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How do successful women manage their emotions at work? If you’re a working woman, here are some lessons for you.
If you’re a working woman there’s no doubt you’ve faced challenging work situations where your emotions have been tested. Have there been times when you wondered, how do others do it?
I chatted up Preeti Rastogi Saikia, former Head of India Research & Operations at Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG) and current senior leader at Kilpatrick Executive Search.
Preeti gives some handy tips on how to manage your emotions around challenging personal situations and angry emails. She also shares her favorite confidence building ritual before high stakes meetings.
Read on for more.
Can you share an example of a tough situation in your life and how you managed your emotions around that time?
This was a time of personal grief where I lost my parents within a very short time gap of each other. I was totally down and out at this time. But three things really helped me:
What about every day work life? Any specific situation where one needs to learn to manage their emotions?
Yes! We see this so commonly. Sometimes you’re really angry at someone and you want to shoot a nasty email. I’ve received such emails where the contents of that mail bark at me. In such cases, I try to take the anger out of it and focus first one what the person is saying. Similarly, if I feel like going nasty on someone, I do something else before even typing that email. Corporations need to educate their employees to write well thought out emails.
When it comes to managing your emotions, an organization’s focus on mental wellbeing of their employees also plays a huge role in positively handling different emotions. According to you what is the biggest myth about mental health in the workplace today?
I’ve observed three things:
What are your top three suggestions for leaders to help employees manage their emotions better?
Firstly, leaders need to understand that stress is a reality of life and they need to equip their employees to deal with it. We haven’t been given this training in school or college so organizations need to do it and help employees in their personal development. I mean, if you promote an employee purely on the basis of his technical skills but you know that he’s not ready for the stress that comes with the role, you’re actually doing a disservice to him. Going unprepared, will affect his performance as well as morale.
Secondly, we need to create a culture of open communication. Sometimes it’s okay to say that your plate is full and you need some time off. And this culture can only be created from top down.
And finally, I am all for aggression and hustle at the workplace. But leaders need to nip unhealthy aggression in the bud. For example, react sharply to disrespectful emails or curt one liners and let people know that the organization won’t tolerate it and perhaps even have guidelines around it. This goes a long way in building the organization’s culture.
Managing our emotions effectively during high stakes situations like board presentations, big client visits or town hall meetings can make or break our success. What is your most favorite confidence building ritual for such situations?
Check out this video for Preeti’s answer.
read more...
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I huffed, puffed and panted up the hill, taking many rest breaks along the way. My calf muscles pained, my heart protested, and my breathing became heavy at one stage.
“Let’s turn back,” my husband remarked. We stood at the foot of Shravanbelagola – one of the most revered Jain pilgrimage centres. “We will not climb the hill,” he continued.
My husband and I were vacationing in Karnataka. It was the month of May, and even at the early hour of 8 am in the morning, the sun scorched our backs. After visiting Bangalore and Mysore, we had made a planned stop at this holy site in the Southern part of the state en route to Hosur. Even while planning our vacation, my husband was very excited at the prospect of visiting this place and the 18 m high statue of Lord Gometeshwara, considered one of the world’s tallest free-standing monolithic statues.
What we hadn’t bargained for was there would be 1001 granite steps that needed to be climbed to have a close-up view of this colossal magic three thousand feet above sea level on a hilltop. It would be an understatement to term it as an arduous climb.
Why is the Social Media trend of young mothers of boys captioning their parenting video “Dear future Daughter-in-Law, you are welcome” deeply problematic and disturbing to me as a young mother of a girl?
I have recently come across a trend on social media started by young mothers of boys who share videos where they teach their sons to be sensitive and understanding and also make them actively participate in household chores.
However, the problematic part of this trend is that such reels or videos are almost always captioned, “To my future daughter-in-law, you are welcome.” I know your intentions are positive, but I would like to point out how you are failing the very purpose you wanted to accomplish by captioning the videos like this.
I know you are hurt—perhaps by a domestic household that lacks empathy, by a partner who either is emotionally unavailable, is a man-child adding to your burden of parenting instead of sharing it, or who is simply backed by overprotective and abusive in-laws who do not understand the tiring journey of a working woman left without any rest as doing the household chores timely is her responsibility only.
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