After 90 seconds, the initial flood of chemicals has completely dissipated. Dwelling on the situation that caused your feelings in the first place keeps powerful, chemicals flowing and you literally stew in your own juices. It takes a little practice, but rather than stewing, you can hit the ‘reset’ button.

A Relentless Loop

Road Rage offers a prime example of getting stuck in an angry loop. Remember the last person who cut you off? What ran through your head? Did you take it personally, thinking that the other person had done something to you? How long did you hang onto the anger?

Let’s replay that scenario. Someone cuts you off. Maybe you were in their blind spot. Maybe they realized they were about to miss their exit and reacted without thinking or looking in the rear view mirror. Maybe they were distracted by a personal emergency. None of the likely reasons that caused the other driver to cut you off had intent to harm.

That’s the way it is in a lot of situations that trigger anger. We create a story and interpret intent behind the other person’s actions. Most often our stories are wrong. Dwelling on the story keeps the anger churning.

Hit The Reset Button

You can use a number of different techniques to stop the flood of chemicals that keep you stewing. It starts by recognizing you’re in the throes of an amygdala hijack. Clenched jaw. Racing heart. BP spike. When angry or afraid, we take short, panting breaths. To interrupt the amygdala hijack, take a few long, deep breaths from the diaphragm.

Next, acknowledge how you feel. Rather than saying to yourself, “I am angry,” phrase your self-talk as, “I feel anger.” Verbs are small, powerful words that create your reality. The nuance of language actually does make a difference.

Finally, rewrite the story you’re telling yourself. Unless you’re a mind reader, you cannot possibly know what’s going on in another person’s head. It’s pretty much guaranteed that the first story you’ve told yourself is off target.

Self-management Builds Leaders

We know from Daniel Goleman and Annie McKee‘s work that a large component of leadership is the ability to manage your own emotions. Part of communication is the biochemical influence we have on others within our sphere of influence. Communication isn’t constrained to word choice, tone of voice, and body language. The chemicals we release also play a significant role in the communication. Great leaders know how they impact others and have learned when to hit the reset button—an important element of emotional intelligence.

On our January 16, 2013 blog, we gave an overview of cognitive bias (our tendency to filter information through our own past experiences, likes, and dislikes) and surmised that it can lead to faulty judgments. So much of positive leadership hinges on good decision making, which, of course, affects company culture and workplace happiness. So, let’s expand the discussion.

In the fourth of our series, I am going to talk about the Anchoring Bias. This bias is the tendency to favor a piece of information and “anchor on” or favor that information when making decisions, even though it may have no logical relevance to the decision at hand. With the Anchoring Bias, the information becomes our reference point to evaluate and make decisions. And, as you might guess, this can lead us astray.

One illustrative example is a series of studies that were done in the Real Estate industry. In these studies, before touring a home, appraisal agents were broken into four groups. Each group of agents were given information about the home including a standard MLS listing sheet and comparable prices of houses in the area. The twist is that each of the four groups saw a completely different listing price. After touring the home, they were asked to write the appraisal and then list the factors that went into their pricing. As you might have guessed, the listing price they saw prior to the tour significantly affected the appraisal price…the higher the listing price, the higher the average appraisal price. And these agents weren’t even generally aware of this effect. When asked to list the factors that were important to them in pricing the property, only 8% said that listing price was a top-three consideration.

So what is a leader to do to minimize the Anchoring Bias?

1. Remember experience is important.  But don’t overestimate historical information as a predictor to a successful outcome. Stop to ask yourself if history is relevant from time to time.
2. Watch out for the classic “business-as-usual attitude” during changing conditions.
3. Stop every once in a while, employ a blank slate, and really look at a problem.
4. Check for anchoring in your budgetary processes. For instance, in new markets, clean slate thinking could help.
5. Expand the team to people who can bring fresh eyes to assess and share their opinions to gain better perspective. This is good for teambuilding as well.

We hope that was helpful.  What did we miss?  We’d love to hear some of your tips to avoid anchoring.

This book is a no-cost, no-permission guide for boosting individual, team, and business performance. Whether you lead three employees or 3,000, this book shows you how to increase productivity, collaboration, and profitability using the simple, yet powerful tools from the new field of Positive Psychology.

Featuring case studies of some of the most forward-thinking and successful companies today – Zappos, Google, and Amazon to name a few – Profit from the Positive provides over two-dozen evidence-based tools that “business schools will be teaching in ten years” (Shawn Achor, New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage).

Learn how to GET MORE DONE, WITHOUT HAVING TO WORK MORE HOURS by:

1. “Outsourcing” yourself
2. Setting habits instead of goals

Learn how to BEAT YOUR COMPETITION by:

1. Hiring for what’s NOT on the resume
2. Quitting

Learn how to BOOST YOUR TEAM’S PRODUCTIVITY UP TO 40% by:

1. Recognizing the Achoo! effect
2. Previewing—not just reviewing—performance

The best part?  These strategies don’t cost a dime to implement!  You will not need to hire an expensive consulting company or go through internal red tape to secure permission to begin implementing these tools today.  Trained by Dr. Martin Seligman, known as the father of Positive Psychology, Greenberg and Maymin translate the scientific research and finally make it accessible to the business world.

So, what is Positive Psychology?  (If you’ve been reading our blog for a while then you know…but just to clarify….)  First, let’s be clear about what it is not: Positive Psychology is not positive thinking. Positive Psychology researchers have studied topics such as productivity, resilience, motivation, collaboration, and much more.  In short, they seek answers to questions that every business leader wrestles with.

Readers of Malcolm Gladwell, Chip and Dan Heath, Marshall Goldsmith, and Dan Pink will especially enjoy the book.  In fact, Marshall Goldsmith (NY Times best selling author of Mojo and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There) endorsed it, saying: “Put it on your nightstand, bring it on the plane with you—however you do it—read this book. Profit from the Positive gives actionable steps for managers’ biggest burning questions. As a 21^st-century leader, you cannot do without it.”

Profit from the Positive has been endorsed by bestselling authors including Gretchen Rubin, Tony Hsieh, Adam Grant, and Chris Brogan. These no-cost, no-permission tools have been successfully implemented by business leaders, managers, entrepreneurs, executive coaches, and human resource professionals at companies ranging from Google to Aetna.

We only recommend the best here at Positive Business DC.  And we’re happy to know that really good books can help the business world increase their positive practices.  Read it.  Give it to that HR manager you know.  You’ll be glad you did.

For more information, please visit www.ProfitFromThePositive.com.

For interviews, review copies, webinars, or more information, please contact:

Senia Maymin, Coauthor, Profit from the Positive, LLC:  Phone: (415) 480-4190 / senia@profitfromthepositive.com

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Margaret Greenberg is a sought after executive coach by Fortune 500 companies.  In 1997, after a fifteen year career in corporate HR, she founded The Greenberg Group, a consulting firm dedicated to coaching business leaders and their teams to achieve more than they ever thought possible. A pioneer in the field of positive psychology, Greenberg also designs and leads workshops, webinars, and conferences for business audiences and is an expert on creating strengths-based organizations.  Greenberg’s research has been featured in the popular Gallup Management Journal and she is a regular business contributor at www.PositivePsychologyNews.com.  She has also been interviewed by national media outlets in the US (Entrepreneur Magazine) and Canada (The Globe and Mail).   She holds a BA in Sociology from the University of Hartford, a Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) from the University of Pennsylvania, and is recognized by the International Coach Federation as a professional certified coach.  Greenberg lives in Connecticut with her husband and two dogs. They have two grown daughters.  For more information, visit Greenberg’s website at www.TheGreenbergGroup.org.

Senia Maymin, PhD, has been featured in the media—including PBS’s This Emotional Life, Business Week, Public Radio International, and USA Today—primarily for her work as a positive psychology executive coach.  When entrepreneurs and executives seek far-reaching productivity improvements, they call on Maymin as an executive coach and workshop leader. Maymin founded and is editor in chief of a research news website featuring more than 1,000 articles by over 100 authors.  Additionally, Maymin oversees a network of coaches that specialize in positive psychology methods. She has worked in finance on Wall Street and in technology as cofounder and president of two start-ups. Maymin holds a BA in Math and Economics from Harvard, a Master of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA and PhD in Organizational Behavior from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She speaks Russian, French, and Japanese. She lives with her family in California.  You can visit the research news website at www.PositivePsychologyNews.com, the coaches network at www.PositiveCoaches.net, and Maymin’s website at www.senia.com.