Leading from Within Series - Part 2： The Power of Emotional Control

Leaders don't just manage projects, they manage presence. And your presence is contagious. If you walk in the room scattered, the room feels scattered. If you walk in the room grounded, the room calms down. You are the thermostat.

That's why emotional discipline isn't just not optional, it's your leadership advantage. Because a room will always take its cue from you.

- Welcome back to the Get Lit Podcast, brought to you by the Leadership Ignition Team. I'm Shane Beckham. - And I'm Mike Hough, and today we are continuing

our three-part series called Lead from Within, an episode when we talked about identity, leading from the inside out. Today we're focusing on regulating the room, how to bring emotional discipline into the way you show up for others. - Great point, Mike, because here's the truth.

You can't lead others well and you're constantly hijacked by your own reactions. This episode is going to be all about learning your own state before it owns you. Remember, think before you think. Let's talk a little bit about this in a further detail, Mike. So the crux of this conversation is, again, we've done an episode on the red, the green and the blue, which touched some of this, touched some of that in this episode but it's just talking about how this can hurt us and how we can help it. So to that point emotions themselves aren't the problem. The problem is when we let them run the show something happens and the emotions take over. We've all been there. Anger becomes explosion, this guy. Stress becomes panic, this guy. Fatigue becomes disengagement, also this guy. My guys struggle with all three of

those. Yeah, we all do. And you're exactly right. Emotional discipline does not mean we don't have feelings. Of course we have feelings. It means figuring out to understand where you are on the spectrum of your feelings and channeling them with ownership. You got to own your feelings. It's extreme ownership of your feelings. Yeah, kind of think about it like you're driving. You just don't let the car go wherever it needs to go. You control the vehicle despite the fact there's bumps in the road or there's potholes or there's steep curves, right? You grip that steering wheel tighter and you guide it. I love that analogy. What about Jesus take the wheel, Mike? Does that apply there? No, I don't think so because in that case you have ownership. So we're going to watch a little guidance from Jesus. Speaker 3 To emotional discipline, I do have to say, "Jesus, give me the power not to knock this fool out." How about that? That's probably a good place to be from time to time, yeah.

Oh, yes, but here's some, here's back to the real talk. Here's some, here's a few reflection questions that we have put together for some leaders to ask themselves. A, when tensions rise, do I react? And, and do I respond or how do I respond? Okay. B, what emotions tend to hijack you the most often? We all have them. We have our triggers, our main trigger points. Is it frustration? Is it fear? Is it defensiveness? How many people do you know that have that defensive quality? When you just say a statement and what they do immediately, they're guarded and they're coming back, right? C is how does my reaction impact the people that I lead? Because I don't think that's thought through enough. It's not only your family, your friends, whatever. It's also the people that are under your direct leadership that are affected by that, Mike. Any, any comment on those points?

Yeah, for sure. When you are a leader, you don't have the luxury of not being in control of your emotions. You don't have the power to just act however you want to react to a situation. As I mentioned before, you have to have extreme ownership of who you are and the environment you're creating for those around you, who you're leading. There are a lot of leaders out there who just don't do this well, Shane. They just don't. They just react in whatever environment they want to react. And think about some of the movie villains that you know about, right? Uh, that's exactly what's going on when those characters, they're purposefully acting the way they want to act in a situation because it generates this feeling. Well, I think about that feeling is leadership shadow. Whether you're in the room or not, you are casting leadership shadow. And when you're in the room is your only time to impact it when you're not in the room, that shadow still exists. So what shadow did you create when you were in that room in terms of controlling your emotions and engaging the environment around you? You have to have recognition of your state and then the alignment around your state, you might be feeling however you might be feeling, you might perfect state of flow, you might be feeling wonderful. But at times you've got to invoke a little bit of energy or you have to invoke a little bit of passivity to ensure you're controlling the room in a way that makes sense. It's not manipulation. It's learning where you are and ensuring you're demonstrating the right emotion for the right the right environment. So like we talked about before, if you want to think about this in terms of lines, the red line is you know, you're you're pegged, you're peak frustrated, upset, whatever it might be, the blue line is you're depressive. You're not feeling well. You don't want to get on with the day, whatever that green line, that's center in the middle. That's perfection. That's where you want to be. And when you see or feel yourself going red or blue, recognize it, own it, and pull back to get to that state of flow.

Question for you, Mike, two, actually, I want to make a statement. Then I want to ask you a few questions about that. Number one, to your point, is when you enter a room, A, how are you noticed? How are you addressed? You know, those are verbal cues about how people probably feel of your approachability with your emotional state. If you see people going the other directions, that should probably be a cue that maybe something going on here. Speaker 4 Or even if they don't go the other direction,

they just don't have any desire to come and engage. That's right. They avoid conversation with you, which probably represents you've got some underlying problem that you need to address. But even so much so as that, Mike, it's the main point of this is how are you remembered when you leave the room? Are you accepted? Are you missed? Are you noticed? Or are you talked about? Not so much that that matters, but I think you understand where I'm going. What impact are you leaving on the rooms that you enter? be a direct correlation of how you act while you're inside that room. Don't believe me? Go into a meeting room and you are immediately drawn to people that have what? Positive aura, good leadership ability, don't overreact in emotional situations. Those are typically the people that you want to go talk to, not the ones that if you say something wrong, they're going to bite your head off or belittle you in front of your other friends or maybe make inappropriate comments or suggestions when you're around. Those are the type of people what? They have bad emotional discourse. They don't recognize the temperature of the room and they can leave the bad taste. So you always want to make sure you're remembered for what when you leave. So back to all that. My question for you is, when tensions rise in Mike's world, how do you react or respond?

I'm very conscious of my behaviors and my emotions and sure I get upset. I mean, things frustrate me, things depress me. That's life. That's human nature. But I'm also, I've been trained to be very conscious of what I'm going to do with that feeling. So that feeling might be frustration. Well, then I, the first thing I start to think about in a lot of this is like microsecond activity, right? I'm thinking about, okay, well, if we're here, what did I do to get us here? What can I do to get us out of this situation? Did I not train that person well enough? That's why they don't know what they're doing. That's why they've been front. That's why they've given me some information that's terrible. Is it just because I've had a bad day and they've done absolutely nothing wrong. It's, and this is just normal learning lesson. Am I really depressed about this situation because I'm really, I'm actually upset with myself that I didn't do what I was supposed to do to prevent it from happening. And so these are micro thoughts that are happening real time as quickly as possible. So I can say, take ownership of whatever I'm feeling. If I'm feeling this way, what did I do to get here? How did I help myself get here? Now that I own it, I can bring myself back shame.

So another key point to that, and it goes back to our last episode, you are still framing this in the after action report. You're just doing it just in time versus on paper at this, you know, in some situations, but that means you have good emotional cognizance that you are recognizing the situation, you're evaluating it before you respond, and then you're coming up with the best possible calculation of answer or reaction that you can do. Because in your position, I mean, how many, you know, direct employees, not direct, but how many employees are underneath you?

Well, you know, we've got 6,000 team members, uh, and I don't interact with all of them all the time, but I do interact with, you know, probably the top 300 a lot. If it's not every single day, it's at least once a week and at minimum once a month. And so, you know, uh, in my job, in fact, in all of our jobs, we have the responsibility of influence and we're all creating influence, whether you're a formal leader or not. The question is, is what influence are you creating? And if you can be aware of the type of influence you're creating and navigate that situation and drive outcomes that make your people, uh, enjoy where they go to work every day, create an environment of openness, excitement, and you allow them to feel their own emotions in their own ways and then help them figure out how to reframe and renavigate. You can't do anything but have great success in the workplace.

Noah, you kind of answered the next question. I've got one more because that is the reaction impact for people that you lead. That's exactly, exactly, you know, a great answer to that. So, the last question I'll ask you is that is, is there a specific emotion that is your main trigger? Like, is there something that hijacks you specifically the most often?

Yeah, and it is that one that we all see a lot of people execute. It's defensiveness. If I feel like I haven't done something well and somebody calls me out on it, the first thing I feel is, oh, I need to explain why that happened. I need to say, well, that's not who I usually am. And I just had a bad... And so I used to just do that. I used to be super defensive and I used to just say that outwardly. I don't do that anymore. If somebody is now saying something that makes me feel defensive, the first thought I have is I'm feeling defensive. How am I going to reframe this to learn something from what they're saying to me so I can be better next time? And then if I've screwed up, the very first thing I've learned to say is, I screwed up. You're right. It's not as good as it should have been. And I'll do better next time. Whether that's somebody on my team or somebody I report to or a customer, it doesn't matter who it is. Because it's not about titles inside organizations are for purposes of formal decision making. Any other use is a misuse. It doesn't matter who's telling me I screwed up. It could be the most frontline person in the world that said, "Hey, you know, that last town hall, you said something I didn't appreciate. And I will admit if I said something I should not have said, I should not have said it." So totally, Shane, that's the one that gets me most often. How about you? I know you've been working on some of this yourself.

I have, and I want to back, before I give you that answer, there's something I wanted to bring up. So again, I'm sorry I keep referencing this, but I took some nuggets away from that conference I went to And another thing that Bedros had said was, I'm talking about Bedros Killian. Um, he said, I can't remember who told him this. It might've been Craig Ballantyne. I'm not exactly sure. So I apologize for the reference mess up, but he said, you have to start treating your emotions as if everything is your fault. I think that's brilliant. I love that. And he, and he, he said further on stage, he said, can you elaborate on this? Like, give me an example. And he's like, no matter what happens in your life, if you start living your life, that everything is your fault, then it will really start to shape and refine the way your emotional responses are. Now that doesn't mean that you become passive and dismissive and all the things. That's this. And he said, he said, so the story was, so let me get this straight. If my wife is on a cruise and a meteor hits that cruise ship, that's my fault. Yep. You should have booked another cruise line, right? So he just, you take that, you take that empowerment and I've actually started to employ this just to your point, whenever there's a, there's a screw up at work, it's my fault. I did not train them properly on this. Let me regroup, let me refocus. And now let's come up with a solution. Cause I can get mad about it. Sure. It still doesn't change the outcome. Not going to do a damn thing for you. You know? So why not focus on saying, all right, as my leader of this facility, that is my my problem and now let's come together as a team and fix it. So that's something that I've approached. But even further into that, you brought this book into my life and I'm appreciative. You know, Mel Robbins, The Let Them. I'm about 60 pages in. That's how far I've gotten so far. Fantastic so far. I love the theories behind this book because not only does - I guess you go in depth about the let them theory. That is, let them be angry at you. Let that car in front of you cut you off. And your answer is let them.

- And how good does that feel, right?

- I say it probably 100 times a day now. All day. But then the next piece of that is what's critical. Is you can't stop with just to let them. Because then you can start to develop that superiority complex. Speaker 4 - Exactly right.

- That's needed briefly. I'm better than that a-hole that just cut me off. Let him screw off. Right. I, then I'm on with my day, but then you have to balance that back out. Then you have to say, let me. So let me understand why I didn't get invited on that guy's trip. Well, probably because I work 25 hours a day. It's not that they didn't invite me. They probably all knew the answer was going to be saying, man, I can't make it. I got to work. Right. And so let them and then let me, which may not make as much sense to you read the book, but it's a great read. So my point to that, Mike, is most of the time when I get angry about something, the core issue is something that I have caused. It's my fault. I'm not angry at the other person. I'm angry because I don't like the outcome or the answer that I've been giving or I didn't get my way. That's why I'm angry. We can fix the problem. I'm angry because I didn't get ahead of it. So my emotions can get away from me. But here's the thing is when you start to have the power to not overreact, that is when you really have control of your situation. Think about it. When someone insults you or does something you don't like right to your face, if you can sit there and smile at them and have that let them mentality, that is a trump card, buddy. have controlled that entire situation. They do not have the power to affect your emotions. And I don't care what they say, what any human says, when that happens, you're the, if you're the one giving it, you feel like, man, that dude is solid. You know, you give that's a power move. So to me, I've really started to try to build that into my world to where. It's water off a duck's back in the country, in the country world is just, you know what, I'm not going to let anything that happens affect me in a way that I'm going to react negatively until I stop and reevaluate what's going on. Because as you've said before, in other previous episodes, negative energy is going to project. Your team will pick that same negative energy up. And then all of a sudden now you've got a building full of negativity. Whereas if you're able to spend it, shake it off, keep the positive energy going. One that's observed. So now you're, you're enforcing observed positive behavior from your team. Right. You're lending that part of leadership. And two, you're presenting that good mantra, which is also going to fill that space, man. I want good energy. I don't want the bad. So my, my number one biggest struggle to me is impulse anger. To this day. And it can happen at any moment with my family, with my co-op, my colleagues, my workers, my friends. 99% of the time it's a misunderstanding, but I have such hard trouble that trigger hits. And it's like you said, microseconds. I can't stop. I can't stop the train from leaving the tracks. Struggle big time. That's why I'm in the books. That's why I'm going to conferences. That's why I'm listening to podcasts. That's why I hire people like me and you to be able to help teach me these things because obviously there's some things that all of us can't do without a little practice and help. So we don't want to get into that part where we start regretting everything we do because Lord knows we've been there. So any comments on any of that, Mike?

Yeah, Shane, thanks for the opportunity. So I just think when we think about the human mind, we start with this reptilian core, right? There are things that we're just naturally going to react to. It happens. just like being in a strong workout routine, being in a, a, a mindset that you're going to achieve a mission being in a, whatever it is that you're going to need to go to get a work on it, right, you got to recognize one, I have a problem to I'm going to own it. And three, I'm going to do something about it. And that's, that's what I love about what you just said, which is, I know what's wrong with me, I know what I do. And I know what I do instinctively. So insert a way to solve the problem so I can stop doing the things that are destroying relationships, maybe not destroying, it might have in the past, but certainly get in the way of being who you want to be. They're not, they're not helping you get your to be list done. So I'm really excited about you, you going down that road and, and talking about the idea that we can help a lot of people solve these same issues Shane.

You know Mike, it's, it's constantly said the inputs equal the outputs. And that is so relative and important in our emotional state. is just the same as it is in any other state. In fact, you and I both agree about the physical aspect of mental health. And when you're physically in a groove, a lot of the pieces of the puzzle fit together. However, there's a lot of men and women that are in good shape and in good health and do the fitness world that are still very emotionally off.

- It's the right shape. (laughing)

It could be part of that for sure. I would not argue that I don't know from experience, but God help you. You don't want me to ever get anywhere near that crap or I will burn. Speaker 4 We can't build this down, but just.

You have to be willing to fix one part of your life into your point. My, if there's four F bombs or there's 40, it doesn't matter, right? You have to find the one that needs the most attention and fix it first. Because if you don't, then you can never really truly fix the rest of them. We all know what our underlying most emotional flaw is, whether we're willing to sit in it and admit it. That's one thing. But if you do have the courage to finally say, this is a problem, you know, these podcasts are almost like therapy for me because I'm able to express a lot of things that I've kept pinned up on the inside for a lot of years. But if you can't figure out that one crux of thing that you need to fix, Mike, there's no way to do that. So fix the most broken part and then slowly figure out what the next move is. Because if not, you're gonna be in quicksand. You're just gonna keep going down until one day you can't breathe. And we all know what the outcome of that is. That leads to very bad decisions, bad habits, and eventually, you know, a whole lot of bad things can happen. So I wanted to kind of segue into a what's some things that you do and I do together practically, you know, some what we call our practical toolkit. And again, this is some of the stuff that Mike and I would gladly do anytime for anybody in any teamwork. We have a lot of practical toolkits that we have, but this is just some of the stuff that that you and I use to help us stay in control and we fail we we both fail at this but we're constantly trying to improve so Mike what's what's one strategy that you employ to help you keep your emotions in

check when they start to rise? Yeah the first one I love is just the pause rule so buyers somebody's just said something to you whether it be good or bad or whatever it doesn't really even matter you just need some give yourself some time to think maybe the question is completely innocuous but why not take three seconds before speaking specifically if you think it's gonna be something's gonna trigger you that pause can save you from words of regret Shane ask me anything

and that's random but let's see what color are your socks

I'm wearing blue socks today Shane that three seconds might have felt you as the guy who's going to respond to that question, eternity. But you just saw it. It's not, it's nothing. It's fine. It's not, it's a natural when it flows in conversation, but it can save you from saying, Hey, piss off Shane, don't worry about what color my socks are.

Which is your normal response to me, by the way.

Anytime you can, anytime you ask me a question.

So what tool you got Shane? Well, not just that Mike, you can also employ that with email and text. Well, with that, you should always, specifically if it's a charged topic,

right? Something that you've got to dispute or you've got to change an opinion on. First of all, email is almost never the way to do that. Text is definitely not the way to do that. You want to be face to face with people to have those kinds of hard conversations. But every now and again, somebody will put something in writing and send it out to a lot of people. And so you've got to correct that, that situation. If you're going to be putting yourself in that situation, you've got to get it read by a friend, let it sit for 24 hours, et cetera. You don't need three seconds in that case. You need a lot of time.

The pause rule goes a little deeper when it comes to written communication, which unfortunately, Mike, is the new norm. It is.

I've seen so many poor, poor responses. And I don't mean in terms of writing or English. I'm talking about thought process, because somebody wants to fire something off quickly.

Well, not just that, Mike, I'm going to go with you. If you're going to send it, at least get the damn spelling and punctuation

right, because then I don't even matter at you.

lines it for you. They tell you you spelled it wrong, you big fool. That makes me even madder. I'm like, come on, man. Right. But yes, pause rule, absolutely very effective tool. Secondly is name it to tame it. Speaker 4 Right. So what does that mean?

Simply label what you're feeling. I'm tense. I'm anxious. I'm pissed off. You know, there's the boundless things that you're having that emotion. I'm sad. I'm happy. Whatever it is. And the happy probably wouldn't fit there. But if you say something out loud, it takes some of the power away from it.

Well, and you don't have to say, you don't even have to say it out loud. Let's imagine you're in a conversation. You're about to take that three seconds. You've got the pause rule. Somebody just said something that's got your goat, man. You just said yourself, that really made me angry. Now, let me think about how I'm going to respond.

That's a good point. That's very true. Cause most of the time you are not by yourself if you're in that position, unless you get a text or something else, but absolutely agree with that. That gives you time to reframe it, refocus it, and to evaluate it. So that goes back to my point, name entertainment, aka let them, and then think it through.

What about the next one, Mike? Yeah, Shane, the next one for me is a stage shift back to physical movement. I have a stand up desk for this very reason. It's the idea that when you change your body's position, you can oftentimes gain control of an emotion that you're feeling. Now, some people will say, go out and take a walk. That definitely works. Stand up, stretch, whatever. All that stuff works. And if you're, uh, if you're a office based person, you're on a lot of zoom calls, you know, you have people come in your office all the time to be in a standing desk allows you just to make a little shift in the weight on your feet. Just move your hips a little, do whatever. And that those little adjustments will allow you to take that three seconds. Make that physical move and you can reframe a lot of things. And, you know, look, if you're really working on something, like you said before, put on that weighted vest and go rock it out for two and a half or three or seven miles, and you're going to come up with an answer of what you want to do next.

Yeah, I did some of that over the weekend, you know, just had a lot of just stuff running through my mind about basically it's, man, I'm not, I can't get enough done. I got so much to do and I thought, well, you know what? I want to add to that because I'm fixing to go for, I'm going to fix to go for a walk.

And, but you know what? It's funny. People will say I've got too much to do. I don't have time to go for that walk that that 20 or 30 minutes that you go spend that time on will be the best 20 or 30 minutes you will have spent all day versus what you would have wasted on chasing ghosts.

Absolutely agree clarity. There is clarity and movement sir. Absolutely agree with that 100% So the other one you can do or last one we'll talk about here is just reset your rituals. I talked to someone about this today at the gym and we were talking about how she was doing fantastic and Locked in man, and then all of a sudden there's a bump in a row had to have some minor surgery Then that domino led to another domino another domino Dominoes are gonna fall one way or the other You have the ability to pull it out and he make it go forward or backward so What we did today in our meeting is let's just strip this back down to the basics You know, we're all guilty for trying to hit that home run when we try to hit home runs every day Guess what? We're striking out more than we're making contact So let's think, let's think basics here. Build small repeatable practices before any, it says, you know, but we'll say before any high stakes moment. I think you do that before any day begins. If you start building those small repeatable practices, that becomes a habit. You know, we've talked about the basic things all the time. Setting your clothes out the night before, having the food in your tracker the day before. Those are how you get ahead and win and those are small little things that you can do. It's not like we're saying go run a marathon. You know, we're saying give us 30 minutes to an hour of exercise each day. Be mindful of your nutrition choices. Put it in the day before. These tasks usually generally take five minutes or less, Mike, but yet it's so profound, the amount of people that just can't seem to get it. So find that ritual. Listen to a song you like. Let that be a trigger. Right? I know when I'm not feeling well, what do you do? You, you, you tend to want to listen to some music and what do you do? You go to your favorite playlist. It usually lifts you up.

So if you're in that- I usually go to death rock.

If you're in that case, listen to some of your favorite music. Hey, go somewhere, say a prayer. You know, pray can, you know, power of prayer can go a long way or just say a paraphrase, you know, that may sound silly, but I say this all the time. I've say to myself, onward and upward, you know, onward and upward, you know, We're going to get through this day. We're going to get through this. And that will also continue. Those practices can keep you grounded, which is a very important emotional state to be in because when you're ramped up high, you have to be very cautious about your reactions. Not only with your physical, mental, emotional side, because you're probably going to react in a way that you would never react in a normal state. So ground yourself with these small rituals and let those be what? Atomic habits, cues to bring yourself back down to that emotional state,

to where you can practically function without risk of regret. I love it. I, you know, I think about these in terms of both macro and micro reset rituals, Shane, and the macro ones are the ones that I had to learn over the last, you know, three to five years in terms of my fitness and my health and how I ate and how I, you know, took care of my body. And those, those rituals are normal now. Those are, those are habits that I, that I formed. Those are atomic habits that have built on each other. And the micro rituals I use, uh, for reset rituals, I use them all time. And my job, I love staying in front of a crowd and presenting. I, I relish it. I know you do too. I love giving presentations to customers or to, you know, the senior executives or, or to our ownership teams. And I love very scary projects. I love them. But I get really anxious right before I'm about to go do it. When I'm about to walk on stage, man, I'm sweating bullets. And I'm, I, when I just tell myself, okay, I'm good at this. I'm going to be fine. I know my material. And then the one thing that I like to use a different technique is box breathing. We've talked about breathing techniques before, but I'll spend 20 to 30 seconds just doing just some box breathing and it just helps me regulate my pulse in my mind. I feel my, my heart rate go down. I feel myself regaining control. And I just think reset rituals are a great way when you're in a, like, like we said before, a high stakes moment to, to just get reset and make sure you're ready to go.

I couldn't agree more. One of the things I do with the breath mic is even still with Mike coaching a gym class, you know, you're not really talking about high stakes, but and you can be changing somebody's lives potentially if it's their first class there. This could be a decision whether or not they stay and get healthy and extend their life or don't. So technically, I guess this could be a high stakes situation every day. If any of the coaches or anybody watches me when I when I'm on the mic, I get up to the TV and my back is turned. I set the timer down and before I turn around and start talking, it's a one solid in and out breath to reset just like you just said. It's a trigger for me to where I switch and say, okay, it's time to go into coach mode.

And what's funny about this Shane is that's not just mental, that is actually physical. That's the sympathetic nervous system resetting. And so people think, oh, that big breath or that box breath, you know, you're actually, you're actually resetting a physical part of your being when you do that.

Yeah, love it. Great advice on that. So, Mike, let's kind of wind this episode down. Today we talked a lot about emotional discipline as a leader and how to learn to manage your presence so the room does not manage you. One of the things we love to say is be the thermostat. Be the thermostat of the room, man.

And that's exactly what we talked about when you're talking about casting your leadership shadow in the red, blue, green, and all the other things we about today and in the next episode, we're going to close this series of our three-part series with aligned action. So how do you turn your identity, which we talked about in episode one, and emotional discipline we're talking about now into real sustainable long-term momentum as a leader?

So here's the challenge for this week. Catch yourself in one emotional reaction, just one, and use the pause rule or the name entertainment and see what changes in the way people respond to how you react.

A great episode, Shane. I think it's time to put a bow on this. Uh, this was our series called lead from within. Remember your presence is contagious. Regulate the room. And as always, Shane, let's get lit. Speaker 5 Bye everybody. See y'all. Thank you for listening to the leadership ignition team podcast. Go to our website at www.leadershipignitionteam.com to subscribe to our weekly newsletter, engage with us and find again, favorite podcast networks, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.