Transcript Dealing with Negativity Managing Your Own Emotions and

Dealing with
Negativity
Managing Your Own Emotional Arousal
A Presentation for Holzer Medical Center LDI
Kendall L. Stewart, M.D.
October 22, 2004
Why is this important?
• We all spend a great deal of time
managing negative people.
• All leaders face challenges with
their
– Own sensitivity,
– Their uncertainty about what to
do, and
– Their hesitancy to act.
• This presentation will address
all of these barriers to selfcontrol.
• These challenges are not easy to
overcome, but they can be
mastered.
• Effective leaders will find a way.
• This presentation will suggest
some practical strategies for
managing your own emotional
arousal.
• After listening to this
presentation, you will be
able to
– Identify three categories
of challenges in dealing
with negative people
– Describe three practical
strategies for effectively
managing your own
emotional arousal.
– Explain why those
strategies make sense.
– Explain how to deploy
those strategies
successfully.
What are some effective strategies for managing
yourself when dealing with negativity?
• Analyze your past performance.*
• Identify your vulnerabilities.
• Recognize your own emotional
arousal.
• Anticipate your instinctive
responses.
• Take full responsibility for your
own feelings.*
• Focus on remaining emotionally
detached.
• Suppress feelings instead of
venting or ruminating.
• Stop expecting difficult people to
change.*
• Clarify others’ unpleasant
feelings.
• Acknowledge the
counterproductive emotional
context.
• Tend to the wounded.
• Employ mental distractions.
• Adopt the observer role.
• Make timely notes as a
distraction.
• Dictate a private memo.
• Consult with a trusted mentor or
coach.
• Become the dispassionate
investigator.
• Seek confirmation that negative
reinforcement is indicated.
• Use role play to prepare for
confrontation.
• Give yourself credit for progress.
Analyze your past performance.
• Why should you?
– Reminds you that great leaders
are born, not made, but that the
best leaders work hard to
burnish their gifts
– Encourages leaders to focus on
their strengths
– Reminds leaders who is in
charge and who is responsible
– Emphasizes the need for
continuous improvement
– Creates dissatisfaction with
mediocrity
– Sets the leader apart
– Renders life more satisfying
– Provides insight into one’s
instincts and vulnerabilities
– Demonstrates that the leader
need not be held hostage to
others’ behavior
• How can you?
– Keep a journal.
– Create four columns.
•
•
•
•
What happened?
How did I feel?
What did I do?
What might I have done?
– Ask others to critique your
performance.
– Reflect on what a “perfect”
leader would have done.
– Identify your strengths and
opportunities.
– Focus on one significant change
at a time.
– Focus on your feelings and their
power.
Take full
feelings.
responsibility for your own
• Why should you?
– Reminds you that blaming
others for how you feel is a
common leadership failure
– Puts responsibility where it
belongs
– Decreases feeling of impotence
– Diminishes the power that
difficult people have over you.
– Inspires other aggravated people
to adopt the same approach
– Makes you accountable for fixing
the problem
– Sets you apart from many
leaders
– Teaches others that blaming
others won’t wash
– Pressures colleagues to take
personal responsibility too
• How can you?
– Talk openly about your feelings
– Persuade others that their
feelings are their responsibility.
– Reframe unpleasant feelings as
opportunities to be in charge
instead a helpless victim
– Acknowledge your feelings on
the spot
– Admit that feelings color
perceptions—yours and others
– Tell stories about how
uncontrolled feelings got you off
track
– Tell stories about other leaders’
feelings
– Tell stories about how you
repaired feelings-contaminated
feelings
Stop expecting difficult people to
change.
•
Why should you?
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
People are partial to their
expectations even when patently
unrealistic
This often predisposes frustration
and disappointment
Permits leaders to predict behavior
more accurately
History, not hope, is the best
predictor
Disinclines leaders to take behavior
personally
Decreases the odds of recurrent
disappointment
Forces leaders to face reality
Encourages leaders to face their own
patterns
Gives a sense of peace with
acceptance
Invites leaders to clarify their
expectations
•
How can you?
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Recognize your repeatedly-frustrated
expectations
Admit your unrealistic expectations
publicly
Quit complaining and start
explaining
Focus on proper management of
current behavior instead of trying to
change it
Predict future behavior and
encourage others to plan
Come up with an unrealistic list of
optional behaviors as a humorous
distraction
View the challenge of dealing with
difficult people as job security
What have you learned?
• Negativity is plentiful in most organizational
environments.
• The best way to manage it is to begin with yourself.
• For most of us, managing our own emotional arousal
does not come naturally.
• For some of us, it is nearly impossible.
• But effective leaders understand how important this
is.
• They work hard at it.
• They rarely score a “10,” but they will not settle for
just scoring “1s” in incident after incident.
• These strategies can help.
• But it takes real effort.
Where can you learn more?
• Kendall L. Stewart, et. al. A
Portable Mentor for
Organizational Leaders,
SOMCPress, 2003
• Kendall L. Stewart, “Physician
Traps: Some Practical Ways to
Avoid Becoming a Miserable
Doctor” A SOMCPress White
Paper, SOMCPress, July 24, 2002
• Robert Bacal, The Complete Idiot’s
Guide to Dealing with Difficult
Employees, Alpha Books, 2000
• S. Michael Kravitz, Managing
Negative People: Strategies for
Success, Crisp Publications, 1995
How can we contact you?
Kendall L. Stewart, M.D.
Medical Director
Southern Ohio Medical Center
President & CEO
The SOMC Medical Care Foundation, Inc.
1805 27th Street
Portsmouth, Ohio 45662
740.356.8153
[email protected]
[email protected]
www.somc.org
www.KendallLStewartMD.com
What questions remain?
www.somc.org
Southern Ohio Medical Center
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