Office Meets Playground: Acknowledge their emotions

Ah, to be a two year old. Curious about the world. Exuberant. Into everything. Throwing yourself on the floor at the mere idea of a waffle cut in half.

In the course of taking care of two two and a half year olds, I'm constantly at the mercy of emotional meltdowns that, in my opinion, are over the top, irrational, and just plain annoying. Through reading about parenting, though, I've learned not to just dismiss my children's zany emotional tirades but to acknowledge them - even if I can't do anything about it. So I often find myself in a conversation about how yes, it is very sad that the waffle broke into two pieces, and yes, it is terrible that we can't put it back together. And yes, life is hard.

Yesterday, I was in a business meeting that also started out with some very strong emotions. A team member who was expected to be there had in fact not been planning on attending the meeting, and one of my colleagues was visibly upset. Before I even started to tell her that it was OK that the person wasn't there and that the rest of us were capable of handling the meeting quite well, I acknowledged that she was upset and assured her that although I couldn't change the situation in the moment I would make sure that her feelings were addressed in subsequent meetings. According to a colleague, she visibly calmed immediately.

I hate to sound like I'm comparing my colleagues to two year olds, but the truth is that we all get emotional when our expectations aren't met, when we're disappointed, or sometimes, for no reason at all. And just like kids need their emotions acknowledged before they can move on, sometimes our teammates and our clients need the same thing. Just showing that you're willing to listen and respect another person's emotion state can often be enough to calm them. It even works with my husband.