Do you frequently experience regret after a meeting, a call, an encounter with others?
Do you often get carried away by (negative) emotions and unable to regulate them properly?
In both cases, your interactions with others is heavily influenced by the emotion at hand, often leading to strong emotions in the other person(s) as well.
By increasing awareness of the effects of emotional expression, you can learn to recognize when a potential negative "ripple effect" of your emotions may occur.
Early detection makes it possible for you to either choose a different way of expressing your emotions or to abandon the meeting, call etc.
In other words, the more you understand how your emotions ripple outwards, the better equipped you become to choose the type of ripples you want to create.
Imagine you are a team manager
During a meeting with your team members, you are frustrated and lash out against one of your colleagues. You may think that you are the only one who is affected by the frustration, but the ripple effect from your emotional explosion affects all the team members present at the meeting.
When the team members go back to their desks after the meeting, they feel your wrath too. They go back to work with a pit in their stomachs, perhaps wondering when they will become the target of your frustration.
đŁđ˛đżđľđŽđ˝đ you think that your emotional explosion was good for productivity because you showed your team members the urgency of the matter.
đŁđ˛đżđľđŽđ˝đ, đľđźđđ˛đđ˛đż, the fear you induced soon translates to caution. To perform at their best, your team members need to take risks, move beyond their comfort zone, and make mistakes along the way. Because the team members are afraid to become your next target of frustration, they play it safe and do only as you tell them. After a year or so, you may notice that your team is not functioning well; they lack initiative and autonomy. You wonder what is wrong with them.
As this example illustrates, the way we express our emotions can have a direct effect on others. Expressing emotions can have both positive and negative effects on other people. When you are aware of these effects, you can use your emotions wisely.
This, is an extract of our toolkit "Building your influence as a Leader", a toolkit to help you develop your influence as a leader.