- 12 February 2021
- Posted by: Erkan Sarıkaya
- Category: AGILE
You have options in front of you, and plenty of uncertainty. Which path will you choose?
Just as the captain was about to go below for dinner, the lookout suddenly reported,
– “Light, sir. Two miles ahead.”
– “Then signal the ship,” the Captain ordered.
– “You are on a collision course. Alter your course 20 degrees.”
A moment later, the reply came from the source of the light:
– “You are advised to alter your course 20 degrees.”
The Captain felt insulted. “Send another message,” he said. “Say this:”
– “This is the captain of the 35,000-ton battleship Defiant. Alter your course 20 degrees.”
The reply came:
– “This is Seaman Second Class O’Reilly. Alter your course immediately.”
Red-faced with rage, the Captain shouted:
– “We are the admiral’s flagship. Alter your course.”
Seaman O’Reilly’s reply came a few seconds later:
– “And we are a lighthouse, sir.”
Emotional Agility – Dr. Susan David
“As we move through life, there are no lighthouses to keep us clear of relationships as unfeeling as the rocks”
What Is Emotional Agility?
This week I wanted to reflect on “Emotional Agility”, the book by Dr. Susan David, an award-winning psychologist at Harvard Medical School.
I underlined most of this book; it truly offers a clear and very compelling process for understanding and developing our own “agility”. I recommend this book, which draws on a great deal of research and gets us to question ourselves.
In short, the book’s aim is to help you become more aware of your emotions, to accept them and make peace with them, and then to grow by increasing your emotional agility.
Emotional agility is not about controlling your thoughts or forcing yourself to think more positively.
After all, research shows that flipping your thoughts from negative (“I’m going to ruin this presentation”) to positive (“You’ll see, I’m going to do a great job”) usually doesn’t work and can even backfire.Emotional agility is about loosening up, calming down and living a more meaningful life. It’s about choosing how you respond to your emotional warning system. This concept supports the approach described by psychiatrist Viktor Emil Frankl, who survived a Nazi death camp and wrote “Man’s Search for Meaning” about how we, as human beings, can realize our potential and live a more meaningful life: “Between stimulus and response there is a space,” Frankl writes.
“In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
The Agile Team and Emotional Agility
Let’s think of the whole agile team as one human being, one person.
“Stimulus” –> Work, expectations, a new event, rituals
“Agile Team” –> We run a process within an agile framework (Scrum); we have values and principles, and a purpose and goal we focus on.
“Response” –> All of our outputs, what we produce and our improvements.
Our “responses” feed back into the “stimulus”, and as an “agile team” we become aware, we learn and we grow. We mature.
There are many obstacles on the path to emotional agility, the biggest being ourselves, and we have to be nimble so we don’t fall flat on our faces while the ground shifts beneath us.
Let’s not think about the obstacles for now.
Because the ultimate goal of emotional agility is to keep the sense of challenge and growth alive and well throughout our lives.
4 Steps to Developing Emotional Agility
To develop your emotional agility, you can follow these 4 steps:
- Show up: That’s 80% of success.
- Step out: Put distance between thought and emotion. In tough moments, take a look at yourself from the outside.
- Walk your why: Choose among your options based on your values and goals.
- And move on: Push yourself, keep going and don’t give up. (Sharpen your saw)
The problem is, we all get some things wrong…
So don’t get hooked (Blaming, Monkey mind, Old ideas and Wrongheaded righteousness)
The little red fish is swimming in the lake, weaving this way and that; along comes Hasan the fisherman and casts his line. Listen, little red fish, don’t take the bait, the fisherman will catch you and toss you in his basket. 🙂
Let’s say you got hooked. To get free: don’t bottle it up and don’t brood!
I’ve tried to show a brief summary of the book on the “mind map” below.
I’m also sharing below Susan David’s TED talk on “The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage”, just 16 minutes long and watched by 8.5 million people. Here’s to discovering yourself …
Erkan SARIKAYA
Enterprise Agile Coach
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Author: Erkan Sarıkaya — Enterprise Agile Coach, founder of GONEX. He writes on enterprise agile transformation, Scrum and agile leadership coaching. You can learn more on the About Us page and read his other posts.