Dealing with difficult emotions.

How we experience the world around us is not down to the circumstances we find ourselves in but how we interpret these circumstances.

Getting more skilled at how we understand and manage our emotions on any given day is vital if we are to fulfil more of our potential as leaders.

A fundamental job of any leader is to set the emotional tone of the environment at work. Emotions are contagious and as leaders, if we are constantly anxious and stressed out we will be transmitting that to the people around us.

Performance psychologists estimate that around 70% of our performance at work is dictated by the environment we are operating in, and leaders have a massive role to play in creating this environment.

“Between stimulus and response is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Viktor Frankl

How coaching helps

One of the most important things I work with my clients on is their ability to create space between what happens to them (their circumstances) and how they respond. So many leaders get stuck in reactive modes that greatly reduce their ability to think calmly and the options they have at their fingertips.

By getting my clients to slow down and connect more deeply with their bodies they can access states of calm from which they are able to find more resources.

By reflecting on the underlying causes of particular emotional reactions and helping the leader make connections between things that they were previously oblivious to, they can start to have more mastery of their emotional life.