The Box
Unfair
Hostile
Stressful
What do these words have in common?
They more often than not describe the common American workplace.
Situations at work can often be as emotionally taxing as those with family, friends, and significant others. Putting your blood, sweat, and tears into a job is no longer a metaphor, as employers expect more, and job markets become more competitive.
It seems that very little is in our control, especially if we happen to work for someone else, and this lack of control is an issue that comes up regularly in sessions with my clients.
Work can make you feel trapped in a box – So how do you get out?
The Emotion, Truth, Conscious (ETC) Coaching model. ETC coaching is a framework anyone can use to change the way we perceive and react to situations. ETC can be applied to any area of life and is especially powerful when applied to a negative work context.
The first stage in the ETC model is Emotion. Emotions may flood in as the result of a negative event or trigger, such as receiving feedback. This usually results in negative self-talk and all kinds of doom and gloom thinking. According to ETC, in this stage, it’s important that you recognize the emotions you’re feeling, acknowledge them, and take deep breaths rather than dwelling on the emotions any further.
The second stage is Truth. At this stage, I instruct my clients to change their self-talk and look at the facts. Haven’t they always delivered? Don’t they usually score well in their performance reviews? Don’t they have valuable experience on their side? By focusing on what is true, people can achieve a more rational state of mind and thought pattern to base subsequent decisions on.
The final stage is Conscious Choice. Making decisions when agitated is never a good idea, and so this stage of ETC helps people get into a cooler and more collected headspace to base their decisions off. Knowing the facts in cold blood helps you be more rational when making decisions, and so I usually work with my clients here to come up with an action plan or an idea of what they would do if the situation arose again.
ETC is designed for self-coaching as negative events are taking place but teaching a client to use ETC “in the moment” isn’t always possible. In addition, examining past events is a great way to learn from them and use them to inform the future. In this article, we’ll go through examples of me using ETC retroactively with my clients so that you can see it in action.
Vanessa
Vanessa, one of my clients, is a young advertising professional who has been working at a top firm in New York City for almost a year. Though she had great grades in college and stellar experience, she still suffered from imposter syndrome and a lack of self-confidence. In one of our sessions, Vanessa mentioned to me that she had been yelled at by one of her managers. She had worked on a project he had assigned to her with little direction, and when she hadn’t done it up to his standards, he screamed at her and belittled her. Vanessa’s day was ruined, and she didn’t know what to do next.
In our session, we broke down the event using the ETC method. When Vanessa’s manager yelled at her, we established that she felt scared, nervous, angry, and inadequate, and that her hard work meant nothing – these were her emotions. Then we went through the facts – Vanessa had always been well-liked by most of her professors, managers, and peers, she consistently received high performance reviews, and she had never been fired from a job before. Furthermore, she accepted that even though she hadn’t done anything wrong by working on the project to the best of her ability, yelling in a professional setting was never acceptable, no matter what. Finally, we looked at what her choices were and came up with a plan. Vanessa resolved that she would speak to her manager and express respectfully that he should not talk to her like that, and in the meantime strategically look for other jobs that might be a better cultural fit.
Vanessa changed her thinking, and the next time conflict arose, she was able to handle it without letting it affect her view of herself.
James
Another one of my clients, James, had recently been going the extra mile at work. James would frequently offer help to his teammates, take on new work, and lead new initiatives to improve team performance. After about 6 months of this, James felt confident that he was a shoo-in for a promotion he wanted that had recently been hinted at by his manager. At the next staff meeting, James learned that he had been passed over for the promotion in favor of someone more junior to the team. James was devastated.
In our session, we worked through what he was feeling, establishing that James felt overlooked, underappreciated, and an overall sense of rejection. He also felt stuck in his current role, and like he had wasted all his time going above and beyond. We then discussed what was actually true – James was a hard worker, experienced, and ambitious. However, the person who had received the promotion had established better rapport with James’s manager. Though James was friendly at work and more qualified than his junior, a connection had beat him out in the end. While this was unfair, James and I talked about what choices he had, and James decided that he would lean into his close relationships at work for future promotions, stop cultivating unrealistically high expectations for his colleagues by exceeding expectations constantly, and maybe even put his resume out there for better positions.
Using the power of ETC, James had used a disappointing situation to improve himself professionally and manage expectations for the future.
Breaking Out
Feel free to apply this to negative events that have happened to you, and you just might find yourself using ETC in the moment the next time you are triggered. Like a muscle, restructuring your way of thinking must be worked on constantly, but it is possible with discipline and commitment.
Warmly,
Anne Stamer
President and CEO
Stamer Coaching & Consulting