An Immediate Action Drill for Emotions

First, this is one of my all-time favorite videos:

Jocko is a retired Navy SEAL turned author, leadership consultant, and host of the Jocko Podcast. The video is an edited response to a listener’s question: “How do I deal with setbacks, failures, delays, defeats, or other disasters?”

This is both my favorite and least favorite line of the answer (which is edited in the video): 

“When things are going bad, don’t get all bummed out, don’t get startled, don’t get frustrated. No. You just look at the issue and you say, ‘Good.’” 

At a very basic level, that’s a “glass half full” approach. But what I think is hugely valuable about that perspective is that it goes beyond one’s general orientation toward having an explicit philosophy to apply in specific circumstances. Here, “Good” isn’t a naive reaction to bad events. Rather, it’s a procedure—a proactive decision to identify the upside and to focus one’s energy on that. 

Now here’s what I don’t like about it: Jocko suggests that one can simply avoid being bummed out, startled, or frustrated. I just don’t think that’s possible. We’re all human beings. We have emotions.

In a recent coaching conversation, a client observed that most of the senior leaders she works with seem unflappable in the face of challenge. I shared that I doubt they aren’t experiencing emotions like the rest of us. Instead, it’s more likely that those leaders have developed the emotional muscles to (a) notice what they’re feeling in real time, (b) avoid turning that emotion into an immediate reaction, and, (c) utilize that noticing and pause to make a conscious choice in how they want to respond. 

Put another way: They have feelings, but they’re effective at processing them quickly and productively.

Now, that fast emotional processing is way easier to say than to execute, especially when emotions are strong, or the setback is significant. But that’s where having an explicit procedure can be helpful.

In the military, teams have “immediate action drills” and “pre-planned responses” that spell out, “When X happens, we’ll do Y.” They’re helpful when conditions do not provide enough time for reasoned analysis and when high emotions would hijack that analysis anyway.

Perhaps we can borrow that concept and adopt immediate emotional action drills for challenging situations.   

For example: When things get heated, ask for two minutes to get some water (acknowledging that I might not be in a good place to respond immediately).

Or: When my team brings errors to my attention, take a deep breath and then ask a problem solving question like, “What’s the first thing we need to do?” (so that I avoid the temptation to ask questions that sound like they’re about assigning blame). 

Or: When things are going bad, say, “GOOD” (to interrupt the tendency to focus on or be overwhelmed by the negative).

Because it’s hard to be unflappable, the immediate emotional action drill might be a tool to make us seem unflappable when that’s what the situation demands. It’s not denying our humanness, it’s creating productive routes around the most compulsive parts of that humanness.