Managing how you feel

Daniel Goleman divided emotional intelligence into five parts: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skill.

Whenever I teach emotional intelligence I always place extra emphasis on self-regulation, as it’s the element that is hardest to do and consequently is the one people hope they can skip.

Self-awareness sounds noble - ‘I know who I am’. Empathy sounds kind - ‘I’m interested in others’. Motivation sounds driven - 'I keep going when others stop'. Social skill sounds inclusive - 'I bring people with me'. Self-regulation, however, just sounds like being told to calm down - ‘I can manage how I feel’.

Yet it's the part that decides whether the other four ever reach anyone. You can read a room perfectly and still ruin it in the half-second between feeling something and saying it.

Self-regulation isn't suppressing what you feel. It's about noticing your likely reaction before it leaves your mouth or your fingers. 

A recent randomised trial found that employees who reinterpreted a situation before reacting were less likely to take it out on colleagues and performed better overall.

Self-regulation doesn’t ask you to feel less. It asks you to leave a gap between the feeling and the fallout. Most of the damage that I’ve seen in teams over the years lives in the self-regulation gap.