BUILDING HIGH PERFORMANCE WITH EMOTIONAL AGILITY

By Achala Bhat

“Effective leaders are mindful of their inner experiences, but not caught in them.”

—Susan David and Christina Congleton

BUILDING HIGH PERFORMANCE WITH EMOTIONAL AGILITY

Agility is being asked for. In JDs, interviews, on the job and to excel in the corporate. While we are doing that, a little attention is being paid to what is inside of us. Something very powerful but often misunderstood and asked to shun away. Emotions. In a world today, that is thriving on agility, emotional agility becomes a key indicator of who can make an impact in today’s industry and more so, be an influential leader.

This article throws a light on what is emotional agility and how can we carve them out at our workplace.

What is emotional agility and how it differs from emotional intelligence?

The ability to approach one’s emotional experiences mindfully and thoughtfully, is emotional agility, whereas, being aware and in control of one’s emotions, is emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is being aware of what emotions you are feeling and why, while emotional agility is being accepting of them and understanding that they are in line with your life values.

The work of Susan David in this field is noteworthy, and she outlines the process of emotional agility in the following 4 steps –

Honestly, label your emotions
Accept your emotions, compassionately
View your emotions objectively
Choose your values underlying those emotions

What this will typically look like in action –

1. Being accepting of yours as well as others’ emotions at work

2. Collaborative – willing to welcome other’s views, even in case of a counter view

3. Ability to step back from a current situation and determine the desired outcome based without emotions running the show

4. Navigate through difficult conversations, without being overrun by emotions.

Why do we need emotional agility in organizations?

Emotional agility, since it thrives one the element of collaboration, is an essential trait in high performing organizations.

It is an imperative, to enable the following valuable traits in organizations –

1. Effectively giving and receiving feedback

2. Asserting one’s motivational drivers and career goals with peers, supervisors

3. Help leaders gain an insight over the motivational drivers of their workforce

4. Creating positive inner narratives, much like we have on our resumes!

5. Effectively aligning one’s actions, with shared values of the organization and choosing roles/jobs basis that

How to cultivate emotional agility at your workplaces?

1. Coaching to rewording the inner narratives – In your coaching conversations with your team, or team meetings, encourage the idea of how one can reword difficult emotions at work.

For eg. If the underlying emotion is – “I am not doing enough”, reword it to – “There is a different way in which I can contribute to be more effective.”

If the underlying emotion is – “My coworker is too strong in their views”, reword it to – “My coworker has a counter view, we should discuss it in detail.”

2. Good for you and more – Encourage team building activities and setups like Good for you, where people can share their latest personal milestones and not-so-good moments.

This gradually builds up an atmosphere, for the acceptance of difficult emotions and builds vulnerability, one of the prerequisites to build emotional agility.

3. Stories of resilience – This is more of a top-down approach to cultivating emotional agility. Leaders can share their stories of growth, resilience, innovation – combined with failure and risk taking and collaboration – during crisis and counter views, to convey a message to their teams, on accepting uncomfortable emotions and conversations.

An important prerequisite for emotional agility, is psychological safety, and sharing these stories can encourage just that.

4. Vision building – Building emotional agility is futile, if it is not aligned to the shared values. Brainstorm, with the team and agree on the shared values that your team would reflect. Design KRAs for projects, basis these values and word your appreciations and rewards, incorporating them. This will serve at best, to percolate the organizational values.

In an era where humans and human resources are striving to distinguish themselves from AI and machines, emotional agility can go a long way, in bringing out the unique traits of people at work and thus, contributing to a high performing workplace.