In my position, I have the opportunity to sit in many high level management meetings each week. It is very interesting to me to watch the dynamic of the individuals in the room. It has actually become somewhat of a habit that I have learned.

There are some meetings where we can get an amazing amount of work done and reach several decisions with grace and high energy, no matter how hard or passionate the topic. Even when some of the items that we decide on are feverishly debated by those who passionately have a belief that they feel is in better service of the good of the organization.

But then there are those meetings where you can have the exact same group of individuals which come to the same meeting, and you can just feel it in the air that it is not going to go well. Items come up on the agenda that are rather benign which should be open and shut instead become long drawn out emotionally draining arguments on several fronts. Some walk away from the meeting asking themselves, “What just happened?” Other members walk away from the meeting very negative and emotionally charged. I emphasize negative emotions since regardless of the win or lose side you fall, you still walk away with a sense of anger, stress, bewilderment and probably the largest emotion at the root is the chip in the coat of trust you have built as a team. One of the items in this event that often gets overlooked is the emotion that the person, usually some sort of manager or other leader, takes back to their own team. Not only at that immediate moment following the meeting, but the individual will often maintain some memory length of this interchange and thus the negative manifestation lingers longer and the effects expanding proportionately to that length of time.

Why does this happen? What can cause this? What I am attempting here is to answer perhaps what we can do to mitigate these interchanges. Let’s face it, there are going to be less than stellar experiences in team environments. But how we handle them, or more importantly how we can avoid the majority of these has an enormous effect on a team and thus organizational success at large, or an organizational culture.

Many of us get caught up in our own what I will call, “everything.” This “everything” I am referring to is our own success, the wellbeing of our family, our day, our week, etc. Did you ever get to a point in time where you felt that time was just flying? You wonder that first morning when there is frost on your windshield, “Wow, where did the summer go?” The best one I feel, especially now that I have crested over fifty, “The older you get, the faster time goes!” But time does not actually speed up on us as we get older. The length of a day when we were sixteen sitting in class waiting for the bell to ring, is the same length as a day off we may get from work when we are fifty. Time seems to change as a matter of our perceptions of where we are and what we are doing. Waiting in the line at the store can seem like hours when it was really only 15 minutes. But spending hours embracing with a significant other can seem like it was only 5 minutes. The difference between the two is really where our attention was at that time. In the line at the store, our mind is everywhere else other than in that moment experiencing the environment around us. But conversely, in those hours of romance with our beloved, our attention is intently focused on where we are and what we are doing in that moment. We were intently connected to that experience and thus our perception of that time is changed. But living in that moment we were able to fully engage in our thoughts and actions. Living in the present changes a lot of outcomes both personally and for those around us. So where am I going with all of this?

So back to our original situation in our team meeting experiences. Imagine that it is Wednesday around say mid-morning and you have a team meeting coming up at noon. The meeting will last about two hours and there will not be food there. You were running late this morning and you didn’t really get a chance to grab a decent breakfast and forgot your lunch on the way out the door. You get to work and a few people are our sick, and you spent the morning putting out fires. E-check!!! Where is your head right now in this moment? Most importantly, where are your emotions right at this moment? Get your head in that exact moment and do what I call an E-check. One of the best ways of breaking a cycle and ensuring that an emotion stays in check is to be an observer of that emotion and not a slave to it. Even if all of the above description of your day did not happen, remember this is a team meeting. You are about to interact with a team of people, or the emotions of others for the next two hours. Being aware of, or observing where YOU are is critical to ensuring that you do not become the victim of an emotional runaway train during an exchange.

Taking this a step further, be sure to take stock of others in the room. Just a quick check on others for body postures, facial expressions, pen clicking, foot bouncing, etc. can be the difference between a good exchange and knowing when to back off and come up this hill another day. Once you have made this a habit two things will happen. First, you will become very good at quickly assessing others emotional state coming into an exchange. This will allow you to better turn the dial on your approach. Secondly, for those that you work with on some regularity, you will start to note “tells,” that you can use for a better outcome on a regular basis.

If you have ever heard of, or experienced that elusive state of synergy within a team. This is it. When a team of people all stay in check of where they are, and are aware of the states of those around them this level can be achieved. Being at this level of communication does not mean that you will agree on everything, and be high fiving everyone at the end. But you all leave having moved forward with good energy. It means that while you may disagree, you have built trust with each other. You have showed caring and empathy which is inherently picked up by another person. One of the easiest paths to trust is being reliable. So the next time you are about to engage in any form of exchange with someone, or group of people is to do an E-Check, (Emotional Check) of where you and if possible where they are just prior to the exchange.

What are some ways that you stay in check?

Kenny G.

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