Prepare to Develop Emotional Intelligence

Daniel Goleman, a psychologist who contributed to the rise of the concept of emotional intelligence, proposed these five key principles of emotional intelligence in the workplace, which are self-awareness, self-management, motivation, empathy and social skills (1998).

These principles provide more detail than the three key skills previously mentioned and can be summarised into four categories:

Self-awareness

This is the ability to know your own emotions, strengths, weaknesses, and goals, as well as how they impact your actions and other people. It is characterised by having self-confidence and a realistic assessment of oneself. There are three stages of self-awareness:

• Emotional self-awareness: Recognising emotions and their impact on your life
• Accurate self-assessment: Accurately identifying your own strengths and weaknesses
• Self-confidence: Knowing your self-worth and capabilities

Being able to accurately identify your emotions and abilities helps you figure out which areas you need to improve on. This principle is also the foundation for other principles, as you cannot properly manage and harness your emotions if you do not know them in the first place. Self-awareness can be applied in the workplace by analysing emotional stressors and the reason behind those stressors, as well as actively asking for feedback about your own behaviour.

Self-management

This involves taking what you know about your own emotions and finding ways to apply integrity and flexibility in decision-making by keeping disruptive emotions in check. A huge part of managing yourself involves holding yourself accountable and committing to improving yourself.

You can practise self-management in the workplace by remaining calm during stressful situations and adapting your response to others’ emotional expressions. The ability to keep your emotions in check while resolving issues will show that you are able to respond effectively and rationally to any situation. Showing control under stress will allow others to approach you more easily and create a more open relationship between workgroup members.

Social awareness

Being socially aware refers to the ability to accurately identify others’ emotions. It involves being conscious of what other people are feeling at any given time based on their behaviours and being able to respond in appropriate ways to different situations. This means adjusting the way you interact with others in the workplace, depending on the situation and their emotions. Empathy plays a key role in social awareness. Empathy deals with processing and understanding others’ reactions, emotions and motivations from their perspective. This is a valuable skill to become an effective leader, as it involves putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and feel what they are experiencing so that you can respond appropriately.

There are three kinds of empathy:

• Cognitive empathy: The ability to know how another person feels and what they may be thinking.
• Emotional empathy: Also called emotional contagion, this is the ability to attune to another person's emotional processes and respond appropriately.
• Compassionate empathy: The ability to feel and understand another person's pain and respond to it.

The ability to relate to other people from their perspective helps establish respect and understanding between workgroup members. Empathy can be demonstrated in the workplace by actively asking co-workers about their opinions and offering them guidance and support whenever they need it.

Relationship management

Relationship management involves connecting with others. Before managing your relationship with someone, you must know what outcome you want to get out of it. It is important to note that this skill considers not just what you want to happen in the relationship, but also the other person’s needs. This can be applied in the workplace through teamwork and mediation of conflicts. Goleman’s principles of motivation and social skills can be categorised here. Motivation involves assessing your position and goals and understanding why you want to reach them. It involves the ability to find the good in each situation, especially failures, and learning to move forward. Being able to motivate yourself and others effectively can increase productivity and efficiency in the workplace. Social skills, on the other hand, is the culmination of the previous principles. It uses emotional intelligence in action by negotiating your own motivations with others’ and coming to a compromise. This includes being persuasive, finding common ground and resolving conflicts in the workplace effectively.

Existing evaluation criteria

Knowing whether you have a high or low level of emotional intelligence is a difficult task. There are aspects of a person that remains unanalysed, which can lead to harm or the failure to realise one's full potential. To assist people in understanding more about themselves, numerous tests and studies have been developed and conducted to quantify and evaluate emotional intelligence. Though not entirely accurate, these tests can give you a starting point into understanding where you stand and where you want to go regarding your own emotional intelligence.

The following is a list of some tests that measure emotional intelligence:

Bar-on model of emotional-social intelligence (ESI)

This model was developed by Reuven Bar-On (2006) and is designed to evaluate a person’s ability to manage personal, social and environmental change. The model evaluates their self-awareness, empathy, self-management and motivation, as well as their ability to adapt to solve problems related to their emotions.

Mayer-Salovey-Caruso emotional intelligence Test (MSCEIT)

This test was developed by Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso (2002) and it measures how well a person is able to perceive, understand, manage and use emotions. These are measured by having the person solve tasks related to each ability.

Genos emotional intelligence inventory

This is a workplace tool developed by Palmer, Stough, Harmer, and Gignac (2009), usually used by Human Resources to evaluate potential employees. Unlike other tests, this does not evaluate emotional intelligence directly. Instead, it measures 70 workplace behaviours that effectively demonstrate emotional intelligence in the workplace. The inventory attempts to assess the awareness of self and others, authenticity, emotional reasoning and self-management.

These tests all measure the principles of emotional intelligence, giving test-takers an overview of principles they are proficient in and principles they need to improve on.

Developing evaluation criteria

Although there are many existing evaluation criteria for you to use, it may be helpful for you to develop your own. This allows you to contextualise it according to your job role or your workplace and focus on certain aspects of emotional intelligence that you feel are more important to your work. Some existing evaluation criteria may be very general or do not emphasise the specific skills that your workplace needs; therefore, it may be more useful to develop your own.

Testing yourself on each of the principles will let you know what your emotional strengths and weaknesses are, and how these can be applied in your workplace. Your strengths and weaknesses will be based on the principles previously discussed. For example, questions about the relationship management principle will help you identify how well you empathise with your co-workers or if you lack the ability to motivate them effectively. Additionally, questions about your self-management may teach you about the strengths that you have in being able to calm yourself down when you are angry.

Types of Tests

The types of tests that are suitable for measuring emotional intelligence are the following:

Yes or No

This type of test only has two answer options, either yes or no. An example is shown below:

Do you manage your stress level in the workplace effectively?
a. Yes
b. No

Although this type of test is simple and straightforward, its binary nature can limit responses. The responses may also not be applicable at all to the persons taking the test, in which case you should opt to use the other types of tests listed.

Scale

This type of test gives a statement and you must rate yourself based on the statement on a provided scale. The answers are usually on a five-point scale and they list how applicable the statement is to you, from 1 being least likely and 5 being most likely. An example of a statement in this form is shown below:

The statement may also ask about the frequency of your actions. Another example is:

Freeform Response

This type of test allows for any type of response. This is best when giving a scenario, where the response can be any action possible to do in real life. For example:

One of your teammates’ performance at work is not up to standards. How do you address this issue?

Since this type of test allows freedom of response, scoring the test itself may be difficult. In order to create a test like this, you should list down all possible correct responses. When scoring the test, refer to your answer key, but allow room for variations. This test can help you analyse emotional intelligence in-depth, as the answers to different scenarios often reveal what the test-taker’s process of thinking of a response is.

The next thing to consider are the specific skills you want to evaluate. A good foundation to start with is the three skills required for emotional intelligence: being aware of emotions, harnessing emotions, and managing emotions. If you want your criteria to be more specific, you can also base your questions or statements off Goleman’s principles of emotional intelligence in the workplace.

To start developing your own evaluating criteria, list down the principles you want to include. It is generally a good idea to cover all principles, but if you feel that your workplace or job task does not really require a certain principle, you can opt to focus more on the others. Contextualise these principles according to your job role or workplace. You can also use situations that commonly arise within your organisation as examples. Next, write down questions or statements that correspond to those principles.

A sample questionnaire with four statements per principle is provided below. Responses to it are on a five-point scale, with 1 being least like the test-taker, and 5 being most like the test-taker. The statements are general, but you can reword them to be more specific and fit the context of your workplace:

Self-Awareness	Rating 1-5
I know what situations can cause me stress.
I know why I react to things the way I do.
I set goals for myself that I know I can achieve.
I know when I feel upset.
Self-Management
I encourage myself to do my best at work.
I set realistic goals for myself.
I analyse the situation before reacting.
I can calm myself down quickly when I’m angry.
Social Awareness
I understand what others are feeling based on their facial expressions.
I can pick up on changes in others’ voices while they are speaking.
I understand others’ body language.
I know when others feel upset.
Relationship Management
I know what my co-workers’ strengths and weaknesses are.
I am able to motivate my co-workers to do their work efficiently.
I can calm people down quickly.
I know how to find common ground with others.

In the sample questionnaire, all the questions are worded positively, such that answering with a high number means that you have a good grasp of the emotional intelligence skill being asked about. For this test, the higher the score, the more developed one’s emotional intelligence is.

You may also word some questions negatively, such that answering with a high number means that the emotional intelligence skill is not fully understood by the test-taker. An example of a negatively worded question is “I often lose my temper.” Remember to note down which questions are worded negatively in your answer key.

An emotional intelligence test could also be used to measure job satisfaction. A person who scores highly on emotional intelligence is more likely to be satisfied with their job and those who perform the best are in positions that require them to use their emotional intelligence frequently. Meanwhile, people with a high level of emotional intelligence but are in a job that does not require them to utilise it are reported to perform more poorly and are less committed to their job.

A good test that measures emotional intelligence would be more rigorous, having more questions or statements than the example above. The questions should also be specific to your workplace and the industry it belongs to. For example, an emotional intelligence test for someone who works in sales would have questions that focus more on dealing with customers. Meanwhile, an emotional intelligence test for a manager or team leader would have more questions related to motivating and encouraging co-workers effectively.

To summarise, the following steps are how to develop your own evaluation criteria for measuring emotional intelligence:

1. Decide on the type of test, whether the responses will be in yes-or-no form, scale rating or freeform.
2. List which emotional intelligence skills and characteristics are the most essential for your job role, workplace or industry.
3. Write the questions for each category in the skills or principles of emotional intelligence.
4. Make sure the questions are specific to the industry and type of workplace you work in.
5. You may opt to rearrange the order of the questions so that the test-taker does not know which specific skill of theirs is being tested. Make sure you keep an answer key that indicates the skills that the questions correspond to.

Now, look at how you scored and compare the items that you felt were most like you and the ones that were least like you. The way you answered these questions could provide clues to learning your strengths and weaknesses.

1. Were your strengths in reading your own emotions, or in reading other people’s emotions?
2. Do you find it difficult to regulate your own emotions?
3. Is it difficult for you to motivate yourself and others to perform your/their best?
4. Do you find it difficult to figure out how others are feeling?
5. Are you able to connect and interact positively with others?

Identifying your strengths and weaknesses will allow you to function in a work environment that plays to your strengths and helps you achieve your goals. If your result shows that managing your emotions is the category with the lowest score, you can focus your effort into improving that skill. You may practise self-regulation by stopping before you act and asking yourself how and why you feel this way. It may help you gain insight into which emotions are driving your behaviour.

Remember that your level of emotional intelligence is not fixed. You can always continue to improve it. Adjusting the way you interact with other people is a sign of effective leadership. Great leaders are the ones who show transformative qualities. Transformative leadership inspires valuable change, and it can enhance morale, motivation, and performance of followers.

It is important to identify emotional stressors in the workplace. These are what trigger your stress and other negative emotions such as anger and sadness. If stress is becoming a problem for you and your team members, you may need to take action to reduce this. Too much stress reduces emotional intelligence, which negatively impacts your leadership capabilities.

A certain amount of stress is normal, but the main culprits of severe work-related stress are the following:

1. Deadlines
2. Interpersonal conflicts
3. Staff management
4. Dealing with too many issues and problems

Not everything in the workplace can be controlled, but that does not mean there is nothing you can do. It is about finding ways to manage workplace stress, not about making huge changes or rethinking your ambitions. The only thing you can have constant control over is yourself, so focus on that.

Some symptoms, both physical and psychological, of chronic stress are:

• depression
• anxiety
• irritability
• feeling unmotivated
• compulsive behaviour
• lack of sleep or too much sleep
• unintentional gain or loss of weight

Even if a job has become increasingly stressful, you can retain a large measure of self-control and self-confidence by understanding and practising emotional intelligence. When it comes to work satisfaction and success, it matters just as much as intellectual ability. Emotional intelligence is about communicating with others effectively, overcoming differences and defusing tension and stress.

Identifying emotions

The first step to identifying emotional stressors is to be aware of what emotions you feel. However, feelings are complex, and it is difficult to identify them. You may have been taught to ignore and override your feelings as most people have. Sometimes, even if you can identify them, it may become hard to express them appropriately. For example, feeling mild annoyance may be expressed as intense anger. It is important to identify your feelings to be able to express them properly.

Before you learn to identify them, it is important to understand the following about your feelings:

Feelings can result in physical reactions

During moments of emotional stress, you can experience bodily reactions such as increased heart rate, perspiration and trembling. This is because feelings are mediated by a part of the brain called the limbic system and the autonomic nervous system, which cause involuntary reactions.

Feelings are influenced by thoughts

How you interpret a situation can result in various feelings. If you perceive a person as selfish and unreasonable, you may feel anger towards them. If you are jealous of someone, you will be inclined to react accordingly towards them whenever you interact.

Feelings can be simple and complex

Simple feelings could be anger, sadness, fear, love, excitement, or joy. Complex feelings may be a combination of basic emotions and last longer compared to simple feelings. For example, fear is a basic emotion, while free-floating anxiety is a complex emotion.

Feelings give you energy

If you acknowledge your feelings and express them appropriately, you will feel more energetic. When you remain unaware of them, you may feel numb and tired.

Multiple feelings can arise at once

For example, you may feel anger and fear together in response to a threat. It is also possible to feel both a negative and positive emotion at the same time.

Feelings are contagious

If you spend much of your time with a person who is depressed, you may start to feel sad, too. Similarly, you may feel happy around a person who is excited. Interacting with optimistic people can encourage you to feel positive emotions.

Feelings are never right or wrong

Emotions simply exist. The perception and judgment can be right or wrong, but feelings are simply there. All people experience both positive and negative emotions.

Feelings tend to be suppressed

Suppression can be conscious or unconscious. You can ignore and withhold your emotions, but they still exist. You may experience a vague sense of unhappiness, but you may find it difficult to pinpoint what is making you unhappy.

As discussed, suppressed emotions manifest themselves through bodily sensations. It is important to tune into your body to identify what you feel. A process called ‘experiential focusing’ was developed by Eugene Gendlin (2007). This process allows you to give a concrete form to your emotions, which makes it easier to identify them. The following are the steps for tuning into your body:

Identifying emotional stressors

Controlling your emotions means you can recognise them and can develop strategies to act on them when appropriate. The following steps may help you with the process of identifying and analysing emotional stressors in the workplace.

Understand what causes your emotions

Human emotions fall into basic categories, such as joy, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust and anger. More complex emotions are combinations of these basic ones. Jealousy, for example, is a complex emotion in reaction to fear. This fear may be caused by things in your personal life. You may feel that you are not ‘as good’ as someone else, or fear being abandoned because you are not ‘perfect.’

If you can learn to recognise what kinds of situations cause which emotions, you will be able to tell the difference between anger and fear. Remember that sometimes multiple emotions can show up at the same time and the person who is experiencing the emotions may not be able to distinguish between the two.

Recognise that emotions are not random

Emotions often occur on a subconscious level. By learning to recognise your emotions and bringing them to a conscious level, you will be more able to control them. Repressing emotions does not make them disappear on their own. If you can recognise the emotion the moment you feel it instead of letting it build up and intensify, you will know that you are gaining control.

Another crucial thing to do is to accept responsibility for your emotions. Do not blame other people for them. Taking full responsibility will help you control your emotions better.

Be aware of what you thought or experienced when the emotion began

Regularly during the day, ask yourself how you are feeling. Keep a journal, if you can. Even if you only use it at the end of the day, write down your thoughts, feelings and situations that cause a particular emotion in you. Stop and analyse what you were thinking about. Focus until you find what thought was causing that emotion. This way, you can pinpoint the trigger that made you feel that way instead of letting its origin slip away.

Documenting your emotions also helps in determining just how much of a trigger you can tolerate. Understanding these things will help in facilitating your emotions when faced with overwhelming situations.

If you are unsure of how to start writing in your journal, you can use the following guidelines:

Identify

• What happened?
• When and where did the situation occur?

Reflect

• How did you behave?
• What thoughts did you have?

Theorise

• Was the outcome expected or unexpected?
• What do you think could have changed the outcome?

Conceptualise

• Is there anything you can do now to change the outcome?
• What actions can you do to change similar situations in the future?

You may already know what triggers certain emotions in you but analysing it further by using the steps outlined above may help you discover the hidden roots of your stress. For example, an employee may have made a joke while talking to their manager, but the manager did not laugh. The employee interpreted the lack of reaction as the manager being angry at them and jumped to the conclusion that they did not do a good job that day. This can spiral to feelings of sadness and inadequacy, all in just a short amount of time without the person even being aware of it. If they took the time to analyse their feelings in that situation, they would have realised that the manager’s lack of reaction was not an expression of anger toward them.

There is nothing wrong with negative feelings and thoughts, as you cannot control them all the time. These are natural, as long as you do not let them consume you with worry. Like the example above, there may have been times that you assumed something was about you. You may have misinterpreted something and felt anger or sadness. Feeling those emotions at the moment is fine, as long as you take the time later to calm down and analyse your emotional state.

You should also note what kind of relationship you have with your emotions.

1. Do you experience feelings that change smoothly, encountering one emotion after another as your experiences change?
2. Are your emotions accompanied by physical sensations, in places such as your stomach or chest?
3. Do you experience discrete feelings, such as anger, sadness, fear, and joy, each of which is evident even in subtle facial expressions?
4. Can you experience feelings strong enough to capture others’ attention?
5. Do you factor your emotions into your decision-making?

If any of these experiences are unfamiliar, then you may have learned to suppress or disregard the emotions you are feeling. Many people are disconnected from their emotions, especially the strong core emotions such as anger, fear, sadness and joy. This may be the result of experiences that taught them to shut their feelings off. But although emotions can be distorted, denied, or ignored, they cannot be eliminated. They are still there, whether the person is aware of them or not.

In order to be emotionally healthy and intelligent, you must rediscover and reconnect with your emotions, accept them and become comfortable with them. Do not let your past emotions and the situations that triggered them distract you from your goal. Learn to recognise and anticipate what triggers your emotions.

Once you have acknowledged what situations trigger certain emotional states in you, it is time to address how to respond to them. A few methods that you can try are the following:

Make choices

It is important to make sure you make a conscious choice and not simply react to a situation with pure emotion. Here are some good things to remember before acting:

• Principles: Who do you want to be? What are your morals? What do you want from this exchange? Ultimately, what is the decision that you would not look back on with regret?

• Logic: Which response is the one that will result in the outcome you desire? For example. if you get into a fight and you want to take the pacifist route, you can just walk away. But there is a good chance that they will be insulted, so it might be better to apologise and calm them down.

Change your outlook

In order to experience fewer negative emotions, you must change the way you see the world. It takes time and effort, but it means learning how to let go of some things and find good things in everyday life.

You may find that changing your outlook also changes your emotions. Being optimistic is important. Instead of letting emotions take over because you pessimistically expect them to, try to evaluate the world around you and find a learning experience in the things that happen. Keep your perspective open and allow yourself to grow with each event.

Acknowledge that there are certain things you cannot change, but do not allow them to anger and frustrate you. What you can change is your reaction.

Discard upsetting thoughts and negative emotions

There are many ideas that can upset people repeatedly. Though they are made up, many people pressure themselves to conform to these thoughts. Here are some common notions about the self that are wrong:

• “I must be perfect in order to be worthwhile.” Nobody is perfect. If you believe you must be perfect in every situation, you will only cause yourself stress.
• “I must be loved and approved by everyone.” There will always be one or two people who will not really like you, and that is fine. You are not required to be liked by everyone and the sooner you learn this, the easier it will be to discard feelings of inadequacy and disappointment.
• “I hate it when I am frustrated, treated badly, or rejected.” Small doses of frustration can be healthy for you. It improves patience and resilience to adversity. It is all about taking things into perspective and building resistance to letting your emotions control your every action.
• “I hate it when things do not work out the way I want them to.” The only thing you can control without compromise is yourself. The rest is beyond you. Learn to adapt and accept that there are things that will not go as you planned.

Eliminate negative core beliefs about yourself

Some people do not think of themselves highly enough. Their self-esteem is almost non-existent and many of their emotions result from not being able to love themselves adequately. Some common negative core beliefs are:

• “Misery comes from outside forces, which I cannot influence.” You cannot control the things that happen around you, but you can change how you perceive them. You are the only one who can choose to change your own situation.
• “It is easier to avoid difficulties and responsibilities than to face them.” Even painful experiences can serve as a basis for learning and future growth once you get through them. It is childish to go through life thinking that difficulties can be avoided.
• “Because I had no control over my life before, I have no control over my present and future.” Change is the only constant thing. People do not stay the same as time passes. Situations change, people learn and growth happens. Learning to let go of the past can help you improve your life.
• “I could be happy if I did nothing and enjoyed myself.” An unmotivated life is a life left unrealised. Setting new goals, new objectives, and striving for your ambitions help give more meaning and purpose to life. While you can, it is better to explore and actively search for your goals and purpose.

Discard negative ideas that come from feeling inadequate

Inadequacy comes from low self-esteem, the idea that you are not good enough. Banishing inadequacy from your thoughts can help you accomplish more things. Some habits that form from feelings of inadequacy are:

• All-or-nothing thinking: This type of thinking assumes that everything is either good or bad. There is no in-between.
• Disqualifying the positive: You may feel that positive statements are untrue, while negative comments are things you “knew all along.”
• Personalisation: You falsely believe that you are always at the root of bad situations.
• Mind reading: You immediately assume that you know what other people think of you. Instead of asking and clarifying their thoughts, you assume the worst.

Discard negative ideas that come from fear

People can be afraid of a lot of things, but you should not let fear rule over your decision-making. Rationalise things and understand the root of your fear and find a way to face it rather than cower from it. Some common thoughts that stem from fear are:

• Over-generalisation: A single negative event turns into a pattern of defeat. A failed job application becomes two, and suddenly you may believe that you are incompetent. You generalise not because of a pattern, but because you fear the pattern.
• Labelling and Mislabelling: This is an extreme form of over-generalisation. When you make a mistake, you instantly label yourself as a “loser.” Mislabelling involves describing a situation with words that are emotionally charged, and often extreme or irrational.
• The fortune teller error: You already believe that things are going to turn out badly. You have no evidence of this, but you are convinced anyway.
• Jumping to conclusions: You immediately jump to the worst conclusion without even facing the facts. You think that preparing for the worst is better than hoping for the best because you are afraid, not hopeful.

Avoid negative ideas from other complex emotions

Do not give in to defeatist emotional responses. Realise that you are more than what you think of yourself. Focus on interpreting your worth positively if you catch yourself thinking the following thoughts:

• Magnification or Minimisation: Magnification, also known as catastrophising, is the exaggeration of the importance of insignificant events. Meanwhile, minimisation is lessening the importance of something significant. These two blow up a person’s problems. This cognitive distortion is often found in people who experience panic attacks frequently.
• Emotional reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions reflect how things really are, “I feel it, therefore, it must be true.” You put your emotional weight on situations so that you can regain some sort of control.
• Should statements: You beat yourself up as a way to become motivated to do something. You ‘should’ do this, you ‘must’ do that, you ‘ought’ to. This type of thinking only brings you undue stress instead of motivating you. And when you direct ‘should’ statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

Seek more positive experiences

Some experiences, like listening to a specific song or eating certain foods, can trigger good emotions. The more pleasant memories you recall, the easier it is to realign yourself to that mood. It is far easier to get out of an angry or sad emotional state when you know what a happy state feels like.

The way you cope with the stress can come in different forms.

• This can be facing the cause of the stress directly to solve the issue immediately. For example, if a deadline is causing you stress, your strategy may be to finish it as soon as possible so you can stop worrying about it.
• You can also choose to take a step back from the cause of the stress. If you feel too overwhelmed, it is best to take time to calm yourself down before you face it again. Try to do any activity that relaxes you but note that this is only to take your mind off the issue temporarily. Actively avoiding the problem will only cause your stress to accumulate and will not solve anything. As soon as you feel ready, approach the cause of your stress with a refreshed mind.
• No matter what method you choose to address your emotional stressors with, it is important to continue acknowledging the emotion. Just because you are not reacting to it does not mean that the emotion does not exist.
• Controlling your emotions is essential, but you must learn not to suppress them. Suppressing your emotions can cause not only emotional symptoms but physical disorders as well. Controlling your emotions is built by reducing stress, remaining focused, and staying connected to yourself and others. It involves expressing emotions, even the negative ones, in a healthy manner. Being able to connect to your emotions by having a constant awareness of them and how they influence your thoughts and actions is key to understanding yourself and remaining calm in tense situations.

 

If you feel stressed at work, chances are, your co-workers feel the same way. Managing stress in the workplace goes beyond individual methods and strategies. As an organisational issue, emotional stressors should be dealt with collectively. When the organisation openly recognises work-related stress, it de-stigmatises this and allows the members to feel more comfortable sharing their emotions. This helps in the development of everyone’s emotional intelligence.

Sharing the emotional stressors you have identified can allow you to compare them with your co-workers, allowing you to check if they have encountered these as well. They can then give you feedback if the methods you use to handle your stress are effective and share their own methods with you. There may also be resources within the organisation that you can use to address your emotional stressors. You can ask if these are available so you can utilise them.

There may also be situations that trigger your co-workers that you are unaware of. Knowing this information will help you foster an emotionally safe and healthy working environment for everyone. It is also important to remember that you should respect others’ boundaries if they choose not to share their emotions. If you try to bring up the topic and the person you are speaking to does not feel comfortable sharing, do not insist.

Addressing stress in casual situations can help, but if the emotional stressors in the workplace cannot be prevented or managed by the members, they need to be addressed formally. You may opt to hold a meeting to compile all the members’ concerns into a list and think of methods that the organisation can implement to address the concerns. However, meeting and discussing this as a group may feel uncomfortable for some. You can also opt to have relevant personnel, such as the office therapist or the human resources department, conduct one-on-one interviews in a safe environment.

Based on feedback from others, review or reflect on your emotional stressors and the methods you use to handle them. Reflecting is closely linked to learning from experience, in which you think about what you did and what happened and decide what to do differently next time. The difference between ‘thinking’ and ‘reflective practice’ is that reflective practice requires conscious effort to think about events and develop insights into them.

Reflective practice is an active, action-based, and ethical set of skills, situated in real time and dealing with complex situations. To develop the critical thinking necessary for reflective practice, it is helpful to follow these steps:

Thinking is only a small part of the process. You must learn to develop an understanding of the theory and others’ practice, too. As much as possible, explore ideas with other people. Reflective practice does not have to be done alone; it can be a shared activity.

Reflective practice can improve your self-awareness, as well as help you develop creative thinking skills and encourage you to engage actively in your work. In work situations, regularly reflecting will support more meaningful discussions about the development of your professional life. Although it will take time to apply the technique and adjust it to suit your needs, it will ultimately save you time and energy in the long run.