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Picture the scene. Your career is chugging along nicely. You’ve invested huge amounts of time, effort and perhaps money in developing yourself. And then: bang! An emotional reaction destroys your likelihood of promotion.
So often, people believe that they are powerless against their own emotions. However, if they had a true understanding of the impact of different emotions on their corporate success, they may feel more inclined to take control and responsibility for their emotions.
As a first step, it’s useful to review the negative and positive aspects of how emotions really affect you and how they are perceived by others.
When your boss and colleagues see you happy, it can be contagious. It’s very difficult not to like happy people and the assumption is often that you are happy because you’re performing well and people are pleased with you.
People can sometimes confuse being happy with a lack of care, as if happy must mean carefree. They think that you are not stretching yourself or not taking the job seriously enough. In fact, some think you’re just a bit ‘lightweight’ and are not a serious contender for promotion or more responsibility.
People often interpret frustration to mean that you care about the job/your team/the business because your frustration must be borne from a desire to make things better. This drive could mark you out as someone to watch.
At other times, colleagues could consider that you are a negative person who expects, unrealistically, everything to go his/her way.
Surprisingly, anger is sometimes interpreted positively as an indication of passion towards the business or its success.
More often, people interpret anger as a lack of self-control. They may even see it as bullying.
Counter-intuitively, this sometimes comes across as confidence and makes you appear ready for new challenges as you take everything in your stride without making a fuss.
Many, though, may see you as someone who has no drive or passion and isn’t looking for improvement (including improving your own career).
When you’re oozing confidence, people can see you as a safe pair of hands, someone who is supremely competent and able to deal with any situation. It inspires confidence in people to trust you with important projects, information or decisions.
When confidence is taken too far, it can be seen as arrogance and a lack of listening skills.
If you have good analytical skills, you’re likely to be perceived as fully in control of yourself, others and events around you. Your lack of emotion will also give the impression of self-confidence and competence.
Others may see you as lacking passion, empathy, sympathy or, that all-important Emotional Intelligence. Lacking these can be career-limiting, as most management and leadership roles require a strong understanding and connection with other people.
It’s not just important to manage your own emotions. If you genuinely want to progress, you need to be able to gauge how others perceive your emotions so that you can act and react accordingly, and if you don’t have that awareness of your emotions, every part of your life will be affected. In the words of science journalist Daniel Goleman: “if your emotional abilities aren't in hand, if you don't have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can't have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far”.
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Heather Foley is a consultant at etsplc.com, HR consultancy and bespoke software provider
