be alert to the use of the words “always” and “never.” Rarely is it true that things are always or never a certain way. Instead of using always or never, look for and acknowledge the exceptions. More important, empower yourself by thinking through the ways that you can create different outcomes for yourself. If you feel like you never have enough time for yourself or you want a better job, determine what steps you can take now to have more time or get that better job. Remind yourself that you have a say in the outcome of your life.
3. Being Negative
Being negative is when we choose to focus only on the disagreeable things that happen. If we dwell on the negative, that becomes our reality.
I did this recently after teaching a class. In this case, there were twenty-six students. As I went through the students’ evaluations of the course, one was particularly harsh. The student felt there were “too many irrelevant stories” and that I should have “kept the class moving.” While the other twenty-five evaluations were all very positive, I focused only on the one negative evaluation.
Another situation occurred on a large, long-term project I was managing. At the end of the first year, we solicited feedback from our clients on how we were doing. There was a mix of positive and constructive feedback. I chose to focus on one negative statement. The client stated that the delivery of “software was often late and of poor quality.” To this day, that is the only piece of feedback that I remember.
In both of these cases, I vividly remember the negative comments and little, if anything, else. I chose to focus only on the negative.
We can also be negative by ignoring or discounting the positives. Instead of focusing on the negative, we choose to discount or reject examples where we did well or were successful. We find a reason for the positive not to count because it wasn’t good enough or because anyone would have done the same thing if they were in our shoes. This type of thinking really strips us of the happiness and satisfaction we should experience.
I sometimes do this to myself by hiding behind my project team. When there is a success on a project, I say to myself “This was the result of having a strong team” or “any PM could have succeeded in this situation.”
Negative thinking and behavior can be so ingrained that you are unable to see it without the help of others. If you are a person who focuses on the negative, you may not be aware of it. You can start by asking your friends and family if they see you as a negative person.
Breaking the habit of being negative can be tough. If you do find out that you are negative, ask others for support. Practice finding the positive in every situation, in yourself and your performance, and in every other person.
4. Filling in the Blanks
We fill in the blanks when we interpret things a certain way, usually negatively, without any facts to support our interpretation. We attribute a negative interpretation to a person or situation without any justification.
For example, consider a situation in which you’ve submitted a project proposal to a client. If the client does not get back to you immediately, you may jump to the conclusion that they did not like you or your proposal. You may start to think things like “that was a waste of time, I shouldn’t have spent my time working on that.” A more accurate interpretation is that you simply expected the client to respond faster than they actually did.
5. Should Statements
The word “should” is a red flag. It has many negative connotations and where possible I advise you to strike it from your vocabulary. When someone tells you that you should do something or should have done something, they are meddling, controlling, or shaming you. Should is a word that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
You may direct should statements at yourself with the intent to motivate. You might say something like “I should have known better than to trust Jeremy” or “I shouldn’t have told them they could take until Monday on the deliverable.” Should statements can lead to guilt and frustration. If you use should on yourself or on others, stop. It is unhealthy.
One way to overcome use of the word should is to use “I want” statements. Instead of saying “You should turn in your status report by Friday” (or, worse, “You should have turned in your status report last Friday”), say “I want you to turn in your status report by Friday.” The expression “I want” is a more direct and clean way of stating your expectations for the desired behavior.
6. Personalization and Blame
Personalization is when we take responsibility for events that are not entirely within our control. We take personally what could be simply a random event. We might combine personalization with a should statement and say something like “I should never have said that to Jonathan; he quit the team because of me.”
Personalization can be tricky for PMs and leaders. Sometimes it is entirely appropriate to take responsibility for the results or outcomes of the team we are leading. Sometimes we need to step up and say “That was my fault.” However, it is not always healthy to take responsibility for everything that happens.
Blame is the opposite of personalization. This is when we are quick to affix the blame for an event or incident. Blame is when we put the responsibility for ourselves and our situation on others.
A more balanced approach is to think of the principle of co-creation. We co-create everything that happens to us. We are partly responsible and others are partly responsible. We will talk more about co-creation in Chapter 6, Relationship Management.
Identifying Your Own Patterns of Stinking Thinking
The common theme with all stinking thinking is its negative connotation. We are choosing to be negative instead of positive. This thinking often represents our own fears and dark thoughts.
The first step toward overcoming stinking thinking is to recognize what you are experiencing. This type of thinking is a habit and perhaps one that we have had all our lives. We need to be able to see and recognize the habit before we can change or eliminate it. As with the other self-management concepts we have talked about, we can use some of the following techniques to overcome distorted thinking:
Journal
Keep a journal of what has occurred—your thoughts, and your feelings. You can use this to track back and understand how your negative thoughts are impacting you.
Get Help from a Friend
Get input from a trusted friend, spouse, coworker, boss, or mentor. Use their feedback to see where your thinking is distorted.
Seek Professional Help
As noted earlier, you may need to seek professional help if you get stuck and cannot get to the next level without it.
Other Reasons to Manage Our Emotions
Avoiding emotional breakdowns is pretty important, but there are other situations where managing our emotions is also important. For example, how we manage our fear directly plays into the risks that we take and the potential rewards. Anger can also be used to our advantage is we understand how to harness it.
Managing Our Fear
There is a relationship between fear and our behavior when we are scared that can lead to success or failure. Fear can keep us from doing things that we shouldn’t. Fear can also cause us to procrastinate, wait until the last moment, or not act at all. Our fear of failing in a particular situation can actually become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I have let fear cause me to fail, and it hurt. Years ago I had an important interview for a long-term consulting engagement. I was excited about the opportunity and frankly, I wanted the position. But I was scared. And unfortunately for me, I was not aware enough at the time (i.e. self-aware) to appreciate exactly how afraid I was.
My fear was not so much about the opportunity as about the interview. I was so excited about the engagement that I was afraid I would blow it or that somehow my desire for this opportunity would be apparent.
So what did I do? Well, I let my fear nearly cause me to create the exact thing I was worried about. I procrastinated; I stalled and didn’t get ready on time. I left my house late. And I arrived 15 minutes late for the interview. My fear of blowing it nearly cost me the position.
What I need is to do a better job of catching myself when I am afraid. Sometimes simply naming the fear is enough to take the energy out. It also helps me to determine what my fear is telling me. In the case of the interview, it was telling me that it was important to me. Using the fear as information is the essence of emotional self-management.
Fear can also be a positive. Looking back on my career, I realize that most of my growth took place when put myself in situations that I was in over my head and afraid. I can recall going in to work and being afraid of failing, fearing that I would not know what I was doing or that others would realize that I didn’t know what I was doing. These were the times when I grew the most in terms of my experience and development.
When I was in high school, my best friend Wes was the class president. He was funny, popular, and got along with everyone. I remember every year he did something that I thought was crazy—he volunteered to be a cheerleader for the (girls) powderpuff football game. The powderpuff cheerleaders would dress up with wigs and makeup and go through some pretty silly cheers. I thought it was crazy and a bit dangerous to dress up and make a fool of himself, but Wes seemed to enjoy it. He used to ask me to join him but I never dared to push through my fear and take the risk.
Fast forward to my first job out of college as a young engineer at IBM in 1985. As project assignments were offered, other young engineers jumped at the projects, even ones that they knew little about. In contrast, I almost never volunteered for new assignments. As with the cheerleading, I wasn’t anxious to jump in—frankly I was afraid.
My fear cost me. I was at IBM nearly 10 years. During that time, my career progressed, but not as fast as I would have liked. My fear prevented me from taking risks and that slowed my progress. No risk meant little or no reward. Looking back, the best thing I did at IBM was when I left my comfortable job there in 1993.
I have found that I grew the most when I pushed through my fear or put myself in tough situations. Conversely, when I was comfortable in a job, such as at IBM, I was not learning and growing. And more importantly, not adding as much value to my customers.
So I have learned that for me, feelings of comfort and familiarity are not desirable; in fact, they are dangerous to my career. That is one of the reasons that I grew to love project management so much—projects have a beginning and an end. Even long projects will come to an end and I will need to seek out something new.
As an independent consultant today, I recognize that I have no choice but to push through my fear and take risks. I have also learned that most of the fear I feel is unwarranted. It is actually more dangerous for me to get comfortable and complacent in one role—that probably means I am not growing as quickly as I could as a consultant.
The choice is obvious if you want to grow as a PM and a leader and to become more valuable to your employer and customers. You need to stop seeking comfort. You may even need to push yourself out of your comfort zone even to the point where you are burning your boats behind you. How do we know when we should seek something other than comfort? We should orient to our own satisfaction level. In every situation, we should be monitoring our own level of satisfaction and using that as an internal gauge for whether we are doing the right thing.
If you were to be completely honest right now, many of you could identify at least one goal or aspiration that you are not pursuing because of fear. I want you to encourage you to make friends with fear, to understand what it is that makes you afraid, and to evaluate the cost of that fear on your life. Courage is not the absence of fear. Rather, it is when we choose to act in spite of our fear. If you want to grow, you have to push through fear and take some risks.
Consider the following questions about the role of fear in your life:
1. What is the cost in your life right now of your fear? What could you achieve by pushing through your fear?
2. Look back over the last five years of your life and identify when you took a risk. What was the result? What did you learn?
3. What is it you are most afraid of losing right now? Do you have a comfortable management position with a safe and stable company?
4. What is your level of satisfaction with your current situation? What would be more satisfying?
My mentor Rich Blue has been on a kick lately to embrace failure. He keeps encouraging me to live a big life by saying “If you aren’t failing then you are not taking enough risks.”
Harnessing Our Anger
Before working on emotions, I didn’t recognize that I was frequently angry. I was harsh and mean spirited when it came to anger. I never hit or choked anyone but I did use my words to give a punch or a jab whenever I was provoked. What I thought at the time were funny comments or playful jabs were in reality very mean-spirited comments that were quite hurtful to people. I am surprised my career survived at all given how unpolished I was.
The reality is that anger is power, and that power can fire us up. Instead of having it leak out in comments or mean-spirited wisecracks, we can channel our anger in constructive ways. The power anger generates can cause others to stop and listen to us; it can also move us toward our goals. We just need to manage the anger.
Managing anger means that we don’t get physical and hit or choke people. We are also not shouting or yelling at people, slamming doors, or making sarcastic comments. If we do that, our anger is going to get us fired. In today’s highly sensitive HR environment, we need to be careful we don’t respond emotionally—as with an angry outburst—and wind up saying something that lands us in trouble. We can’t afford to be seen as the guy or girl with a chip on their shoulder.
Even if we don’t have some sort of incident that can lead to firing, we have to be careful that we don’t allow anger to affect our effectiveness. We need to use our anger strategically. It may not even require raising our voices—it may be enough to say “I noticed that I am feeling more angry as this meeting goes on.”
The lesson here is that we need to pay attention to our all of our emotions and be aware of ways that may help or hurt us. Fear should be monitored, along with satisfaction level. I’m more in touch with my fear than I have been over the course of my life. But I still recognize that there are situations where I go unconscious and let my fear shut me down.
Techniques to Improve our Self-Control
First, remember that minor emotional breakdowns are common. Even people who have a high capacity to endure pain will eventually hit a wall and break down in some way. The good news about emotional breakdowns is that they are predictable. If we can identify the triggers that set us off, we can begin to predict when we are vulnerable and are likely to experience a breakdown. That predictability can help us avoid or reduce the severity of the breakdown.
Second, breakdowns often escalate slowly. We don’t normally go from a calm and peaceful state directly into a breakdown. Rather, we go through a series of steps that build until we are primed for a breakdown. That slow escalation provides time for us to interrupt the process and prevent the breakdown. Knowing that breakdowns are predictable and escalate slowly gives us motivation to interrupt the breakdown before it occurs.
The following section talks about some of the ways to improve our self-control and emotional resiliency and reduce the likelihood and severity of our emotional breakdowns.
1. Know Thyself
As previously mentioned, the key to self-control is self-awareness. Make it a point to understand your specific emotional triggers, your patterns of stinking thinking, and things that reduce or build up your emotional resiliency. Be a student of you!
There are times when you are quite resilient to what others say, while at other times you are highly sensitive and let others push your buttons. Pay attention to those times when you let other people push your buttons. What are the specific conditions where you are likely to let your guard down? Is it when you are tired, stressed, sick, feeling unappreciated or criticized, or not taking care of yourself? Try to avoid putting yourself in those situations where you aren’t able to choose a graceful response.
2. Use HALT
HALT stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and Tired. These four conditions are warning signs that we might be vulnerable to emotional breakdowns. Conversely, they can serve as a gauge of our level of emotional resilience. Whenever you are Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired, your resilience is low and you are at risk of having a negative reaction or emotional breakdown. You are less likely to make good choices about your responses to stimulus.
The key thing that the HALT acronym tells me is whether or not I am putting myself at risk. The more of the four components I am experiencing at one time, the more vulnerable I am. It is a quick test, and it works well for nearly everybody.
If you wanted to elaborate on HALT or create a more personal version, you could come up with additional things that might set you up for a breakdown. This is a list of some of the things my audiences have shared with me over the years:
• Always on with WIFI and my smartphone
• Working late by myself
• Long-term conflict
• Business travel
• Long commutes
• Long and contentious meetings
3. Evaluate Your Physical Environment
Are you as comfortable as you can make yourself? What needs to change to make you comfortable? If you are isolated, what can you do to feel more connected? If you are a work-at-home professional, try staying connected with Instant Messaging or go to work in a public space, like a Starbucks, rather than stay at home in isolation. Is your work area continually cold? Get a small space heater.
4. Take Care of Yourself and Stay Healthy
If you don’t take care of yourself, it will be hard for you to care for others. Taking care of yourself includes eating healthy foods, exercising, and getting enough sleep.
Keep yourself healthy to prevent illness and fatigue. Take basic preventative care to avoid getting sick by washing your hands frequently and avoiding direct contact with those who are sick. If you do get sick, don’t try to be a hero. Some people think it is important to come to work even when they are sick. They mistakenly believe that the team is better off with them there. Unfortunately, illness can spread and cripple an entire team. Set a good example for everyone else by staying home and getting better. Even if you believe you are indispensable, the team is better off without you while you recuperate.
5. Sharpen the Saw
Stephen Covey talks about the importance of sharpening the saw in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. In essence, he is talking about self-renewal. This means taking your vacations as well as investing in training and development. Are you too busy on your project for vacation or training? That is a common refrain and one that is easily debunked. First of all, no one person is that critical to a project. Second, there will never be a perfect time on your project to take vacation or go to training. The busier your project, the more you will benefit from downtime away from it.3
6. Avoid Long Work Weeks
We all have to stretch once in a while, and we all have a different level of stamina. However, if you are working more than forty-five, fifty, or sixty hours every week, you are likely setting yourself up for fatigue and illness.
7. Get Support
When feeling sick, tired, or worn out, you need to seek support from others. This support could be from your manager, a trusted coworker, friends, a spouse, or a mentor. Reach out to others and engage them on an emotional level. Get the help you need to stay on top of your game.
8. Reduce Your Stress Level
PMs should be familiar with the need to reduce stress and have at least one method that they employ. There are a multitude of stress reduction methods from easy things, such as exercise and self-care, all the way through more radical approaches, such as getting a new job or leaving an abusive relationship. Previously discussed techniques include prayer and meditation. My coach is a big believer in breathing techniques. The point is that there are a lot of different ways to reduce stress, and I encourage you to experiment until you find one that works for you. On the other hand, if you are one of those people who thrive on stress and intentionally create it in your life, what I write here won’t matter much to you anyway.
9. Talk It Out with Someone
Besides having several different mentors and coaches outside work, I have had the luxury over the last two years of having a good friend and member of my program management team who is always willing to be a sounding board for my ideas. I have found this invaluable. If you don’t have someone in your professional life whom you can bounce ideas off, find someone. It is a bonus if you can also ask them to hold you accountable to make changes or follow through on your commitments.
10. Give Yourself a Time Out
If you find yourself heading toward a breakdown, give yourself a time out. Leave the building, go to lunch early, quit for the day, or just head out to the nearest coffee shop for a snack. If you are at home, you can punch a pillow or hit a bed with a tennis racquet. Some people find exercise helpful.
11. Write a Letter or E-Mail You Will Not Send
A technique that Abraham Lincoln reportedly practiced was to write letters he did not plan to send. The idea is that through expressing your emotions in writing, you are able to release any emotional charge. This worked well for Abe when he used paper and pencil but may not work as well today with our modern office tools. For example, we may type an e-mail that we don’t plan to send and then actually end up sending it inadvertently. Some organizations monitor all e-mails, even unsent ones. Other organizations use keystroke logging software to record everything typed at a keyboard including documents, unsent e-mail, and instant messages.
12. Use Appropriate Humor
There is nothing like laughter to remind us to not take ourselves too seriously. You can crack a joke, watch a sitcom, read something funny, or find someone amusing to hang out with. Scott Adams is great at skewering PMs in the Dilbert cartoon; check out his collection online. If you can afford it, add a really funny person to your project team. Of course, they would need to have an official role and work assigned to them or your project sponsors might not find it all that funny.
13. Take Great Care of Yourself
We need to take good care of ourselves to reduce stress and to help prevent emotional breakdowns. This includes taking vacations, getting enough sleep on a regular basis, resting when sick, and getting support from others. You can also reduce stress levels by laughing out loud, going for a walk, spending time with people you like, or spending time on hobbies or interests.
Sometimes taking care of ourselves means we make plans to do the things we really want or need to do or to get together with people who nourish us. Don’t wait for things to happen to you or react to the invitations of others; make plans to do the things that you find nurturing. Get out the calendar now and block out the time for the activities and events that you want to do and that you find nourishing. Be prepared to say no to invitations that don’t enrich you; you aren’t obligated to attend any events you don’t want to attend.
14. Develop a Personal Emotional Dashboard
One thing my mentor Rich has recommended is to create a personal emotional dashboard. We are all familiar with the dashboard of a car or the complexity of a dashboard in an airplane cockpit. Imagine the same thing for your emotional state. Think of it as an expanded version of the heart rate monitor used by the Incredible Hulk.
You might have gauges for specific emotions, or nourishment levels. There would certainly be a warning light for those emotional red flags that you experience. Some other useful warning lights could include building up resentments, numbing out, or criticizing or blaming.
I have created a personal emotional dashboard for myself. It included the following gauges:
• Self-Care—this would be the equivalent of the gas gauge!
• Mutuality
• Telling the truth
• Satisfaction
• Standards
• Responsibility
My dashboard had the following warning lights:
• Sarcasm
• Resentments
• Criticizing or blaming
• Gossip
• Defensiveness
• Emotional boundaries
15. Don’t Strive to be Perfect
Perfectionists find that people never quite measure up to their expectations. They can be just as hard on themselves as well. Instead of going for perfection, strive for excellence, which can be defined as doing your very best in every situation. Celebrate excellence and don’t get sucked into thinking that everything needs to be perfect.
16. Plan and Prepare Ahead
Some of us set ourselves up for stressful situations or negative outcomes by arriving late or unprepared for early morning meetings with team members or other project stakeholders. This can cause us to lose momentum or feel lousy for the rest of the day. Next time you have an important meeting, try getting to bed early, getting up early, and getting in to work before everyone else. Allow yourself some quiet time to review your notes and objectives for the meeting, as well as to think about the emotions of each person who will be attending. Your calmness and quiet confidence will show clearly and even be contagious.
A related idea is to prepare for the day as a pilot prepares for a flight. Pilots have a preflight checklist that they run through before every flight. Your “preflight” checklist includes all the things that you need to pay attention to or plan for before the day begins. This could include thinking through key meetings, reviewing your priorities list, crafting the key messages you want to communicate, or simply getting grounded with prayer or meditation.
Personal Action Plan: Self-Management
Self-management is the ability to manage our emotions so that they don’t control us.
Key Takeaways
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My Strengths and Weaknesses in the Area of Self-Management
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My Actions or Goals Based on What I Learned
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1 Daniel Goleman. Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. NY: Random House/Bantam Books, 1995.
2 Adele B. Lynn. EQ Difference: A Powerful Plan for Putting Emotional Intelligence to Work. New York: AMACOM Books, 2005.
3 Stephen R. Covey. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. Salt Lake City, UT: Franklin Covey, 1989.