While many counterproductive emotions in the workplace result directly from economic stressors, it’s decidedly untrue that managing those emotions requires waiting until the recession passes. Here are tips to help you lead the way toward emotional recovery right now:

1) Become aware of your emotions. Ineffective emotional responses like outbursts of anger or regrettable decisions usually happen beneath our awareness. To keep your feelings from flying under the radar, ask someone you trust to observe you and give you feedback. Ask them to pay attention to such behaviors such as:

• Fidgeting
• Avoiding eye contact
• Raising your voice
• Interrupting people
• Brushing people off in difficult situations

The beauty of self-awareness is that just thinking about your actions will help you improve them.

2) Set a positive tone. Try to exude confidence, but make sure it is real. A keen lie detector comes standard with everybody’s mental machinery so if you’re faking confidence, your people will know it. They will either sense your insincerity, or they’ll think you’ve lost touch with reality.

To become more positive, take a couple of minutes at the start of each day to think of a few things that are going right and jot them down. Glance at those things a couple of times throughout the day to keep you from thinking catastrophe-thoughts or dwelling on them and then spreading anxiety.

3) Show that you care. The tendency for many leaders in times like these is to get things done, because perseverance has been a key to most people’s success. Rather than backing down from a challenge, we tend to toughen up during tough times. This is a fantastic character trait. However, don’t let your focus narrow solely on tasks at the risk of alienating the people you count on. These are tough personal times for many people, and by simply acknowledging that you understand what they are going through, you will help tremendously to calm them.

As Franklin D. Roosevelt wisely recognized when he took office in 1933, emotional recovery must precede economic recovery. The same truth applies to organizations hoping to prosper when the economy eventually rebounds.

People’s ability to control and use their emotions effectively is a profound indicator of their business success.

Consider this recent discovery by TalentSmart researchers: 70 percent of the most skilled business decision makers also score in the top 15 percent in emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence, also known as EQ, is a person’s ability to identify and understand their own emotions, and those of others.

Leaders with low emotional intelligence (or a poor understanding of their emotions) not only rank among the lowest of decision makers but also consistently fail to recognize that their judgment is being tainted by their impatience, anger or other strong feelings. Low EQ leaders justify their actions using all sorts of rationalization to fool themselves into believing that their judgment is based more on logic than emotion. By contrast those leaders who recognize and appropriately manage their emotions consistently make the best business decisions.

Leaders who manage their emotions well are more likely to bring their company through the recession than those who become overwhelmed by their feelings.

Here’s a comparison of the traits of low and high EQ people.

People with low EQ tend to:
Sound off even when it won’t help
Brush people off when bothered
Deny that emotions impact their thinking
Get defensive when challenged
Focus only on tasks and ignore the person
Act oblivious to unspoken tension

People with high EQ tend to:
Only speak out when doing so helps the situation
Keep lines of communication open even when frustrated
Recognize when other people are affecting their emotional state
Stay open to feedback and criticism
Show others they care about them
Accurately pick up on the mood of a room

Positive emotions spur performance
Emotional intelligence is widely regarded as the secret ingredient for taking an organization from good to great, accounting for as much as 58 percent of an individual’s job performance. Reports of larger corporations using EQ training revealed surprising results.

• Coca Cola, for example, uncovered a 30 percent gap in productivity between division leaders trained to recognize and manage their emotions and those who didn’t.
• Hallmark Communities found that sales associates who developed EQ skills were 25 percent more productive than their low EQ counterparts.
• After T-Mobile developed EQ skills in their customer service reps, they tripled productivity.

Individuals trained to improve their EQ can super-charge their job performance.

Negative emotions diminish productivity
During economic down cycles, employees experience greater volatility in their emotions. Those with poor EQ skills see a diminished level of productivity and performance. Additionally, the palpable stress and anxiety hinders these workers’ ability to instill confidence in customers and co-workers. All of the knowledge and technical skill in the world can’t address a productivity issue rooted in poor emotional coping mechanisms.