3 Tips for Managing Emotional Complexity in Business and Life

3-min read

If you’ve ever felt underappreciated, taken advantage of, betrayed, confused, or just flat out miserable in a work situation or with a particular person you’re working alongside — you’re not alone. Emotional complexity is an unavoidable fact of business and life, and it’s one of the biggest challenges on your path to becoming successful. But it’s also one of your biggest opportunities for growth.

Throughout my 30 years in business, my Achilles heel has always been my sensitivity and being overly emotional. Even now, at least once a month, I find myself dealing with some kind of emotionally frustrating situation. While I don’t think handling emotional complexity ever becomes easy, you can get better at it. It’s something I’ve had to work on intentionally, so I want to share three strategies that have helped me approach it in a more constructive way.

1. Objective thinking. Take a step back and objectively try to understand the dynamics of the situation. Ask yourself: Why is this happening? What part am I playing in this? Am I miscommunicating? Am I misunderstanding something? (We’re often co-creators and co-conspirators of our own misery, which is terrible, but fixable!)

   Apply that same objective thinking to the other person. Ask: What’s important to them? What am I challenging about them that’s boomeranging back to me? How do I align with what they care about or need so that we’re on the same side? When you take the emotions and ego out of a situation, it becomes easier to see what’s really happening so you can decide how to navigate it.

2. Selfishness. What I mean by selfishness is the ability to look at a situation and ask: What’s best for me here? What do I want to get out of this? When you can identify what you want and have clarity about what’s best for you, you become an equal at the table. It’s about understanding the game you’re in and learning to play it — graciously and ethically — without becoming a pawn. So much of getting emotionally wound-up in something comes from feeling that your own interests aren’t being served. At the end of the day, that’s somewhat on you. If you can surface your own agenda and figure out a way to protect or advance it — even within tough relationship or power dynamics — you’ll be instantly less emotional. By focusing on actively playing your own cards — evaluating tradeoffs and compromises vs. your targeted outcomes — you’ll avoid feeling victimized.

   
   Ask yourself: What am I trying to get out of this? What am I willing to accept (or not accept), and what do I need to do to get to my targeted end result? Is the tradeoff or thing that needs to be endured worth the outcome? When you ask yourself that, it helps you map out the right plan without emotions muddying the water.

3. Understand that this is an opportunity for growth. So much of being successful requires having emotional control. I think that’s why the famous Stanford Marshmallow Experiment was so predictive of success — because the kids who were able to resist that first marshmallow had innate emotional control. Emotionally complex situations help you build that emotional control muscle — which is critical to any type of success. Yes, these situations hurt, but they’re ultimately a great school for growth, both in business and life.

If you’ve found yourself navigating a frustrating, emotionally complex situation, I feel for you. It’s brutal.

If it’s hard to picture me in this position, here’s a quick video rundown of an especially brutal — but ultimately instructive — exchange I had with an investor while I was being managed out of a company. That experience taught me, once and for all, how to handle situations like this.

This part of careers — and life — is tough. But there’s no path without friction, so you might as well buckle down and learn how to make those moments productive. Remember that the situation is fleeting. But what you’re getting out of it — strength, emotional control, growth, and the ability to handle emotional complexity on your path to success — is a stronger, more successful version of you. That’s definitely worth working on!

As always, good luck!

Emily