Outsmart Your Brain: How to Master Your Mind When Emotions Take the Wheel

“You can either be the victim of your reactions or the master of your mind.” - Marcia Reynolds, PsyD

Whether you’re an executive, manager, team leader, coach, or contributor, emotions must be considered when resolving difficulties and motivating performance. When emotions are triggered, logic is lost. People lose their ability to self-reflect and adjust when mired in emotions.

Whether it’s your own brain that is deceiving you or it’s the reactive brain in the person you are talking to that is hindering progress, you have to know how to work with emotions to negotiate solutions that work for everyone involved.

This workshop will include three aspects of emotional intelligence: managing self, understanding others, and using coaching skills to help get positive results from difficult conversations. The skills will help the participants make better choices when under pressure, uncomfortable, or just plain busy.

The workshop is highly interactive, giving participants a chance to practice new skills and to discuss how to integrate the skills into the scenarios they regularly face.

Key Learning Outcomes 

Participants will learn how to:

• Identify how the emotional brain works—including the trigger-perception-response survival cycle—to understand what drives emotions, thoughts, and behavior especially under pressure.
• Apply the knowledge of the reactive brain to common scenarios that trigger emotions in the workplace.
• Become emotionally self-aware to catch fear and judgment before these reactions have a negative impact.
• Shift into your optimal productive state to make the best emotional, relationship, and task-related decisions in the moment.
• Recognize possible trigger sources that cause emotional reactions and then coach others through an escalating emotional situation.
• Establish an emotional connection with clients and colleagues to enhance negotiations, conflict-resolution, and coaching conversations.
• Explore ways of teaching others to use these techniques so the workplace environment has less tension and more productive interactions even when emotions dominate.

Outline

1. Being Emotionally Self-Alert

• Understand the emotional brain and its effects on behavior.
• Identify how emotional states show up in your body to quickly recognize reactions before saying or acting in damaging ways.
• Discover your primary emotional triggers and how to stay calm under pressure.
• Practice a 4-step process for shifting your emotions at will.
• Discern appropriate times to ask for what you need, choose to act differently, or to let go and move on.

2. Developing Awareness of Emotional Sources in Others

• Shift your listening positions to identify triggers in others.
• Learn how to prepare for a difficult meeting and create a sense of psychological safety in your conversations to work through emotional scenarios.
• Practice catching your own emotional reactions while working with others.
• Apply a coaching approach to your conversations to deescalate reactions and resolve conflicts.

Your brain could be keeping you from the success you deserve. Don’t let it! Dr. Reynolds will help you stay on top of your game by outsmarting your brain.

 “You gave me a new dimension and techniques I have practiced ever since your program. As a result, I am hoping to see the development of more leaders in our organization plus a higher level of service, improved staff morale and commitment of heart and energy.” – Z. Orem, HR Director, World Vision, Somalia

The program can include pre-class reading and an assessment. A group coaching session can be provided after the program to help apply the training back on the job.

This is Dr. Reynolds' most successful program world-wide. She can design half-day to multiple-day programs depending on your needs.

Your brain could be keeping you from the success you deserve. Don’t let it! Dr. Reynolds will help you stay on top of your game by outsmarting your brain.