Access the essential membership for Modern Managers
Key Takeaways
- Self-regulation and self-awareness are key components of emotional intelligence for managers, enabling them to lead with clarity and integrity.
- You can improve your self-regulation by identifying your personal development areas such as maintaining focus, emotion management and mindfulness.
- Self-regulation is an essential skill for maintaining productivity and team psychological safety.
Test Your Self-Regulation Skills
Self-regulation is the ability to manage emotions and impulses thoughtfully. Along with self-awareness, it is one of the five key elements of emotional intelligence, as described by psychologist Daniel Goleman. It is a crucial skill for managers at any stage of their career as it enables you to stay calm, adapt, communicate effectively, and persevere during challenging times, ensuring you lead with clarity and integrity.
We’ve used research from the Mind Tools Impact and Insights Team to create a 15-question assessment tool, to help you assess how well you self-regulate.
Your Self-Assessment
Coming up are 15 questions that ask you about your self-regulation and self-awareness. To answer them, consider your experiences over the past three months.
Be as honest with yourself as you can. There are no right or wrong responses, and you’ll have a chance to review and change your answers before you submit them.
Look at the statements below and choose how much you agree with each by selecting the most appropriate answer.
When you have completed the diagnostic, press “Calculate My Total.”
Your Result
Take a few moments to reflect on your result. Does it surprise you or confirm what you already know? Now give yourself a few minutes to think about what you’d like to get out of this experience.
If your result indicates that you find self-regulating your emotions difficult, you can begin by increasing your knowledge of the concept, and identifying the challenges or obstacles you experience. From there, you can equip yourself with strategies to develop your skills.
If you scored well, this resource will help you to make further improvements.
Let's Act
Having reflected on your score, pick one of the following areas to take action on in the next week or two:
- Consider how well you are able to return your focus, or maintain concentration when interruptions occur and identify some simple steps to prevent or minimize distractions. (See questions 1, 2, 3, and 4.)
- Do your worries limit your ability to concentrate? If this happens, first acknowlege your feelings before regulating your emotions to maintain focus, and deliver on your task or goal. (See questions 5, 6 and 7.)
- If you find yourself becoming stressed, use mindfulness techniques to regulate your emotions, and bring you back to the present moment, or the task at hand. (See questions 14 and 15.)
Take Your Learning Further
Finding your focus
Managerial roles are often busy, and you can face many interruptions – whether it's a team member seeking clarification, or supporting your team to resolve issues and bottlenecks.
Timeboxing is a simple and effective way to manage your own, and your team members', daily workload and prioritize what to focus on. It ensures you don't spend too long on tasks that aren't worth the effort by pre-defining how long you think each activity should take.
Managing negative emotions
We all experience negative emotions in life. You don't suddenly become permanently positive when you are a manager. Being able to recognize your emotions at work and manage your responses when negative emotions arise are skills you can work on and continue to develop.
Developing mental toughness
As a manager, you'll inevitably encounter stressful situations that test your emotional control and response to others' emotions. Mental toughness is crucial in the workplace as it helps you to build your resilience and adaptability during challenging times.
