Emotions: Friend or Foe?
The role emotions play in negotiation, collaboration, and team work intrigues me. We are instructed to be skeptical of emotions and in fact being professional is synonymous to being stoic.
Yet, this is at odds with the evolutionary development of our brains. According to the triune model of the human brain, the three parts of the human brain are: reptilian brain- responsible for unconscious actions like flight, fright, or freeze response; limbic brain (mammalian brain)- responsible for attachment within society, care for young ones; and finally pre-frontal cortex- responsible for analysis, planning, communication etc. Hence, we can see that our analytical abilities are in fact a recent addition to our brain structure and ignoring the emotions can have insidious effects.
But how can we use our emotions genuinely and strategically. This article from HBR lists out some great points( which are listed below in my words):
- Being aware of ourselves and emotions
- Recognizing the trigger causing the particular emotion.
- Reinterpreting the trigger to elicit a positive emotion.
Lesson Learnt: Emotions are not bad we just need to use our superior analytic abilities to use them strategically.