Keeping your cool in the office! (survival tips on handling difficult situations).
Summer is here and it is extremely hot outside (especially in Arizona)☀️. Patience is out the door this time of year. At 6:00 in the morning you are getting into your vehicle to go to work and you burn your hands on the steering wheel because you forgot to put up your sun shade screen on your dash-board. Ouch! 🔥 Not a good way to start your day. You are probably thinking 6:00 am in the morning and needing a sun shade? In Arizona the summer temperatures may hit a high of 117 degrees and morning temperatures in the 80’s and 90’s.
Okay, let’s get back to keeping your cool in the office.
How do you keep your cool in the office when you are feeling stressed and tempers are flaring?
This is one that I definitely struggle with myself as a leader, especially when you are dealing with a variety of personalities, some very bad attitudes and poor work performance behaviors. To be honest there are times when I have failed miserably at keeping my cool.
Here are some tips and strategies to put into action when those tempers are starting to flare.
- Take a deep breath and walk away for a few minutes.
- Take a couple of minutes to pray and/or journal about your frustration.
- Go get something to drink; like a large glass of cold ice water. Sip slowly.
- Practice deep relaxation breathing to clear your mind and to calm those feelings of anger and/or dis-satisfaction about the situation.
- Think about a person you admire and how they would handle the situation.
- Remind yourself to focus on solutions.
- Don’t respond in writing until you have calmed down, edited and revise the email or correspondence to be in a professional non-adversarial tone. Wait until the next day when you have time to sleep on it and reflect about the incident as well as coming up with some agreeable solutions.
The next time you feel your temperature rising and wanting to react unfavorably put these tips and strategies into action. Sometimes just walking away can make a tremendous difference to your work environment and relationships. You know the old saying, “You may not be able to control someone’s negative behavior but you can control how long you participate in it”. ~ Unknown
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