Random musings from my beach walks
TAMING THE BEAST
A client recently described her challenge in dealing with a particular behavioural pattern she was observing in a colleague. She likened the pattern to the “emergence of the beast”.
As I listened to her description of the behaviours and the circumstances when it occurred, I noticed that I had written down the word BEAST and then without thinking I had crossed out the ‘A’ converting the word to BEST.
It was one of those wonderful moments of clarity for me. Not everyone would describe this pattern of behaviours as the ‘beast emerging’, but I have heard those same behaviours described all too frequently in my coaching practice. We all want to bring our best selves to everything we do but sometimes it is the beast who actually shows up.
That got me thinking about the ‘A’ in beast and the behaviours that subvert our best intentions. If they happen too frequently many of those behaviours can derail our careers. The list of ‘A’ words that flowed from this reflection included Amygdala, Assumptions and Accountability.
The amygdala is part of our brain’s limbic system and is involved in processing emotions like fear, anxiety and anger. It generates those automatic responses that enable us to react quickly without thinking – to prepare our bodies to fight or run away. In today’s world not too many of us face physical danger but we do experience many pressures or stresses in our modern way of living, including the personal impacts of a global pandemic. When the fight or flight response is triggered it can result in a sudden irrational over-reaction to a situation – the beast appears!
Daniel Goleman used the term ‘amygdala hijack’ in his 1995 book Emotional Intelligence. He noted that when a situation causes the amygdala to hijack our responses it can over-ride the more logical parts of our brain (frontal lobes). Therapists working with children to help them to manage their anger sometimes describe this as the working of our ‘crocodile brain’.
Another ‘A’ word that can trigger the beast is ‘Assumptions’. We assume that another person’s behaviour is deliberately targeted at us to take us down, to belittle us, to hurt us – when in fact that was not their intention. We don’t gather more data on why they have behaved in a certain way towards us. We don’t stay curious about their motives. We don’t notice the impact their behaviour is having on us. Too many assumptions and the beast comes out.
Environmental factors also contribute to our heightened stress levels – and that’s where my third ‘A’ word is critical: Accountability. Knowing when we are triggered by external events we cannot control, and knowing the story we are telling ourselves when we notice the beast lurking and ready to come out, is part of the solution. To take accountability for our thoughts, feelings and actions we need to rewind our story in order to down-regulate that automatic stress response from the amygdala and let our more evolved brain get back in charge.
Rewinding our story – playing the situation back frame by frame like an old movie clip played backwards – can help us to pinpoint the moment, or moments, that the beast started stirring and also the moment that we lost control of it. The story in the movie clip might be a very old one. Is it a story which is serving us well? What happens if you change the narrator voice in the story? What if a different narrator offers a different perspective? How would I behave in situations like this one if I told that story differently to myself?
There is rich material is this form of reflection to help us deal with recurring situations differently in the future.
And if perhaps you are the person who may be triggering the beast in a colleague, rewind those conversations to help you become more curious about the impact of your behaviour on another human. Then pull back – check your language and your behaviours. Rewind your own story – change the narrative.
Noticing the BEAST within helps all of us to bring out BEST selves to everything we do.
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Coaching Works - Janis McArdle 