As a family entrepreneur or business leader, you may find yourself occasionally caught up in emotions during a draining management team meeting. It’s only human. However, if this becomes a recurring, intense, and lengthy occurrence, it’s far from high performance.

Being a future-fit leader, you stand up and speak out when a meeting is energy sucking. Because you know that negative emotions have a way of spreading like wildfire, potentially ensnaring both you and your team in an emotional roller coaster with no apparent end in sight.

At Triple A People, we are specialised in addressing and clearing the emotional undercurrents within management teams. These underlying emotional disturbances can erupt when the team faces mounting pressure. When feelings of irritability, hostility, apathy, nervousness, and other emotions permeate the team, it inevitably manifests as a decline in team performance and results.

Emotions are valuable

Emotions can be immensely valuable, if you know how to listen to them. This is the essence of emotional intelligence – recognizing that excessive emotions carry intelligence. They offer insights into whether you’re on the right path, whether boundaries are being crossed, and whether your core values and beliefs are at stake.

However, emotions are pure energy and unfortunately you can’t touch or grab them.  The good news is that they manifest themselves through your body. In other words, your body keeps the score. For example, fear might freeze you, sadness might result in a lump in your throat, happiness may cause goosebumps, and love can make you feel butterflies in your stomach.

Emotions require acknowledgement

Emotions demand to be acknowledged. As Einstein cautioned, “Where thinking starts, feeling stops.” Many entrepreneurs and business leaders tend to overthink and under feel, which doesn’t sit well with our emotions. When neglected, emotions rebel, often manifesting physically through headaches, neck pain, back pain, skin issues, high blood pressure, and even burnout. Merely resorting to pills or frequent visits to the physiotherapist is merely treating the symptoms, not the root cause.

The 5-minute rule

So, remember that emotions are valuable and shouldn’t be ignored or suppressed. They are allowed to exist and they carry a message. But, on the flip side, don’t let emotions run you.

This is where the 5-minute rule comes into play, a helpful tip for you and your management team:

Kick off each team meeting by dedicating a maximum of 5 minutes to express your emotions. By offering them a bit of attention and acknowledgment, they tend to quiet down naturally. After this emotional release, your meeting can start.

Once you’ve released your emotions for those five minutes, you’ve tapped into the intelligence they provide. Afterwards, show gratitude to your emotions and kindly command them to take a step back. Avoid dwelling on them, getting stuck in them, becoming dependent on them, or infecting others with them. For dramatic performances, there’s always drama school.

Curious?

Would you like to know more about the emotional management within your team? Or take a closer look at your own emotions and how they affect your leadership effectiveness?

Contact us below for a coaching appointment.