Emotions Drive Behavior. Do You Really Get It?

Start by asking yourself some of these questions

Recently, while designing a training program at the Institute for Health and Human Potential, we began our meeting by asking ourselves this question:

It’s interesting that no matter what kind of program we design, and no matter the delivery methods we use (classroom, online, sustainment, etc.), the answer almost always sounds like this: “We want people to better understand and manage the emotions that drive their own behavior and the behavior of others.”

Emotions driving behavior is the basic foundation of Emotional Intelligence. Most leaders and individuals that we work with often don’t understand that, (I used to be one of them). They focus on observing and managing behaviors.  To illustrate, we worked with a leader who was not doing well at holding her people accountable to deadlines.  Her boss had spent considerable time explaining to her why it’s important to do this (which it is) and how to do it (i.e. the behavior).  But she was still struggling with it.   

She was fortunate enough to attend our Emotional Intelligence program that included a 360 degree assessment, training and follow-up coaching.  During the training, she learned that we all have certain triggers – things that cause us to have an emotional reaction and trigger our innate “fight or flight” response.  This limits our capacity to think clearly and causes us to move to default behaviors that may not be skillful or effective.  Here are some default behaviors you might see from people who are triggered (and experience yourself!):

These are examples of emotional reactions that can force us into unskillful default behaviors. For this leader, her default behavior was to avoid discussions about deadlines because they trigger her emotionally. Her EI360 assessment reinforced this as she got feedback from others that they were noticing this behavior (of course nobody had the courage to give her that feedback directly, but that’s a whole other article!). 

The foundation of Emotional Intelligence is self-awareness and recognizing when emotions are driving our behaviors.  During the training program, she came to realize that the reason she wasn’t holding people accountable (a behavior she knew she was supposed to do), was because she was afraid that the people on her team would get upset, and that they wouldn’t like her.  Avoiding conflict and needing acceptance from others are fundamental emotional needs we all have.   

Gaining this awareness made a huge difference as it explained why she had not been able to hold her people accountable effectively.  She also learned techniques she could use to manage her emotions and stop herself from moving toward her default behavior of avoiding these discussions.  

With coaching, she was able to identify low-risk situations where she could practice stepping into tough conversations, even when she felt uncomfortable. She was eventually able to learn to manage her emotions (her fear of conflict and wanting to be liked) so that she could step in and have those difficult conversations with people who were not meeting deadlines. 

If you want to gain self-awareness of what emotions are driving your behaviors, you can start by asking yourself some of these questions:

Examples include:

If you can figure out what emotions are driving your behaviors – as this leader did - you have made a big first step in getting to a higher level of performance as you will be able to approach more difficult behaviors like taking a risk, speaking up in a meeting or holding someone accountable. 

When I was first a leader, I didn’t get it: I was only managing behaviors, including my own. By doing so, I was missing out on the biggest piece of the human puzzle: emotions!