Willner Consulting

Emotions do not just happen to you, but are made by you. This, and pointers to the science beneath, is the best Christmas gift I could think of giving you this year. Your brain constantly predicts and constructs your experience of the world- not always correctly, and sometimes on a low body budget. This gives you a lot more control over your experience than you may have thought you had. But it comes with some responsibilities 🤔 . I am the luckiest, as a big part of my job is to constantly learn and convey wisdom from those who research concepts relating to modern work life, increasing my own wisdom in the process. This year, I have been absorbing the work of neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett. Her insights have not only changed the way I interpret my emotions, and subsequently my surroundings, but also been a game changer for many of my clients. Feldman Barret's research center around how the traditional approach to emotional intelligence (EI) need rewriting, especially as we live and work in increasingly multicultural settings, arguing that emotions are not universally detectable through expressions or controlled by rational thought. Instead, emotions are constructed by the brain, based on predictions and context, a process influenced by past experiences and emotional vocabulary. Hence, greater emotional granularity, or vocab, enhances EI, health, and social interactions, including at work and home. Understanding how your brain works is key for building EI. Also, it helps you reframe the stress and anxiety that often arises when balancing work, life, and responding to a world in change. What are some simple takeaways from this? 💡 The stress and anxiety you might experience is your brain raising to rationalize the sensations that you feel in your body. Often it oversimplifies things or gets them wrong! 💡 Sometimes, when you feel the world is going under, the sensation your brain picked up may have a purely physical cause, such as hunger, tiredness or a cold breaking out! 💡 …this is because the brain operates with the same budget constraints as your body! The brains function is simply to keep you alive and going. 💡 When you learn new words to describe what you are experiencing, you sculpt your brains micro wiring, giving it means to construct new more accurate emotional experiences. 🤣 As mentioned in the Re-thinking podcast linked to below, there is a Japanese word describing the unpleasantness you feel after a bad haircut. What other feelings might you need more accurate words for? Here are some resources! https://lnkd.in/evWF8J6d https://lnkd.in/e-4xEhwr https://lnkd.in/e-KHVWF7 #ei #emotionalintelligence #neuroscience #stressmanagement #leadership #futureofwork

It is feedback season 🥳. But what about bringing it forward? How can you ensure that whatever your direct report/peer does well gets amplified, has impact, and grows further in the incoming year? By being specific, forward- looking, and refining group dynamics. infographic below by @cult of pedagogy, inspired by Joe Hirsh #leadership #feedback #motivation #futureskills #futureofwork

What is the difference between intelligence and wisdom? I’ve always sensed they have emphasized different capabilities. Adam Grant has once again managed to verbalize it, emphasizing judgement, self-control, and longer-term thinking; ”Wisdom is converting learning into good judgment”. #leadership #learning #wisdom

Sometimes we (misguidedly) make it our goal not to feel things - or for other people not to feel things. We seem to think we cannot handle the emotional part of reality. 🙄 We prefer our direct report/peer not to feel anything when we give them critical feedback 🙄 We avoid critical conversations because we might feel uncomfortable things 🙄 We hold back phoning the medical centre because we do not want to deal with the emotional reality of potentially bad news 🙄 We bury ourselves in work/stress because we are afraid to stop up and notice what we actually feel about our work or situation. 😳 Sometimes we even try to skip grief. But emotions, as illustrated in the infographic below (kudos to The Present Psychologist ), can be important motivators, protectors and teachers. And we are built to feel. But we often lack the skills and agility to coexist with our emotions in harmony. As stated by Susan David, Ph.D. ; “Emotions as data, not directives. Think of them as one data point among many to consider as you move forward.” #leadership #ei #emotionalagility #motivation #difficultconversations #selfawareness

What might a reflective response feel and sound like? When we respond, instead of react, we are no longer feeling, acting or sounding like we are defending ourselves, or our fragile egos, from a threat. We are instead able to tap into curiosity, objectivity, and use our emotions as data rather than imperatives. I love the 12 examples below in the infographic by Dr. Carolyn Frost, Lifestyle Designs, of emotionally intelligent phrases. In what type of situations or conversations would you need to hear/use these types of sentences more? How might they shift the dynamics in that conversation? #leadership #emotionalintelligence #emitionalagility #stressmanagement #communication #difficultconversations

Is it possible to love your work, yet hate your job? If this is the case, what might be driving it? Most of my clients are mid-to-advanced-level career professionals who for one reason or another want to change something. A considerable segment comes because they for various reasons feel stuck, disillusioned, and underappreciated. What I have heard more than once from people representing this segment is that they love their work, such as the larger impact the research, expertise, or product they are working on can bring, using the skills it requires, and/or learning about how their area is evolving. When these people claim to hate their jobs, despite liking the work, it is usually because of one – or many- of the below issues are at play ⚠ A direct leader who does not understand, appreciate or support them ⚠Overly political organizational culture, sometimes even toxic, that prevents them from freely and safely expressing their opinion ⚠Lack of mandate to use their expertise, lead, build, or carry out their duties to the best of their professional knowledge ⚠Lack of visibility, recognition or growth ⚠Role description that only allows them to use a limited amount of their professional skills and strengths ⚠Extensive working hours, insufficient pay, and/or lack of flexibility ⚠Uninspiring work environments ⚠Bureaucracy, meetings and politics that keeps them away from the actual work ⚠Lack of team spirit, collaboration, and relatedness among colleagues While there isn’t always an easy or quick fix to the problems above, developing self-awareness around what it is that you do not enjoy about your job is necessary to move past it. Whether through influencing, job crafting, pivoting, or changing direction completely. If you are unhappy at work, is it because of the work or because of the job? What one or two things could change this? As leaders and managers, how can we make jobs inspiring again, and better reflect the strengths and capacities that individual employees bring? Image is a work meme found on internet -original painting apparently Robert Innes “James Eckford Lauder. #leadership #futureofwork #employeengagement #careerpivot #professionalcoaching

What is the key to being less overwhelmed and reactive? Focusing your time, energy and efforts within what you can actually control. Accepting and letting go of what you cannot. By doing this, you can actually increase what you can reasonably influence. So where should we start? According to the Stoics, what we can fully control include our thoughts, emotions, and interpretations, reactions and actions. With todays science, we also know that how we care for ourselves, mind and body, shapes how we subsequently think, feel and interpret our environments. "We can see the circle of influence as the point where inner meets outer. What we place in our circle of influence also depends on how optimistic or pessimistic we are and how we think about our agency and self-efficacy. We may overestimate our agency and influence, or else we may underestimate it, especially when we feel depressed and helpless (Seligman, 2011; DeAngelis, 2015)." Image and quote from PositivePsychology.com Circles of control inspired by Stephen Covey #leadership #resilience #stressmanagement

What choices are driving your "crazy-busyness"? 😐 🤔 If you are unaware, you are likely also not aware of what choices you must make to break free of this busyness loop. And you are far from alone! Our busy brains are great at lying to us, especially when the going gets tough, and we are inclined to believe them. As busyness becomes interlinked with our identities and sense of worth, it becomes even harder to break free. According to leadership expert Dorie Clark, we often mix up the manifestations of busyness, such as video calls and emails, with the underlying causes, that keeps us trapped in a cycle. These causes often fall within the following three areas; 1. Achieving a status symbol - feeling busy makes us feel popular and important! 2. Avoiding uncertainty - brain hates uncertainty, and busy makes us feel in control 3. Numbness - attempting to drown our problems in work. To break free, we must acknowledge the root cause that drives our busyness and start making choices aligned with our values. "But busyness is often loneliness, frustration, and a life not fully in our control". What choices have you stopped making since becoming "crazy-busy"? 🤔 There is a link to Dories TED Conferences talk in the comments! #leadership #busyness #stress #stressmanagement #worklife

How does the ability to synthesize show up in leadership? I sometimes listen to managers questioning their value as leaders, since they are managing people more knowledgeable than themselves and often don't have all the answers. I invite them to approach their roles as facilitators, orchestra conductors and/or synthesizers, focusing on harvesting information from different sources, recognizing patterns, joining dots and shaping them to new, inspiring insights and thoughts. What strengths and abilities drives great synthesizing? Quote below by Adam Grant #leadership #futureofwork #futureskills #leadershipcoaching

Every. Single. Time. ! Or actually, not quite as often anymore for me. Because it is part of my work to listen to the work dilemmas of others, I am blissfully aware of that I am not alone in feeling and acting like the below picture from time to time. And just that awareness helps. But why are we so mean to ourselves? How can we beat it? By working on our self-compassion, which is also a door opener for empathy and connection with others. According to Dr. Kristin Neff, a prominent researcher in the field,  there are three main elements of compassion: mindfulness, common humanity, and kindness. They are obviously all crucial for how we, as individuals, respond to our own needs, setbacks, and emotions and how we experience suffering. But I have noted that the one relating to common humanity is especially crucial in a time where an increasing amount of people are feeling isolated and lonely at work. It boils down to this; "Can we feel connected to others in our suffering or do we feel isolated to others in our suffering?". Everybody screws up, hurts, doubts, grieves, worries, and judges themselves, once in a while. It is not just you, nor a sign that something actually is wrong with you. But that can be easy to forget, especially if we remain isolated with those thoughts. What can you do to remind yourself you are not alone and treat yourself kinder? Once more, thank you Liz Fosslien for the perfect illustration. Source The Greater Good Science Center Berkely https://lnkd.in/eYV6M8tP #leadership #selfcompassion #empathy #mentalhealthatwork #resilience #emotionalintelligence #mindfulness #kindness