A short motivational talk by Blair Singer on recognizing and managing emotions to improve individual effectiveness and team dynamics. Singer teaches a technique of identifying and labeling emotional states (for oneself and others) to dissipate high or low emotions, move people up an emotional energy scale toward enthusiasm, and avoid trying to solve issues before addressing emotions.
Hi, this is Blair Singer, author of Little Voice Mastery and founding contributor to Radical Wealth. You know, a lot of times we are run by our emotions rather than allowing our emotions to be used as assets in the things that we do. Certainly a person that's passionate about a goal or a vision is certainly going to be more effective than somebody that's apathetic about it. But what happens if you're stuck in an emotion or somebody on your team or somebody you're associated with? Their emotion is in the toilet, and maybe yours is in a passionate or enthusiastic state and theirs is in an apathetic state. What do you do? This is a very common problem that erodes teams, destroys relationships, costs a lot of money, and costs a lot of heartache. So here's a great technique, and it's taught to me by many of my teachers over the years. It's simply called identifying the emotion or the mood level. In other words, let's say you're feeling enthusiastic and somebody else doesn't care about your good idea. Maybe you have a great project you want to take on. Somebody says, yeah, so what now? What are you going to do? You're going to try to sell them on it? You're going to try to convince them? That's typically not going to work. The rule number one when dealing, remember a high emotion, whether it's a negative or positive emotion, typically yields a low intelligence. So trying to explain something or sell something to somebody is not a good idea. Rule number one, always deal with the emotion first. If you see somebody that's stuck in an emotion, your best bet, do your best to identify it. That sounds something like this. So it appears to me that you just don't care or you appear to be. Are you angry about something? No, I'm not angry. Are you frustrated? Yeah, I'm frustrated now. The minute you're able to identify the other person's emotion for them, immediately the energy begins to dissipate. Now, here's the good news. The good news is, is that high on the scale is obviously being enthusiastic and at the bottom is death. So normally a normal person would rather be enthusiastic. The good news is, if you're able to spot and identify the emotion not only for them, but for yourself, you will automatically begin to move up that scale. You'll automatically become more enthusiastic. You'll go from apathy, maybe to sadness to fear, to hostility, to anger, to impatience and ultimately to enthusiasm, which are all much higher energy levels. The key is, don't get hooked into the issue. If it's your issue. If you're upset about something, don't try to solve the something. Find out what the emotion is. Let's say you didn't make a sales call and so I should have done better on the sales call. Forget the sales call for a minute. How do I feel right now? I feel dejected. I feel depressed. Why do I feel depressed? I'm depressed. So how do I want. And then I'm going to tell you. The next technique I'm going to talk to you about is how to get to the next level quicker. But if you just I'm depressed right now. You will find that if you identify it, you will already not be depressed anymore. You just said depressed. So now what comes next? Well, what am I going to do about that? Okay, good. So now I'm getting impatient. Okay, good. So if I can do a little more practicing, I'll get better. Now I'm enthusiastic, but I had to go to identify the emotion first. Do this for people on your team. You can do this for a whole group. We call it identifying the emotion that's in the space. Do the best you can with that. I guarantee you're going to clear up a lot of energy. Be awesome.
