SPEAKER_01 0:00

We both have different experiences handling this. For me personally, I will say this general topic of self-regulation or self-management, it's been a journey for me and I've learned a lot about myself and my reactions. When I was early on in my career and I was really young, I will say that I did react without thinking. I would talk without thinking and things like that, right? So this has been quite a journey for me.

UNKNOWN 0:29

One,

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Welcome to the Emotional Intelligence Podcast, a podcast where we explore the intersection of emotional intelligence and leadership. And whether you're a seasoned executive or just starting out in your leadership journey, we're going to share practical tips, inspiring stories, and expert insights to help you develop your emotional intelligence and achieve your goals. So sit back, relax, and get ready to take your leadership skills to the next level. I'm Ismail. And I'm Samir. You know, throughout this podcast... we've continued to keep going back to these four foundational or main core ingredients of emotional intelligence. And I'll repeat them for us. They're self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. But today, I think we want to have a deeper conversation about just one of the principles in more detail. And so the focus today is going to be mainly on self-management and emotional regulation. Yeah, yeah. So that was the plan. And even more specifically than that, I think we really want to focus today on being able to manage our emotions when we're having those really difficult conversations. It might be around a disagreement or a feedback session where you kind of find yourself on your heels. You're in that emotionally stressed situation. And for a lot of people, that's really when kind of the worst of us comes out. It's when we feel like threatened or under duress during a tough conversation. That's right. And I mean, I think there's some really practical strategies that we can employ and that, you know, practice to handle these potentially, we'll call them explosive conversations better, right? And I mean, we can take a situation and we can leave it distressed and broken, right? Or we can actually do something about it and make it more constructive and perhaps maybe not leave the room in such a hot mess. Yeah. Or like I say, the bucket of tears. Bucket of tears. Yeah. But really, you're on point there, Miss Mullen. This is a topic that has some really wide-ranging applications, I think, in all facets of life, right? But I think at work, it's so critical that And we'll be focused more on work today to learn that leaders really learn how to control their emotions during these really difficult conversations. And it's such an important element in building trust, I think, in creating that environment of psychological safety that we so covet and we talk about leaders needing to be able to create that. And so by being able to Yeah. Get better at it and create an environment to have these difficult conversations where they're really the one who is creating the comfort in the environment and not the one who is creating the volatility or the explosiveness, as you mentioned. Right. And I mean, before we started recording, we were talking about how we've both been in these situations. We see them in different ways and we experience them in different ways. But in this episode, I think we can look at both of our experiences, look at some of the research and share some really simple tactics that we can all use to not walk out of that room after a difficult conversation. In a bucket of tears. Bucket of tears. Yep, exactly. The whole goal of this is to avoid the bucket of tears. Okay, Samir, why don't we launch right into this? And I'd like to start off at posing this first question. And that's, what is it? about a difficult conversation that puts people so on edge and causes us to react in ways that may be so different from our typical response, or even respond in a way that's almost counter to our personality entirely. Yeah, I mean, you see it all the time, right? The most calm individual or somebody who's so mild-mannered in the face of an argument can really turn into a different beast, right? And a big part of that is because when you're having a difficult conversation it's usually centered around a disagreement right and that disagreement can feel very much like a threat right so um you may be having a conversation with your boss or um or somebody who it works for you right and immediately you're thinking okay like we're going into this conversation it's going to be difficult or you're maybe blindsided by that conversation and you feel the threat of having to give something up either whether it's A preference of yours, whether it's a right that you've earned or maybe it's a bit of power that you've been given that's getting taken away from you. Right. So immediately there's like this threat of having to give something up. So your body, when it feels that it's getting ready to fight. Right. And, and so that's the trigger and it triggers your sympathetic nervous system. You know, your body starts to respond in ways that are really visceral, very tangible, right? Your heart rate spikes, you know, you feel the breathing, the shallow breathing start, your muscles might start to tighten. I know with, you know, we always used to say with my dad, like the veins would start popping out of his forehead. Forehead veins. Yeah. Yeah. So like, it's just all these things, right? The blood in your body starts to kind of move away from your organs and you start just having this real discomfort and that discomfort impacts your emotions in a really really big way and I think what's although the human body is so amazing and phenomenal in its inner workings, the one thing that it lacks is kind of that ability to discern between threats, right? So you might have a threat of not getting that raise that you want, but your body, when you're having that difficult conversation, it feels that threat. It responds in the same way as if you're being attacked by a shark. 100%. And so physically, you're having that same reaction. And then... your counterpart starts to pick up on that, right? And as humans, we mirror one another. And so as your blood pressure goes up and your reaction starts to get more, um, upset, then your counterpart starts to get more upset. So, you know, it's, it's really a physical reaction to the threat that you're experiencing and, um, and your body kind of goes in that fight or flight mode and we all have it and it might kind of show up in different degrees, but For some people, it's very obvious. It's very fiery. It's very sudden. Some people take a little bit longer to get there and some people are really good at suppressing it, right? And they're able to utilize some of the tactics that we're going to talk about in this episode and they become kind of calm and they just kind of flow like the river, right? Whatever it throws at you. So it's really interesting how that all plays out. I wanted to be the one to bring up the fight or flight. And you, even though you stole it from me, I can't, I can't say anything, but I agree with you. Like that is, it's this innate, uh, innate response that our bodies have. I mean, it's hard coded. It's a primitive thing that happens in our brains that just triggers us. And it's an evolution, call it what you want, but it's evolutionary. It's, it's really our bodies trying to protect ourselves. So, um, it's that like that threat that you said, our bodies will react in a way that might not be commensurate to the situation necessarily, or it might be, who knows? I mean, I guess if that shark is there, you're out of there. Yeah. And it, and exactly like the conversation or the consequences of that conversation can mean different things to different people. Right. And so that's where you see sometimes a disconnect in one person's reaction versus the other. And you're like, man, dude, why are you freaking out here? Like, but you know, and that's, that's a difficult, That's a difficult situation to be in too, right? Where you're the one who's feeling like you have a lot more to lose in the conversation. So that might cause you to act differently than you would like to act in the situation. So, you know, it really is, it brings out a totally different side in people when they're dealing with those difficult situations. But, you know, I kind of see this as twofold, right? There's difficult conversations that you can sort of plan and prepare for, you know, they're on the calendar, they're scheduled either at work, you know, it's your boss and you're like, Hey, I gotta, I gotta have a talk with you or your boss may reach out to you and tell you like, this is what I want to talk about. And then sometimes those conversations happen more ad hoc, right? Like you're walking into something and you're expecting one thing and the conversation just takes a different turn. Right. I want to talk about both of those situations, but I got to ask a question like, right. What do you, Ismail, do to prepare for those difficult conversations? Let's start with when it's scheduled, when you know it's going to happen, when the topic is known and you can sort of anticipate the content of the conversation or the context of the conversation. How do you prepare for something like that? I mean, like I was mentioning earlier, um, We both have different experiences handling this. For me personally, I will say this general topic of self-regulation or self-management, it's been a journey for me and I've learned a lot about myself and my reactions. you know, when I was early on in my career and I was really young, I will say that I did react without thinking. I would talk without thinking and things like that, right? So this has been quite a journey for me and I've learned a lot. But when I think of that situation, there's tons of different ways of tips and tricks, but there's really two or three that stand out for me. And the first one that I would say is, the first one I would say is, I think it's being very clear on what your objectives are for the conversation. Now, obviously, this is very situational, meaning that if someone said, hey, I want to talk to you, and this is what the topic is, it depends on if you are doing the talking or being talked to. But still, if you're aware of it, it's being very clear about what the objectives are. So is this something that's around corrective action? Are you wanting to calm a tense situation, and maybe perhaps you're a mediator? Right. You really want to be also another way to think about it is someone mentioned this to me, and I think it's really, really meaningful or is striking the coal while it's cold rather than hot. Meaning, is it a situation that. There was an occurrence and you knew if you brought this up right then and there, it would only make things worse. It would cause that explosion that you see when a blacksmith hits a piece of hot metal, right? So you let things cool down and you come back to it. Is it one of those situations? So being really clear, what are you trying to achieve? So when you're looking at the objectives of that conversation, I think one of the things that pops into my mind is empathy, right? We talk about empathy in so many different situations. I think having a difficult conversation is, is an opportunity to employ empathy in a really big way. Cause as we talked about in previous episodes, empathy is not sympathy. Empathy is really putting yourself in the other person's shoes. And in this situation, empathy in, in the situation of a difficult conversation or potentially like a negotiation or somewhere, um, Empathy is not giving in. Empathy is not letting them walk over you. It's truly understanding their objectives. So it's understanding your own objectives from the conversation, but then also understanding the counterpart's objectives. Part and parcel of that is really understanding if there's any information from the other party that is valid, that will help you have a more effective conversation. And you got to ask them sometimes, right? Like to give you more of the why, if you're not understanding it, you have to, you have to ask for more of the why behind their position and be okay with saying like, all right, you know, that's new information to me. I didn't know that, you know, so let me process that. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, it's so interesting when we talk about empathy and in a difficult conversation context, I, I find myself often doing that with like customers, right? Like if a customer is really beating down on my project team, like really right away thinking like, okay, they're getting pressure from somewhere that's causing them to act irrational with us right now and have these extreme extreme kind of expectations. You know, we had a situation where, Um, once where, you know, customers asking us to do some rework for free, you know, we had to, in their mind, they thought the contract covered them and ours, they didn't. So they're coming from a position of thinking they're rightful in asking for this. I personally did not agree with that position and, and we had a conversation about it, but you gotta be able to first understand the objectives of both parties. And then also what's kind of triggering them and what's, what's, what, what their position is and why they feel uncomfortable. Right. I mean, that's where I think the context comes into play. If you're able to really get down to– if it's as black and white as they're getting pressure from above because their budgets are off and something's missing, if you're really able to understand that and empathize with them, you can come to an answer. amicable agreement, something that, you know, some sort of middle ground where no one really is, say, giving in, so to speak. Right. And I mean, on the same vein, also of like self-management or self-regulation, I think it's important to reflect. And this, you know, before I list off my final one, I'm hoping, like we're hoping that people hear this episode and both parties in that conversation are doing this. you know, some of these. And if you're both doing a, you're getting to a, an agreement of a good ending faster, right? A better ending faster. But what you want to do is you want to reflect on your own emotions in the event, like you should recognize and acknowledge your emotions about the topic because, or even the person who you're having the conversation with, because those types of things, they might influence the behavior and thought process during the conversation. And if you take a moment and you reflect on those emotions, it can help you approach the discussion with a lot more calm and more rationality. If you know this person upsets me whenever I talk to them, you know you're going to have to just keep your calm. You just know. That's kind of a worst-case situation that I just described, but they happen. They're there. Right. And that's kind of how the interplay of all the four core– ingredients of EQ come into play, right? Like we're talking about self-management, but you just made a statement there that requires a lot of self-awareness, requires some relationship management, right? Being able to understand how to manage those emotions when you're interacting with these folks. It really brings all of the different pieces of the emotional intelligence equation together. And so that's really interesting. For sure. And, and I, and by no means are these like the only three, these are just three that stand out to me. And you know what, perhaps what we'll do is we will in the show notes, a link to some more information on more tips and tricks. Yeah. One, one thing that, I mean, it's, it could be something that is unique to me or a lot of people might do this, but when I was thinking about, you know, preparing for this, this discussion, like what do I do when I'm, encountering a difficult conversation. And one of the things that I do all the time, and it's usually when I'm driving in the car and I know this conversation is going to happen. And I will admit, I talk to myself sometimes, like it's more like just like self-rationalism. It's just like, you know, I can like talk myself into things out of things. And so I just like to speak things out loud. And so, yeah. So a lot of times when I'm, when I'm walking into one of these difficult conversations, what I do is I sort of role play it in my head before I get into the conversation. And I start off by predicting the worst case scenario. I imagine the scenario of, let's say I was going to go and ask for a raise. My first instinct would be, to imagine that my boss laughs in my face and tells me that I'm an ungrateful piece of crap and to get the hell out of their office. That's pretty bad. Try to think about how I would keep my composure in all of those different situations. So it's almost like I'm practicing emotional regulation before I walk into that conversation. And and so I'm like, all right, if they go with number one, if they're just like cruel to me, like I know how I like I should just expect it, you know, and just like be cool and just walk out of there, you know, and like and I do that with a lot of different conversations, especially when I have to like deliver news to maybe a customer or, you know, if I'm sitting in like a like an executive meeting and I have to sort of spin the narrative on something that might not be, you know, that might not land well. So like, I really do practice that a lot. I mean, I know I could, I can certainly see you being very successful at, um, at both of those, but specifically the spin. I like your spin style. It's very good. Yeah. No, it's very, it's very good. Right. Even sometimes I'm like, Oh man, he's totally spinning me. I'm going to go with it. I'm going to go with it. He made me feel good about myself. Some people, some people call it manipulation. I liked, I like what you're saying. Just like spin it a little bit, you know, but I think there's a happy meeting, which is like positive manipulation. Yeah, exactly. I come from a good place. I'm just, you know, we're all trying to meet the same goals here. I mean, it's all about intention, I think, right? If you're coming from a good place. So that's also important to understand if you're able to see where they're coming from. Is it a place of good, right?

UNKNOWN 20:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Now, let's get back to the show. All right. So to switch gears, Ismael, I'm going to ask you, we talked about how you prepare for a difficult conversation when you know what's going to happen. There's a flip side, another situation where you are in a situation difficult conversation that you weren't expecting, right? So how do you emotionally regulate yourself to mitigate the damage from a really difficult conversation that you were not prepared for? You weren't in that headspace. You get blindsided. How do you maintain that composure in real time when you face that situation? So I'm going to first admit that this is something that I've always struggled with and probably will continuously need to practice forever. right? Just getting better at. Now, that being said, for fear of adding hours to this podcast episode, I'm just going to mention a couple of really big things that resonate with me. And perhaps, again, we can link to some more in our show notes. But I would say number one is breathe, breathe, breathe. And the reason why I say this is because it's been shown that slowing your breath counters some of the psychological effects of the fight or flight response. Okay. Yeah. So studies have shown just breathing will, will counter that response and both like the fight and the flight generally, whichever, um, uh, whichever angle you take doesn't end up being a good result. But if you can kind of manage that, then you're in a good place. And I'm not talking about like that full Wim Hof breathing. If you're familiar with this, if people are familiar with the eight, four, I'm just talking about, you know, in through the nose, pausing and out through the mouth. And I really makes a huge difference. And you don't have to make this like really apparent or you can make it apparent. That sends its own message. But I think taking a breath, it can do nothing but good. It adds more oxygen to that blood that's coursing through your veins and trying to cause you to act. And a very close second is pausing. There's nothing wrong with taking a moment and collecting your thoughts and saying... Like, hey, let me take a moment and think about that for a sec. Or, and you kind of brought this up, you mentioned this, I think I need a minute to process what you said, right? And like, at the very least, this is going to help you not say something really impulsive that you're going to regret later, at bare minimum. And in the best case scenario, you're actually able to take that time. And time is running fast. feels different when you're in those stressful situations what might feel like five seconds might feel like 10 minutes to you well that's maybe a bit much but like it might feel like three minutes and it's really not that long taking a minute to and collecting your thoughts collecting your thoughts i know i don't do that enough but i i very conscious very conscious whenever i'm blindsided for anything good or bad i'm like wait a minute let me just take a second And think about what's going on, assess the situation. No, that's really great. And I would say I might be a little on the opposite end of the spectrum from you on ability to manage my emotions during a difficult conversation. Something that generally comes easy to me. I would say, unless I'm hungry or sleepy, because I'm one hangry dude. You do not want to mess with me when I'm hungry. But if I'm semi-fed, I am... actually pretty good. And I think that part of it is what you said. I am big on just staying quiet and marinating on what's being said, what I want to say next, and really choosing my words in those situations. Again, unless I'm hungry. But one of the things that I really try to practice that helps me in that situation is like the transference, like, like don't let other people's emotions become your emotions. And so like, I'm very conscious of that. And sometimes it really rubs people the wrong way when we're having difficult conversations, because they're like, man, why aren't you as fired up as me? Or why aren't you like, and, and it's not, and they can get miscommunicated as a lack of caring or just apathy, general apathy for the, for the conversation topic. But it's really just, that's my way of emotionally regulating is like, Staying a little bit on the quiet side, pausing, really choosing my words, slowing things down, you know, and I think that's really helpful. And if you in the process can remember to breathe and, you know, really take those like, you know, there's different techniques. People say like when you're upset, like being mindful, like labeling your emotions, like telling yourself, like, you know, like distancing yourself from how you feel like, like. Like, I am not mad. I am feeling mad because, you know, so those strategies all come into play when you're having those difficult conversations. But I would say for me, uh, one of the biggest things is, uh, not, not looking at the person across from me and saying like, oh man, look at, they're really fired up about this. I should be fired up too. If I'm not, I'm not. And it's, and it's because I don't, uh, It's not because I don't feel passionately about it or I'm not. It's not something that's important to me, but it's really just this is how I get what I want in a difficult conversation. It's by maintaining my composure. It allows me to stay connected to my prefrontal cortex, keep my rational thinking in check, which pays major dividends for me. And you don't have to then... You know, do the apology afterwards of, you know, I shouldn't have said that. Now, I'm definitely not perfect. Like, I have my moments. I think we all do. But generally, I would say I'm better most times at getting blindsided by a difficult conversation because of some of these techniques that I've developed over the years. But again, like you said, man, this is a skill that everybody can work on. It's something that mood dependent situation dependent, right? Like, you know, and, and who knows how you're going to react in a situation that has, that you've never experienced before, right? Like, um, you know, with, with, uh, I think of the example of like, as your kids, you face different situations, right? You don't know how you're going to react, right? Like, uh, there could be a teacher or a or a parent or somebody that just really, really gets you and you might not have the ability to remember to breathe and pause and listen. You're just going to go off and you're going to feel like crap afterwards. But I think that there's a large majority of the time that using these techniques that we're talking about, you can really mitigate a lot of that fallout from these conversations. You can maintain your rational level of thinking and really come out of it more positively in your favor. And like we talked about not being like a bucket of tears, you know, I can actually remember the last time I had like a really heated conversation or fired up, like you described fired up, um, conversation or argument, whatever you want to call it. I can remember. And the person across from me, was he's always been calm he's actually again he's one of my my mentors uh and he taught me the art of staying calm he literally like he just he and he did it by showing it to me in my angry passionate conversation i thought really like passion was where it was at and this is how you get stuff done and really i mean i've made far more progress and handled much more difficult situations being calm than I ever did being all fired up. For some people, it works. For some people, that's just the way it is. I remember the last time it was. I'm going to say it's over a decade since I've had that type of conversation or reaction. Now, I'm my manager teaching that, paying that forward because I can see the value in it. I think probably one of the biggest things he did was he was a reflective listener. So he would echo back what I was saying and I'd be like, yes, you get it. I'd feel better about myself. And then he took that time to kind of almost formulate his case and then he would play it back. Like he'd play his case back to me and I'd be like, ah, yeah, you're probably right.

UNKNOWN 30:21

Right. I'm like, damn it.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

And it was like, yeah, it was totally, yeah. A few of those. And I'm like, wait a minute, maybe I need to change my game here. And that's kind of where I started practicing this. But I still would say, you know, as a leader, you got to tie it back to creating that psychologically safe environment and nobody, whether, you know, you said, and I agree with you, like, some people get their way by being really fired up and really passionate and really just, you know, reactionary. But again, I would still say it's short term gain for longterm kind of pain, like in, in, in the sense that like you might get what you need in that moment, but you've deteriorated trust. You've deteriorated the safety of your organization to get that. And, you know, a lot of, I don't know many folks that get things that way and then feel good about themselves afterwards. Sure. Or end up having a very good opinion held about them. So, Ismail, emotional regulation in difficult conversations, it has such a huge tie to emotional intelligence, right? Being able to use those core four principles of... self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship management, and being able to regulate those emotions in the moment during difficult conversations, whether they're spur-of-the-moment difficult conversations or pre-planned conversations. There's tactics that you can use to be effective or to mitigate the damage that could be caused in either scenario. Absolutely. And for listeners out there If you've had any of these circumstances or used any of these tips, we'd love to hear from you and hear your experiences. That would be fantastic. And we both hope that you've gleaned something from here that you'll be able to use in the future. Thanks for tuning in to today's episode of the Emotional Intelligence Podcast. We hope you found it informative and enjoyable. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. And if you have a moment, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave a review on your favorite platform. Your feedback helps us improve and reach more people. If you're interested in learning more about the topics we discussed today, be sure to check out the show notes for links and resources. You can find them by visiting our website. And if you have any questions or feedback, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach us by email at info at emotionalintelligence.com or connect on social media by using the links in the show notes.