Blair Singer (sales author and leadership trainer) gives a short coaching monologue advising leaders to manage strong emotions by stepping outside of them: observe feelings (e.g., "feeling anger" vs. "I am angry"), take a breath, disassociate briefly before responding, and avoid public humiliation or yelling. He explains that reacting destroys long-term trust even if it yields short-term compliance and encourages practicing this skill (even 50% of the time) to become a more effective leader.
Hi, this is Blair Singer. Some of you may know me as best selling author of Sales Dogs, Little Voice Mastery. Work with thousands of organizations, helping them increase sales, build championship teams and become world class trainers and leaders. The message I wanted to impart today is this. One of the most difficult things about being a leader is keeping your cool, particularly in the eyes of the storm. And one of the things that it's taken me many, many years to practice and I'm not at all great at it is, is I'm going to challenge you with this is the next time the emotion comes up. We all know when emotion goes up, intelligence goes down, right? Is do your best to step outside of it before you respond. In other words, don't take people's heads off, don't become angry, don't humiliate people in front of other people. If you can take a breath for a moment and observe the emotion running through you as opposed to being the emotion. In other words, when you say things like, I am angry. No, you're not angry. You are who you are. You're feeling anger, but you are not angry. But the problem is most people become angry and that becomes their whole world at the moment. And all the great work that you've done up to that point and building people up and empowering them and getting them to sell and being on your side can be destroyed in an instant. Because the minute you do that, you trigger everybody else's psychosis out there when they were yelled at, scolded, all that stuff, which I know is not your intention. You may even get a short term result from it. But long term, what you've done is you've lost the battle. So here's my advice. When that emotion comes up, do your best to go, oh, where did that emotion come from? And watch yourself being angry or watch yourself being frustrated just for a couple seconds. The minute you can disassociate yourself with the emotion puts you back in control and keeps you calm in the eye of the storm. And you'll find when everybody else is losing it, you're the one that's taking a breath, smiling and bringing people back together. Not easy. I wish I could tell you to do it 100% of the time. If I could just do it 50% of the time, I'd be grateful. Try it because it will make you the leader that you always hoped that you could be.
