Tips for High-Impact Teamwork: Practical Approaches for Emotional Regulation—Part I

This fall in the Tips for High-Impact Teamwork series, we are discussing the topic of emotional regulation during teamwork. In the past few articles, I reviewed Susan David’s work on emotional agility. My summaries have been a cursory overview of her work, and I recommend reading her book Emotional Agility (David, 2016b) and visiting her website

Tyler Reimschisel, MD, MHPE

One of the most helpful aspects of David’s work is to compare emotional agility to the most common, yet largely ineffective, ways we typically try to respond to our emotions when we feel like our emotions have “hooked us” or are starting to take control of us. 

Some of us are “bottlers” who try to push our emotions aside, rationalize them away, try to talk ourselves into not feeling them, tell ourselves to just think positive thoughts, or otherwise seek to distract ourselves from the emotional elephant in our minds and bodies. As David points out, trying to ignore or minimize emotions only magnifies them (see Butler et al, 2003). 

Others of us are “brooders” who get hooked by our emotions and then perseverate on the situation, obsess about the past emotionally laden event, or enable our past emotions to grow in intensity by constantly revisiting them without resolving or moving forward. Unlike bottlers who try not to self-reflect, brooders self-reflect so much that they exacerbate the situation by letting the reflection on the past grow the intensity of the emotion. 

One form of this type of ineffective emotional response is venting about a situation. Though many times we say that it was good to be able to talk about the event or situation, the data strongly suggests that venting is more likely to be detrimental than helpful in the long run, even though we may feel good in the moment. If there is no forward movement away from the emotional experience and toward a change or resolution, we are very likely to actually feel worse off after the venting ends (Rose 2014).  

In my last article, we discussed how emotional agility offers a better approach to manage our emotions. When we find ourselves beginning to get “hooked” or controlled by our emotions instead of our controlling them, David suggests using four emotional agility movements: showing up, stepping out, walking your why and moving on. If you do not have time to read her book, she summarizes these four movements in the Harvard Business Review article appropriately titled “Emotional Agility” (David and Congleton, 2013). The upshot of these movements is that instead of trying to bottle up our emotions or incessantly brooding about them, we can experience them, step away from them, look them squarely in the eye, consider our values and the type of person we want to be in the situation and finally move through the emotion toward a better, more effective response. 

In this article and the next one, I want to explore specific approaches that you can use during the final movement, moving on. In this movement we make relatively minor adjustments to our mindset, behaviors, habits, or environment based on:

  • What we learned about ourselves and our emotions in the second movement, and
  • How we can best respond according to the values we have established during the third movement.  

The first set of tweaks that I will describe relate to physical actions you can take when you feel yourself becoming emotionally activated. This could occur as a tense conversation begins, you find yourself in an argument with a team member, or there is some other type of conflict or interpersonal disturbance within the team. 

As I describe these approaches, you may notice that several of them overlap with mindfulness techniques. For example, you may find that a “physiologic sigh” can help calm your nerves. This involves inhaling a deep breath through your nostrils followed by a prolonged exhalation through your mouth, then repeating the cycle once or twice. 

Additional variations on breathing techniques include box breathing – inhaling for four counts, holding your breath for four counts, exhaling for four counts, then pausing for four counts before repeating the cycle a few times (Walker, 2024). A somewhat more self-conscious approach is to simply be aware of your breathing, the feel of the air passing through your nose and respiratory tract, and consciously trying to slow your breathing down as you sense your body relaxing (Gallo, 2017). 

Similarly, some individuals use “anchoring” to help regulate their emotions. This can include physical actions like focusing on your body by placing your feet firmly on the ground and feeling how the ground feels under your feet, repeatedly flexing and relaxing your toes and feet, tightening and relaxing your legs, gently making a fist and relaxing or counting while gently tapping each fingertip to your thumb. 

Other physical responses that you may find helpful are asking to take a break from the meeting for a few minutes, asking if you could get up a “stretch for a moment,” or just going for a short walk. I personally find that walking is one of the most effective mechanisms for helping me become more self-aware, collect my thoughts and foster better reflection. (It also helps that it is a good form of exercise!) 

Additional physical factors to consider when you are experiencing emotional stress include trying to get enough sleep since sleep deprivation can influence our ability to effectively work through our emotions, and trying to exercise regularly since this is an excellent way to help mitigate chronic stress. 

Obviously, your personal preferences as well as the specifics of the situation will influence which of these approaches could work for you in a given setting, and I encourage you to practice and use several of them or come up with your own so that you have several tools in your emotional agility toolbox to choose from. 

Another simple yet extremely helpful approach to emotional regulation is accurately labeling the emotions you are feeling. As we will discuss in a future article, our brain organizes or categorizes emotions just like it organizes or categorizes other information it is receiving—through words and labeling. Therefore, by labeling our emotions and the emotions of others, we actually help our brains and bodies regulate our emotions. This is why simply observing our emotional state and labeling it as accurately as we can is a very effective way for releasing the pressure or tension in the emotion (David, 2016a).

It works in our conversations with others, too. In clinical practice, when I notice that a parent of my patient appears to be angry, upset or sad, I can say, “It looks like you are [fill in emotional label].” Then I pause to see and hear their response. This validates their emotion and can be an entry point for normalizing their response, such as “It is very common for parents to feel sad at moments like this” or “I understand how you can be angry at a time like this.” Labeling the emotion in ourselves allows us to experience it without judgment or dismissal, and it is a surprisingly effective way of minimizing the power the emotion has over us. 

Similarly, labeling the emotion in others, even if we mischaracterize the emotion and the other person corrects our error, is very effective because the other person feels seen, heard, validated and respected (Miller, 2018). This means that at the time that we are most tempted to ignore, suppress or divert attention away from intense emotions in ourselves or others, we should fight that urge by labeling the apparent emotional elephant in the room. 

If your experience is like mine, you will be pleasantly surprised by how much it helps to work through the emotional overlay of the situation. Then, as we all become calmer, we may have a better presence of mind to talk and listen to each other more effectively.

The final approach I want to offer in this article is reframing or reappraisal of the situation. In this approach, we reassess the situation and our emotional response to it. Instead of accepting our initial emotional reaction or thoughts about the other person or the situation as unequivocal facts, we create a space to reconsider them. In his book Think Again, Grant perceptively observes: 

In a productive conversation, people treat their feelings as a rough draft. Like art, emotions are works in progress. It rarely serves us well to frame our first sketch. As we gain perspective, we revise what we feel. Sometimes we even start over from scratch (Grant, 2021). 

One of the ways we can “gain perspective” is through reframing or reappraisal. Like naming emotions, this seems too simplistic to be effective, yet data shows it can be very helpful for many individuals. Seppala and Bradley provide an excellent yet concise review of the data supporting the benefits and effectiveness of this approach (Seppala and Bradley, 2019). 

One type of reframing is to view the situation as a challenge or an opportunity to grow instead of viewing it as a threat. Reappraisal does not require an extended time for reflection, and it can be accomplished during the conflict itself. For example, some individuals find silently repeating a mantra, like “Focus on your breathing,” “Listening is not agreeing,” “Stay on the field,” and “You got this” can be helpful ways to respond to conflicts or tensions that cause heightened emotions (Gallo, 2017).

Throughout this article I have tried to offer several potential approaches that could be helpful as you seek to regulate your emotions more effectively during your teamwork activities and other interactions. I realize that some may not be right for you, and none of them will work for everyone. Nonetheless, I do encourage you to practice using many of them. 

When I say “practice,” I don’t mean that you try one approach in a single situation and then discard it if it is ineffective. Instead, like all skills, they get better, easier, more effective and more automatic when we effectively practice them on several occasions. None of the approaches are magical, so please do not expect them to work perfectly the first time you implement them. Yet I am hopeful that with deliberate practice over time you will find many of them helpful. 

In my next article, we will continue exploring various approaches that can help with emotional regulation. Specifically, we will consider techniques to address the emotions related to a lack of motivation, a lack of willpower and procrastination.   

References:

Butler EA et al. “The social consequences of expressive suppression.” Emotion 2003;3(1): 48-67.

David S. “3 ways to better understand your emotions.” Harvard Business Review, November 10, 2016a.

David S. Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life. Avery, 2016b. 

David S and Congleton C. “Emotional Agility.” Harvard Business Review, November, 2013.

Gallo A. “How to control your emotions during a difficult conversation.” Harvard Business Review, December 1, 2017. 

Grant A. Think again: the power of knowing what you don’t know. Viking, 2021: 180.

Miller W. Listening Well. WIPF and Stock, 2018: 26-29.

Rose A et al. “An observational study of co-rumination in adolescent friendships.” Developmental Psychology 2014;50(9): 2199-2209.  

Seppala E and Bradley C. “Handling negative emotions in a way that’s good for your team.” Harvard Business Review, June 11, 2019.

Walker S. “Order Out of Chaos.” Harvard Business Review Press, 2024: 102-103.