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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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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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