When Your Emotions Get Ahead of

Most of us have had one of those moments at work when we wish we could rewind the previous thirty seconds.

Perhaps an email landed badly and the reply went out a little too quickly. Someone challenged an idea in a meeting and the response was more defensive than intended. A conversation became frustrating and something was said in a tone that changed the whole direction of it.

These moments have always happened, but the environment we are working in today seems to be creating more opportunities for them.

People are dealing with constant change, competing priorities, heavier workloads and an expectation that they will remain responsive across multiple channels throughout the day. Add uncertainty about AI, changing roles and structures, and the normal pressures of working with other human beings, and there is plenty going on emotionally before we even get to the work itself.

When the pressure builds, our emotions can get ahead of us.

That matters because an emotional reaction that lasts only a few seconds can have consequences that last considerably longer.

I sometimes think of it like driving a car in heavy traffic. When the road is clear, most of us are calm, attentive and considerate drivers. Put us in traffic when we are already running late and suddenly every slow driver, red light and unexpected lane change feels personal.

The road has not changed who we are. It has simply created conditions where our reactions are harder to manage. Work can be much the same.

We all have emotional triggers.

Someone dismisses our contribution, questions our judgement, changes something at the last minute or fails to deliver what they promised. We feel frustrated, embarrassed, threatened, disappointed or angry, often before we have had time to consciously think about what has happened.

The emotion itself is not the problem. Emotions provide valuable information about what is happening within us and around us.

The challenge is what happens next.

This is where CONTROL, the second quadrant of the Emotional Navigation Roadmap™, becomes important.

Emotional control is sometimes misunderstood as keeping a lid on things. People try to remain professional by pushing emotions aside, pretending they are fine or avoiding conversations that might become uncomfortable.

That might work temporarily, but suppression and control are very different things.

Control is about recognising what you are feeling and retaining enough choice over your behaviour to decide how you want to respond.

That small distinction can make an enormous difference.

Think back to the heavy traffic. You cannot control the driver who cuts in front of you, the accident that has blocked two lanes or the meeting that starts in ten minutes. You can, however, notice the frustration building and decide whether it gets to drive the car.

The same principle applies at work.

Someone can send you an email that annoys you without requiring an immediate reply. A colleague can challenge your thinking without you needing to defend yourself. A difficult conversation can make you uncomfortable without that discomfort deciding how the conversation unfolds.

Creating that space takes practice because our reactions are often automatic. Over time we develop patterns for dealing with particular situations and people, and those patterns can kick in remarkably quickly.

One of the simplest ways to interrupt them is to become curious about your reaction before acting on it.

What am I feeling right now? What triggered it? What am I about to do because of it? Most importantly, will that response help me achieve the outcome I actually want?

That does not require twenty minutes of meditation in the middle of a meeting. Sometimes it is simply taking a breath before speaking, leaving an email in drafts for ten minutes or asking a question rather than immediately defending your position.

Those few seconds create room for choice.

This becomes even more important as people take on greater responsibility. The emotional reactions of a leader rarely stay with the leader. They travel.

Frustration becomes tension in a meeting. Anxiety becomes urgency for a team. Defensiveness shuts down a conversation. Anger changes what people are willing to say the next time around.

The opposite is also true. When someone remains composed enough to work through a difficult moment, other people tend to respond differently as well.

None of this means becoming emotionless, in fact, I would argue the opposite.

Emotions are part of being human and they play an important role in how we make decisions, build relationships, and respond to what is happening around us. Developing emotional control allows us to use that information without handing it control of our behaviour.

The workplace is unlikely to become less demanding anytime soon. Change will continue, expectations will remain high, and people will occasionally do things that frustrate us.

We cannot always clear the traffic but we can become much more deliberate about who is driving.