Session Type: Workshop Accepted by MIG(s): Development Time Allotted: 90 Description: Emotional reactivity often invisibly drives destructive behavior and results. The unseen components of an emotional reaction can be changed to create more productive actions and outcomes. This workshop will include an initial exercise, a description and illustration of the reaction map, an opportunity for participants to apply the map on themselves, and discussion. The learning outcomes will be a tool to describe sensitive and highly personalized behaviors (eg. a reactive emotion) in an objective, depersonalized way. The map also gives strategies and practices for transforming troublesome behaviors in themselves or in coaching clients or associates.
Abstract: Emotional reactivity often invisibly drives unwanted behavior and results. Reactive emotions, like anger and fear, are fast, non-conscious, automatic, and play out rigidly, generally reproducing the same results each time. Once triggered, a reactive emotion can activate an involuntary cascade of actions so rapid that a person may not realize the reaction is happening until the damage has already been done. The executive who loses her temper, may also lose respect and trust and thus the ability to influence. The team leader who panics in the face of challenge cannot effectively move his group forward, resulting in a lost opportunity or even failure.
Because of their non-conscious nature, a person may not realize the reaction is happening at all. This is because a repeated conscious action through the workings of the basal ganglia in time because non-conscious and automatic. The behavior happens without willing it to happen. Though one might strongly desire change, the non-conscious habit keeps recreating something one does not want. Because all habit patterns (emotional or not) are the result of grooved neural pathways, they cannot be stopped by willing them away. They must be consciously rewired. They must be unlearned.
While there has been considerable work on Emotional Intelligence or “EQ”—describing it, assessing it and correlating it to effective leadership, however, there is far less attention given to developing and cultivating it. Moreover, measures of EQ give an overall, trait-like picture of a person’s ability to recognize and manage emotions in themselves and others. They do not address the fact that emotions occur in a moment and must be managed in a moment too. The approach offered here is a systematic way of tracking and dismantling an emotional reactions as they happen. The model forms the centerpiece of a popular course on Self-Management entitled The Executive Mind: Mastering Emotional Reactions that Presenter 1 has taught since 2003 at the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University.
By understanding the unseen components of an emotional reaction, you can short-circuit the process to create new and more productive actions and results. An emotional reaction happens very quickly. It begins with a eliciting trigger, which leads to a rudimentary and viscerally felt assessment of “like, neutral feeling or don’t like.” This in turn leads to an interpretation or story that rationalizes the visceral feeling. Because the nonconscious brain works as a pattern finder searching out similarities current and past experiences, it will import potentially erroneous old assumptions, expectations and judgments onto immediate experience. These drive a focused emotional reaction (like anger, fear, etc) that power an action. This action gives rise to a result. This chain of events can be interrupted and altered at several different points, leading to a changed result.
In this workshop, you will learn how to map an emotional reaction, what its component parts are and how to use the map to transform the results you get by rewiring the reaction over time.
The workshop will be in three equal parts—
• Approximately 30 minutes to move through and discuss an exercise that elicits reactive emotions. A series of provocative and ambiguous photographs and log the internal reaction that happens within ourselves.
• Approximately 30 minutes to describe the components of the reaction map and we will apply the results of the first exercise to illuminate the reaction map.
• 30 minutes to apply the map participants will draw from their experience to apply the map on themselves and to have time for questions and answers.
The learning outcomes will be a tool to describe sensitive and highly personalized behaviors (eg. a reactive emotion) in an objective, depersonalized way. The map also gives strategies and practices for transforming troublesome behaviors in themselves or in coaching clients or associates.
Presenter 1 also used this model to manage himself during 17 years of living with a terminal illness. Jeremy Hunter, Drucker School of Management, Claremont Graduate University; CoreWorks Consulting
Bio: Jeremy P. Hunter, PhD, has been affiliated with the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University in California since 1999. He teaches a series of popular executive education programs dedicated to managing oneself and transforming “the executive mind.” Hunter is committed to improving not only an executive's effectiveness and productivity, but also the quality of their professional and personal lives. He is a principal at CoreWorks Consulting and is an Executive Coach at Corporate Coaching International. Hunter holds a PhD from The University of Chicago and and MPP from Harvard University. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wittenberg University. Hunter lived with a potentially terminal illness for 17 years. When he was told he needed life-saving surgery, more than a dozen of his former students came forward as organ donors. He received a new kidney from one of them in December of 2008.
J. Scott Scherer, CoreWorks Consulting
Bio: J. Scott Scherer is a graduate of the Executive Management Program at The Drucker School and holds a degree in economics from Duke University. He is a principal at CoreWorks Consulting and serves as an executive coach. He received his training in Integral Coaching at New Ventures West in San Francisco, CA. For the past 20 years, Scherer has devoted his professional life to creating transformational learning experiences, pilgrimages and executive retreats. He co-founded and owns a global business, serving a wide variety of educational, religious and healthcare institutions. Scherer creates programs that transform individuals and communities by deepening self-knowledge and enhancing internal management skills.
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