Work Sucks Sometimes, But You Can Master Your Environment With Two Simple Techniques

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Work can Suck Sometimes

It’s time we had an honest conversation about work. More specifically the work environment and how it can, well, sometimes SUCK!

I assume I’m not the only person that gets frustrated when dealing with unreasonable people that cause unnecessary stress making work seem like an unbearable chore rather than an enjoyable place to build a career and make an impact.

Just so we are on the same page, here are some examples of sucky work environment behavior:

• Nepotism / Favoritism
• People with hidden agendas
• Workplace gossip
• Jealous / Backstabbing colleagues
• Arrogant / Self-serving supervisors
• Lack of individual accountability and leadership
• Ineffective decision making
• Unrealistic timelines
• Unnecessary busy work via process overload

I assume at some point in your career you have faced (or are currently facing) one or more of the situations above. And if you have ever felt upset, defeated, or wanted to quit your job, congratulations you are a human being with emotions that just wants to be in a positive work environment where you are respected and rewarded for your contributions.

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Two Techniques to Master your Work Environment

Controlling your emotions while dealing with challenging people is a difficult task. And in full transparency, I still struggle with finding the right balance when faced with a stressful situation.

However, there is hope! I have come to the conclusion that in order to master your work environment, you must have a strong EQ combined with an adaptive mindset to perceive, assess, and manage the emotions of yourself and others.

While the two techniques below may seem like common sense, the art is how they are applied when dealing with challenging situations that make the difference.

Let’s take a look at each.

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The Power of EQ

Emotional Quotient or EQ is a measure of how well you are able to recognize, regulate and effectively communicate your emotions. EQ is measured by 4 characteristics:

• Self-awareness: Ability to recognize your own emotions and how they affect your thoughts and behavior.
• Self-management: Ability to control impulsive feelings and behaviors.
• Social-awareness: Ability to understand the emotions, needs, and concerns of other people.
• Relationship management: Ability to develop and maintain good relationships.

Personal Scenario: Being Publicly Berated

Situation: During a weekly leadership meeting, I was scheduled to provide a status update for an outstanding issue that was adding risk to one of our projects. The goal of the update was to review the challenges and outline a mitigation plan. As I begin my update, a senior leader began to publicly criticize me without having any context of the problem we were trying to solve.

So what did I do in this situation? I took the opportunity to practice EQ.

EQ In Action

• Self-awareness: I had to do real-time self-reflection and recognize why I was feeling frustrated, angry, and embarrassed during this situation and realize how these thoughts could affect my behavior.
• Self-management: I quickly counted to 5 which helped me control any impulsive feelings preventing an emotional outburst that would further escalate the situation.
• Social-awareness: I looked at this situation from the other person’s perspective. I asked for clarity on what might be frustrating them with my update and how best I could address it.
• Relationship management: In the end, I suggested it would be best to take things offline so I could get them up to speed on the original ask, address their concerns, and align on a path forward.

The end goal is to build trust and deescalate tense situations. And as an EQ leader, always look for opportunities to take the higher road.

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Adaptive Mindset

For each of the EQ characteristics, it is key to balance your mindset across two areas:

• Logical mindset: (a.k.a objective thinking) making a decision based on clear and sound reasoning.
• Passionate mindset: (a.k.a emotional thinking) making a decision based on strong feelings or a strong belief.

Knowing when to use objective vs. emotional thinking will enable you to provide the right guidance to a dysfunctional group or inspire and motivate others towards a common goal.

Personal Scenario: Ineffective Decision Making across Leadership

Situation: I was responsible for leading an initiative to align on a common architectural approach to be leveraged by multiple teams. As part of these discussions, there were strong opinions being shared on how best to tackle the problem. The conversations became tense due to misalignment around the goals, scope, and timelines which lead to unnecessary churn wasting valuable time.

So what did I do in this situation? I took the opportunity to practice an adaptive mindset.

Adaptive Mindset Action:

I had a strong feeling, based on personal experience, my recommended option was a reasonable solution, but using a passionate mindset approach to get alignment would have been a disaster as I was working with others that did not know or trust me. To solve this, I had to go the logical route and control my controllables. I did this by:

• Getting Alignment: Connecting with my leadership team to get clarity on the goals and scope of the initiative. In addition to getting their buy-in on my proposed solution and how best to move forward.
• Creating a Clear Plan: After alignment had been established, I sent an email to the working group that clearly communicated the next steps outlining tasks, roles, and responsibilities with due dates.
• Gathering Relevant Data: I requested the team gather data to help look at the problem objectively allowing an informed decision to be made.

In addition to taking an objective approach to managing this situation, EQ played an important role by helping me self-regulate my emotions and keeping my personal biases in check. This allowed me to focus on building trust with the working team and reinforced we are one team working together towards a common goal.

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Wrapping up

A word of caution. Because human beings are fickle creatures, you could follow these two techniques perfectly and still find it a struggle to make forward progress towards mastering your work environment. If that is the case, you are dealing with a larger organizational problem. And based on your tolerance level, you need to identify what next steps are best for you to ensure your mental wellbeing, career, and passions are being satisfied.

Regardless of the outcome, it is always best practice to focus on balancing EQ characteristics with an adaptive mindset. These techniques will help you become a more empathetic leader whether at work or in your personal relationships.