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Newsletter Article
People Don’t Feel the Same Way
By Dr. Jean Greaves
Five years ago, I was meeting with an executive from a global financial services firm who revealed to me, “I can handle most types of complaint calls, but if the complainer implies that I am the problem, I get defensive and my chest turns red and flashes hot. Fortunately for me, I’m wearing a shirt. No one can see this when it happens.” Since then, I’ve often wondered about the range of reactions people experience when their emotions kick into gear.
This fall, TalentSmart® had the unique opportunity to explore this concern with 89 worldwide sales professionals gathered in Florida for their annual meeting. The following query was posed to them as part of a 13- question pre-work packet on emotional intelligence: What happens to you when your emotions get the best of you? Specific emotions were purposely not mentioned in the packet in order to gather the full range of the participants’ experiences.
The sales professionals’ responses fell into two basic groups—physical reactions to emotions and behavioral reactions to emotions—and most had multiple reactions to a single emotional event. The results reveal something surprising— accurately reading the emotional reactions of other people is far more complicated than we might think.
Up, Down, and All Around
We found that sales professionals behave in one of three ways when their emotions take over: they become louder/ faster (52% of behavioral reactions), slower/quieter (18%), or they become distracted altogether (30%). While one sales professional gets amped by his emotions (“I talk faster”), the next sales person gets shut down by them (“I become tongue-tied”), and the next befuddled by them (“My thoughts fray”). Interpreting how a coworker feels at work may require more than looking for the emotional behaviors and signs that you’re familiar with. Why? Under similar emotional distress, your behavior is likely going to be quite different from that of the person sitting next to you.
