Managing your emotions to better manage your business
Life on the farm is filled with challenges big and small, exciting and energizing, but also stressful. With the ups and downs come emotions that can be difficult to manage or communicate. And when family is involved, it can be even more complicated to maintain a constructive relationship dynamic.
Learning to recognize your feelings, to listen to yourself and to others can significantly improve the harmony in your business and increase its efficiency, not to mention help you retain personnel.
No good or bad emotions
"The first thing to realize is that emotion is a normal, but uncontrollable, reaction," explains Jean-Christophe Durand, psychologist and business transfer consultant at Groupe ProConseil. Emotions are neither good nor bad. You can be comfortable or uncomfortable with what you're feeling, but what you do with these feelings is what matters. Managing emotions positively involves regulating them, slowing down to name them, understanding them and acting on them in a calm and composed way.
Emotions are human and natural and we all have them.
Emotions are human and natural and we all have them, regardless of age or gender. “Emotions carry messages and you have to listen to them,” adds Durand. “We need to learn what they mean. Displaying emotion doesn't make you weak. It takes strength and kindness to talk about them."
“Emotions express a need. For example, the desire to feel respected," adds Audrée Bourdages, a counsellor with Au coeur des familles agricoles – an organization that provides psychosocial assistance for Quebec farmers and their families.
When emotions are running high, both experts recommend taking a step back to analyze what’s happening in order to communicate effectively. "You set yourself up for success so you can communicate better," says Durand.
"Talking also puts into perspective what you have felt, while informing those around you, which avoids isolation” Bourdages says.
From a Rooted in Resilience article by Céline Normadin.
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