Leading with Emotional Intelligence: Hands-On ... - always yours

EMOTIONAL SELF-CONTROL TOOLS AND STRATEGIES 99
• What do I need to do differently: I need to take a breath
and walk over there and quietly say something to them.
We all get hijacked at times, but great leaders know themselves
well, anticipate situations that may be stressful for them, and take
preventative measures before the emotional build up or explosion.
In the stressful moment, they know what they are feeling and what
they are thinking. They then have multiple constructive solutions to
prevent an amygdala hijack and maintain their top performance.
QUESTIONS AND ACTION APPLICATIONS
• Write down a time you got hijacked and answer the five questions
to better understand what was happening to you.
• To enhance your emotional self-awarenesss and emotional
self-control practice doing the audit four times a day and see
what patterns you recognize.
• Teach the audit to someone in your office or at work or home
to help ingrain the questions.
4. PUTTING ON THE BRAKES
Why is it so hard to prevent these hijacks, especially after one
begins? David Rock, in Your Brain at Work, examines the inhibitory
or braking system for impulses that can lead to a hijack. The
region within the prefrontal cortex that “lights up” when someone
is inhibiting an impulse, cognition, or emotion is called the ventrolateral
prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and sits behind the right and
left temples. This area appears to be central to the braking system.
The better you can use this braking system the better you are at
focusing and eliminating distractions.
This braking system is “part of the most fragile, temperamental
and energy-hungry region of the brain, so stopping yourself from
acting on an urge is something you can do sometimes but is often
not that easy,” Rock writes. 18 An important fi nding is that your
capacity to put your brakes on decreases each time you do so. It is