LSM602: Identifying and Managing Emotions Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Management “Identifying and Managing Emotions” Course Project Instructions: Complete this project and submit it to your instructor. See the assignment page for information about the grading rubric. Do not hesitate to contact your instructor if you have any questions about the project. This project will give you an opportunity to reflect on how you influence the emotional culture of your team, and then to practice using the tools that will allow you to better manage your own emotions. Complete each project part as you progress through the course. Wait to submit the project until all three parts are complete. Begin your course project by completing Part One below. Part One: Analyzing the Effects of Emotional Contagion In Module 2, you explored four reasons why working on managing your emotions is an efficient way to become a better leader. The reasons included the effects of emotional contagion, emotional suppression, and the high level of signal-to-noise ratio in emotional systems. In this part of the course project, we will ask you to find examples of these effects in your own work environment. Complete the following grid. Emotional Contagion Think of someone higher up that behaves or has behaved in a certain way that caused you to catch an emotion from him or her. Briefly describe what that person did and how it made you feel. The head of distribution was in town, as he is on several occasions throughout the year, and he was taking my team and I out for happy hour and dinner after work. When I arrived at the restaurant with him the team was socializing around the bar area having cocktails waiting for our table. Our head of distribution seemed like he was in a rush to sit down, was a bit short, and, at times, somewhat impatient prior to and through dinner. It put me a little bit ‘on edge’ and uneasy, and I caught myself wondering what made him act out of character with a sense of irritability. It made the dinner less comfortable. 1 © 2016 eCornell. All rights reserved. All other copyrights, trademarks, trade names, and logos are the sole property of their respective owners. LSM602: Identifying and Managing Emotions Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Management Emotional Suppression Now think of a time when you did something where the emotion that was caught by your team made it more difficult for the team to get work done. Consider that one of the interesting things about power is that we underestimate its amplifying effect on other people. I remember a day in which I had a difficult conversation with my manager as I was explaining to him some of the disconnect that was occurring between the Atlanta team and Hartford team while bringing some ideas for solutions. My boss began getting very irritated and began raising his voice telling me that I needed to ‘lock them down,’ in other words get them in order. It made me very frustrated and mad that I was not being listened to or treated very well by my manager, and when I came out of my office my team noticed the look on my face, which was one that was not happy (very unlike me). They noticed that I was not happy and even angry, which distracted them and made them uneasy. The distraction for them in completing their work was that they were talking with each other wondering what was going on, and they started coming up with things, which were nowhere near correct, that may be happening at our company. It caused a great distraction and unhealthy speculation by my team. Describe an interaction you experienced in which the more powerful person in the room was suppressing his or her emotions (e.g., during a meeting when a difficult message had to be delivered). Were they successful from an emotional point of view? (Possible responses range from “not successful at all” to “they suppressed their emotions so much that there was an emotional vacuum.”) Were the emotions that were caught by others the best ones for that situation? I was in a large team meeting when our director was asking for ideas on how best to change the criteria for assessing performance of the team members to better align with the evolving roles of members of our department. As people began sharing their ideas it was obvious that our director was holding back from responding and attempting to suppress his dislike of some of the ideas. He was not the type of person to suppress his emotions, but this was a situation in which he was asking for input and feedback, so he complied to the ‘rule’ he laid out of no judgment; however, he did not do a good job at all suppressing his emotions through his facial expressions – the frowned eyes, sharp look, and contorted mouth as well as shifting body language. What was caught by the team was an attempt to hide his reaction, and his reaction he was trying to hide was the reaction most people expected. It was not good that the team caught his emotions because it immediately stifled the idea sharing and purpose of the meeting, but, one could say that it was a good that they did, in a way, because it probably saved some people from hurting their upward mobility in the long run; or at least some contempt from him in future performance reviews. Describe a time when you suppressed your emotions with others (e.g., during a meeting when a difficult There was a time when I was a manager at a large food service and retail company in which I was directed to change store policy that was against what I thought was the right thing to do. When I gave the 2 © 2016 eCornell. All rights reserved. All other copyrights, trademarks, trade names, and logos are the sole property of their respective owners. LSM602: Identifying and Managing Emotions Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Management Signal-toNoise Ratio (A high level of this is bad) message had to be delivered). Do you think the subordinates ended up with the emotions that were best suited for the situation, or did they catch some of the emotion that you were suppressing anyway? Do you feel that it hurt your ability to make decisions or hurt your ability to suppress further emotions? new direction I had a lot of questions brought to me, and some of my employees that I knew very well knew that something was not completely right. I suppressed my disapproval of the new direction, but several people could tell that something was not quite right. Others seemed a bit confused as to why the change was occurring because it was not consistent with what we had been doing. A couple of my employees caught that I was not happy, which made them frustrated, while others were simply a bit confused causing uneasiness, so in this case they did not end up with the emotions suited best for this situation. It did hurt my ability in the short term to make decisions because I was not sure if I would be overturned by people above my head, which was not the norm prior, and when we made decisions my employees weren’t sure if the decision would be maintained because of the abrupt change that had occurred prior. It didn’t hurt my ability to suppress further emotions as this was an isolated event, and I had been able to very successfully suppress emotions when decisions were made by our upper leadership. This moment just happened to be in direct contradiction to other stated directives in the past. Have you ever worked with someone who seems to have a high base level of a particular emotion all the time? For example, someone who is angry or anxious all the time? I worked for a manager in my previous career, who because of your alcoholism, was constantly irritable, easily angered, and the emotion she consistently displayed beyond being irritable was a tense demeanor as if she was always looking for what wasn’t correct or operating properly in the business including who was causing an issue. Did you ever have difficulty reading their emotional signals (e.g., knowing when something specific made them anxious or angry)? Or, can you think of an instance when you had trouble reading their emotional signals? It was tough to read her emotional signals because she was always tense and looked like she was about to get angry, and when she would get angry in an explosive way it was difficult to know what the true issue was; anything could set her off. There was also conflicting messages on what was expected because it was difficult to read what pleased her or made her upset. As an example, being on the management team, I was not entirely sure of how much ownership and responsibility I should take on the management of the inventory because I had seen her get angry at someone who messed up a simple item in the system, which was easily correctable, and she would take it upon herself to do much of the legwork so it would be done exactly as she liked it. 3 © 2016 eCornell. All rights reserved. All other copyrights, trademarks, trade names, and logos are the sole property of their respective owners. LSM602: Identifying and Managing Emotions Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Management Do you think you have an emotion that you tend to feel a lot? Do you think that it makes it easier or harder for your subordinates to understand when they have done something to trigger that emotion in you? Reflecting on my emotions, I tend to get impatient when members of my team or not executing as I know they can or are not picking up on a concept as quickly as I think they should. I am sure that they can tell when I get impatient, but it doesn’t happen continually or consistently. It tends to come up when there are other outside pressures on me. If what I am perceiving is true, and based from the reactions of my team members, they don’t have a hard time understanding when they have triggered that emotion. Part Two: Removing Drift in Thoughts (Appraisal Category of Emotion Management) Instructions: This part of the course project will help you practice the three-step tool you learned in Module 4. It is recommended that you do this part of the course project over several days to allow you to truly experience distinct emotions. Doing this all in one sitting will not be as effective. Completing this part of the course project will also allow you to get feedback from your instructor so that you can continue to practice it correctly on your own after the course is complete. Remember that retraining your emotional responses is a relatively quick process, but it still requires effort. We’ll ask you to think of distinct events or incidents that triggered or will trigger you to experience a strong negative emotion. Then, as you are re-experiencing the emotion, we’ll ask you to document the raw thoughts you have about each event. Finally, we’ll get you to identify distortions in each of your raw thoughts so you can re-write them to make them more accurate. To get the most benefit out of this exercise, you may want to focus on only one or two of the grids below per day. Event #1: Past Event Complete the following grid. Step 1: Feel the emotion, freeze the thoughts Identify and briefly describe a specific incident in the past that triggered a strong negative reaction: 4 © 2016 eCornell. All rights reserved. All other copyrights, trademarks, trade names, and logos are the sole property of their respective owners. LSM602: Identifying and Managing Emotions Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Management Recall and re-experience the emotion. Once you are experiencing the emotion, rate the level of that emotion on a 100-point scale: Emotion(s): Level: _ / 100 What is going through your mind? Write down your unedited, raw thoughts (at least 3-4): 1. ___________________________________________________ 2. ___________________________________________________ 3. ___________________________________________________ 4. ____________________________________________________ Step 2: Look for distortions Compare your raw thoughts above to the distortions on the “11 Thought Distortions” tool. For each thought, are there any of those distortions? If so, list which ones below (e.g., labeling, mind reading, crystal ball gazing…)? Distortions for thought 1. ______________________________________ Distortions for thought 2. ______________________________________ Distortions for thought 3. ______________________________________ Distortions for thought 4. ______________________________________ Step 3: Clean up distortions For each of the distorted thoughts you identified in Step 2, can you come up with a more accurate alternative (that you believe)? Write the cleanedup thoughts below (e.g., “That guy cut me off on purpose” (mind reading) becomes “That guy may have cut me off on purpose, or he may not have seen me.”) 1. ______________________________________ 2. ______________________________________ 3. ______________________________________ 4. ______________________________________ Event #2: Recent Event Complete the following grid. Step 1: Feel the emotion, freeze the thoughts Identify and briefly describe a specific and recent incident that triggered a strong negative reaction: Recall and re-experience the emotion. Once you are experiencing the emotion, rate the level of that emotion on a 100-point scale: 5 © 2016 eCornell. All rights reserved. All other copyrights, trademarks, trade names, and logos are the sole property of their respective owners. LSM602: Identifying and Managing Emotions Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Management Emotion(s): Level: _ / 100 Write down your unedited, raw thoughts (at least 3-4): 1. ______________________________________ 2. ______________________________________ 3. ______________________________________ 4. ______________________________________ Step 2: Look for distortions Compare your raw thoughts above to the distortions on the “11 Thought Distortions” tool. For each thought, are there any of those distortions? If so, list which ones below (e.g., labeling, mind reading, crystal ball gazing…)? Distortions for thought 1. _ Distortions for thought 2. _ Distortions for thought 3. _ Distortions for thought 4. _ Step 3: Clean up distortions For each of the distorted thoughts you identified in Step 2, can you come up with a more accurate alternative (that you believe)? Write the cleanedup thoughts below (e.g., “That guy cut me off on purpose” (mind reading) becomes “That guy may have cut me off on purpose, or he may not have seen me.”) 1. ______________________________________ 2. ______________________________________ 3. ______________________________________ 4. ______________________________________ Event #3: Future Event Complete the following grid. Step 1: Feel the emotion, freeze the thoughts Identify and briefly describe a specific incident in the future that is triggering a strong negative reaction: 6 © 2016 eCornell. All rights reserved. All other copyrights, trademarks, trade names, and logos are the sole property of their respective owners. LSM602: Identifying and Managing Emotions Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Management Recall and re-experience the emotion. Once you are experiencing the emotion, rate the level of that emotion on a 100-point scale: Emotion(s): Level: _ / 100 Write down your unedited, raw thoughts (at least 3-4): 1. ______________________________________ 2. ______________________________________ 3. ______________________________________ 4. ______________________________________ Step 2: Look for distortions Compare your raw thoughts above to the distortions on the “11 Thought Distortions” tool. For each thought, are there any of those distortions? If so, list which ones below (e.g., labeling, mind reading, crystal ball gazing…)? 1. ______________________________________ 2. ______________________________________ 3. ______________________________________ 4. ______________________________________ Step 3: Clean up distortions For each of the distorted thoughts you identified in Step 2, can you come up with a more accurate alternative (that you believe)? Write the cleanedup thoughts below (e.g., “That guy cut me off on purpose” (mind reading) becomes “That guy may have cut me off on purpose, or he may not have seen me.”) 1. ______________________________________ 2. ______________________________________ 3. ______________________________________ 4. ______________________________________ After you’ve practiced this tool three times, answer the following question: If you were to teach this tool to someone else, what three things that you now know would be helpful? (These should be new insights and not things that were already mentioned in the course.) 1. ______________________________________ 2. ______________________________________ 3. ______________________________________ 4. ______________________________________ Part Three: Practice Meditation 7 © 2016 eCornell. All rights reserved. All other copyrights, trademarks, trade names, and logos are the sole property of their respective owners. LSM602: Identifying and Managing Emotions Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Management Instructions: This part of the course project will require you to practice meditation and report on what you learned while doing it. Before you begin, take stock of your emotional state. Are there things that are causing you stress or anxiety? Complete the following grid. Assess your current emotional state. Briefly describe any work situations that are causing you tension. Meditate three times, for at least 10 minutes each time. Describe what happened when you tried to meditate. What was difficult? Were you able to keep a passive attitude? What, if anything, will you do differently the next time you try to meditate? What changed as you went from the first to the second and third practice? Follow the specific meditation steps as outlined in the “Meditation Steps” tool. Reflect on what you learned. If you were to explain to someone else how to do this, what three things that you now know would be helpful? 8 © 2016 eCornell. All rights reserved. All other copyrights, trademarks, trade names, and logos are the sole property of their respective owners. LSM602: Identifying and Managing Emotions Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Management Outline your next steps. Briefly describe how you plan to work this meditation tool into your daily routine. How will you remember to do it every day? How and when will you evaluate your progress (e.g., measure the change in your before-toafter heart rate drop over two weeks). To submit this assignment, please refer to the instructions in the course. 9 © 2016 eCornell. All rights reserved. All other copyrights, trademarks, trade names, and logos are the sole property of their respective owners.
