How are You Feeling? (Challenge #96)

How are you feeling?

No really, how are you feeling? I’m not just asking you about the literal emotions you are having, but how are you experiencing and managing them? 
 
 Are you being dragged away from your leadership path by sadness or fear or anger? Alternatively, do you just stuff your emotions in a box so that you can get back to what you’d rather do or should be doing? Well, during the month of December in my private professional development community, the Kind Leadership Guild, we’re going to be talking about the ins and outs of emotional awareness for leaders—identifying what you feel, how it feels, what those feelings are communicating, and what to do with that information to continue to grow humanely as leaders so we can make the decisions that we believe will lead to a better world. 

Welcome to the Kind Leadership Challenge, where every Monday morning I teach you how to heal your organization in the next ten minutes! I’m Dr. Sarah Clark, founder of the Kind Leadership Guild, where I use my PhD in Higher ed leadership and nearly 2 decades of experience in academic libraries to advise a growing community of educational leaders who want to build a better world without burning out. 

Kind leaders make the tough decisions without becoming jerks. We plan effective systems that get the job done with less money and effort. And we know that once we stop controlling and start collaborating, any vision becomes possible. Kind Leadership’s pretty simple, but it’s rarely easy. So if you’re up for a challenge, stick around to learn how to create a legacy that will strengthen your community long after you’re gone.

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Because I believe some knowledge should be free, here’s the first few minutes of this month’s course on emotional wellness, so whether or not you are a member of the kind leadership guild, you have the basic tools you need to keep your head while all around you are losing theirs. 

Leadership is the art of making decisions that we believe will improve our organizations. More specifically, Kind Leadership is the art of making decisions that we believe will lead to a better world for our organizations and the communities they serve. However, who are the kind leaders who make these decisions? Humans. You know, the people with too much to do, too little time to think, old traumas, new stressors, not to mention our messy relationships with partners, families, friends, bosses, coworkers, students, community members and that one twerp who cut you off in traffic this morning. We are not saints, and we are not robots, and speaking broadly that’s for the best. After all, those we lead, those we serve, and those in charge of us are similarly flawed human beings, whether or not they are aware enough or brave enough to admit their frailties and flaws.

We cannot control those stresses, traumas and people. We can’t even control the emotions they create in us—or at least I can’t control the emotions those things create in me. But I HAVE found I can control the meanings I attach to those emotions, how I express those emotions, and how I respond to the incidents that sparked those emotions in the first place. And along that journey to becoming a more emotionally robust leader, I’ve developed a four step process for processing your emotions so you can consciously and understand what you are feeling, identify what those feelings are telling you, and even begin to make peace with the triggers of those feelings so you can make decisions with a clear mind and courageous heart. 

The four steps of the emotional awareness process are feeling, forgiving, trusting, and nurturing, and although I will go into depth on each step of this process in the next four parts of this course, I’m going to provide a quick example of how I use this four step process to manage my own non-clinical but still highly annoying anxiety as a leader.

One of my must-listen higher education podcasts is the College Viability podcast by Gary Stocker. It’s pretty much what it says on the tin—a discussion of the growing trend of financial unsustainability in America’s universities, basic education for non-CFOs trying to understand their school’s balance sheets, and a weekly call to action to boards and administrators to get their business models in order before they are tumble over the demographic cliff. It’s an educational listen, an engaging listen, and as someone who works in higher education, an occasionally scary listen. So, after a recent episode discussing the fall of a school that felt familiar to places I’d known in the past, that had me clenching my steering wheel and considering a career change to something less stressful like being a test pilot, I took a breath and proceeded to get a grip on my emotions.

First in the four step process when you notice you are experiencing emotions is to feel them. There are several ways you can go about this that I’ll discuss in lesson 2, but I tend to start with noticing how the emotions feel in my body. After that hair-raising podcast episode, I had clenched jaw, queasy stomach, and a death grip on the steering wheel. I then tried to figure out what thoughts if any were attached to those sensations. For me, it was a simple question--what if this happens to a school I work for or care about? Between my physical sensations and the thoughts that were inspired by my reaction, I realized that I was feeling Fear, also anger, some sadness. Now that I knew what I was feeling, it was time to make peace with the people and forces that caused the emotions, so I could let them go.

Step two is to forgive. Now before you turn me off, Let me reassure you that real forgiveness is much more nuanced than you may realize think. I’ll dig more into this in lesson 3, but for now, we will define forgiveness as reaching the point where something or someone who has hurt you no longer lives rent free in your head, by learning the lessons your emotions teach you about how best to move forward. In this case of the nervewracking podcast episode, I realized that no leader intends to guide their institution into monetary crisis, and more importantly, the struggles discussed in that podcast episode are common enough across higher education that they were likely too systemic for any one leader to completely avoid them. And with that little bit of understanding and empathy, the anger and fear moved through and left me with a realization—I wanted to do something to empower leaders to connect with their guts, their systems, and their teams, so they can build a better world for those they serve.

But could I do it, and more to the point, what if I one day found myself working for a school that were to go under? My first job after college ended with layoff and bankruptcy, and I’ve discovered in the last few years that the experience still haunts me. But that experience gave me a path to the third step of emotional wellness—trust. Even though the worst might happen, I’ve been through it before, with a lot fewer resources to bear, and that collapse got me where I am today in ways that have given me important insights as well as an unshakeable will to ensure that my career is profitable in more than dollars and cents. As for trusting others? Well, we never can totally trust others to be competent, humane, and collaborative, but developing and implementing the skills of kind leadership has helped me spot others’ foibles a lot sooner.

So we’ve felt our feelings, used the power of forgiveness to understand what they have to teach us, and figured out how to trust that we have the ability to keep ourselves and others safe from whatever risk is on the horizon. With this firm foundation, we can now nurture our emotional wellness by taking action to stop ruminating over whatever is triggering us, and either resolve the problem, counter the threat, or take whatever other action might be necessary to build a better world. Because as a lifelong worrywart, I’ve learned there is no better cure to worry and despair than taking thoughtful, emotionally aware actions that have the potential to address whatever fear is on my mind. 

Each of these four steps to emotional awareness can and will be covered in the remainder of this course. If you’re a member of the Kind Leadership Guild, hit the next button to go to the next video lesson. If you’re not yet a member of the Kind Leadership Guild, head to kindleadershipguild.com to learn more, and book a quick call to discuss your own leadership challenges and determine if the guild might be right for you, and if you’re right for the guild.

Thanks as always for listening to the kind leadership challenge, and for growing humanely, managing effectively, and creating collaboratively in your own organization. And if you know someone who might find this episode helpful, hit share in your podcast app or send them over to kindleadershipchallenge.com/94. Never doubt that day by day, you’re building a better world, even if you can't see it yet. So until next time, stay kind now.