Montse Sans: the importance of emotional awareness

We interviewed an expert in emotional awareness, a key element to reach our goals.

Although we often believe that what we feel and experience depends on the events that occur around us, the truth is that this is a half-truth. It also depends on the way we interpret reality, and the way we manage our emotions and decide where to focus our attention.

From this fact arises the concept of emotional awareness, an important term in the world of psychology and coaching. This is precisely what the person we interviewed in the following lines will talk about, Montse Sans, from Escuela Europea de CoachingMontse Sans, who has extensive experience training people and intervening in companies.

Interview with Montse Sans, from Escuela Europea de Coaching: Emotional Awareness

Montse Sans is Director of the Escuela Europea de Coaching center in the Valencian Community and coach in the same entity, as well as trainer and supervisor of the Executive Coaching Certification program. In this interview she talks about the concept of emotional awareness.

Are our actions motivated by our emotions or is it the other way around, are our emotions motivated by our actions?

Human beings, at least most of us, live in the fallacy that we are "observers" of "reality", and yet what we do is "interpret" what we observe. We think that this interpretation we make results in judgments and opinions that trigger our emotions.

But the emotions were already there. From the time we wake up until the time we go to bed, we are always in an emotion. The actions we perform during the day always start from an emotion. What happens is that, depending on the emotion in which we find ourselves, the derived behaviors will have a more or less effective result. Clearly, this is a feedback process.

Is it possible to develop something like an addiction to a feeling or emotion?

Yes, it is something that some people do: always and only show certain emotions and not others. In this sense, the interesting thing is to realize which is the emotion that we do not allow ourselves.

We all need to have a good level of emotional awareness, because to the extent that we are able to identify which emotion or feeling I am in at any given moment, I will be able to understand the reason for some of my behaviors and, therefore, the reason for some of the results I am getting.

In the world of organizations and the business world in general, what can be the negative consequences of not knowing how to identify emotions well?

In the world of organizations, until recently, very little attention has been paid to emotional awareness. We have spent a lot of time and effort hiding emotions, which has led to a certain lack of understanding not only of others, but also of ourselves.

Today we already know that emotions are the key to certain behaviors and behaviors. We have taken a step further and now we not only know that it is necessary to know the emotion but we also know that we can modify and manage it.

The management of individual emotions that are generated in the thinking of each one of us from our paradigms have their faithful and parallel reproduction in what happens in the business culture, which is full of paradigms that generate certain collective emotions and, in turn, generate certain behaviors and conduct of people and, therefore, of the systems.

What are the most common risks to which a leader who does not know how to manage his or her emotions well is exposed?

Undoubtedly, the greatest risk is emotional blindness. A leader, as well as any of us in our respective roles as manager, father, mother, friend... we have to do a self-reflection work for the knowledge of our own emotions and we have to work on our emotional self-regulation.

The key is to understand what has generated the emotion. Therefore, it is not a matter of "controlling" that emotion (as it was said before that it was convenient) but of knowing and accepting to regulate the emotion that appears in such a way that we are able to reverse the process that generated it to be able, in turn, to generate a different emotion chosen by us, which seems to us more useful and more conducive to new behaviors.

When it comes to training people in emotional management and awareness, what are the most important key ideas and those that are often overlooked?

Until recently, we have been using the term "emotional control". Depending on the context and culture, certain emotions were not "well regarded". Today we know that the emotional is decisive.

It is not a matter of covering up emotion or trying to avoid it. Emotional management and awareness consists of understanding the emotion and accepting it because only from this point of view will we be able to learn and take different actions to achieve better results.

On the other hand, having emotional awareness I will be able to intervene in the emotion, I will be able to go back in the steps that have given rise to this emotion to understand what interpretations and opinions have given rise to what I feel.

And finally, what tools and strategies have proven useful in modulating our emotions well and making them play in our favor?

Knowing that there are no positive or negative emotions, that all emotions are useful and have a certain purpose. Also understand that all emotions have a positive intention. For example, anger helps us to set limits; fear helps us to take precautions?

Emotions inform us of valuable issues. Understanding what is the message that the emotion brings us is the first step to be able to become aware and manage it. This is the key to emotional management and awareness.