Have you ever been hijacked by your emotions at work? Or stopped to consider the importance of how our emotions shape our experience at work?

In this week's episode of the Happier at Work® podcast, my guest is Dr Lola Gershfeld, founder of EmC Leaders, sheds light on the importance of understanding our emotions and attachment styles, and their impact on our workplace relationships. Her unique process helps teams build cohesive interactions, culture, and relationships in the workplace. By teaching techniques such as bonding conversations, sharing emotions, and identifying automatic thoughts, we can restructure our interactions to create a more secure bond.

Emotional engagement is a crucial aspect of our lives, and it has a significant impact on our overall happiness and productivity at work. Recognising and addressing emotions in the workplace is essential for creating a positive and harmonious work environment.

During my conversation with Dr. Gershfeld, we explored how failing to talk about emotions hinders our ability to connect with others and can lead to negative cycles of blame and complaint. The root cause of conflict is not necessarily differences in strategy or agenda; it's how we communicate and address each other's attachment needs and fears that flare up.

Dr. Gershfeld emphasised the importance of being comfortable with sharing emotions and creating an environment where it is safe to do so. Empathy plays a crucial role in understanding that people are struggling for connection. Recognising the cues of blaming, pointing, and shutting down can help us identify when someone is struggling for connection.

Our discussion also touched upon attachment theory and its implications for both personal and work relationships. It's fascinating to consider how attachment styles, shaped by our childhood experiences, can manifest in our adult interactions. Feeling secure in a relationship reduces the likelihood of triggering anxious or avoidant responses.

The main points throughout this podcast include:

- Attachment theory and how it relates to workplace dynamics

- Our brain structure and its role in regulating our thoughts and emotions

- We are wired for connection, disconnection leads to anxiety and pursuit, or avoidance and withdrawal

- Asking the question “are you there for me?” Are you accessible, responsible and engaged?

- How our emotions impact on our relationship with our manager

- What triggers us at work - from facial expressions to certain phrases

- Our three primary fears - self, other, relationship

Connect with Dr Lola Gershfeld:

Website: https://www.emcleaders.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lolagershfeld/

Company LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/emcleaders

Instagram: https://instagram.com/emcleaders/

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/emcleaders

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@emcleaders6359

Do you have any feedback or thoughts on this discussion? If so, please connect with Aoife via the links below and let her know. Aoife would love to hear from you!

Connect with Happier at Work host Aoife O’Brien:

Website: https://happieratwork.ie

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aoifemobrien/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HappierAtWorkHQ

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/happieratwork.ie/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/happieratwork.ie

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm0FKS19I5qSlFFmkx1YGqA

Lola, you're so welcome to the half year old work podcast. I'm really excited for our conversation today. Would you like to introduce yourself to listeners, share a little bit of a little bit about your background and how you got into doing what you're doing today?

Sure. Sure. Yes. My name is Doctor Lola Gersfeld, and I'm an organizational psychologist and CEO of EMC Leaders. I am also a developer of the emotional connection process or EMC, as we call it, and that is based on the signs of attachment, based on the signs of emotional connection helping teams to build the more cohesive interactions, more cohesive, culture, and I think stronger relationships. All of that work, has been inspired to me by my I would say, I could say, struggle. It really has been inspired to me by my continued struggle of, working as an HR manager or being a CFO or even a board member seeing my board members struggle, and I remember this board meeting, where I was like watching these board members throwing jobs at each other. And, chairman, the chairman was sitting next to me, and I turned to him and I said, he's like, why are they doing this? And, and I remember I was, like, in my early thirties. You know, I was the youngest one on the board, and he turned to me and he said, I think it's because they care about each other. And I thought, well, that's silly. That is silly. And, I could really understand band, what really that meant, but I found it very fascinating. And at that time, I already had 15 years of experience of building a manufacturing companies. My husband and I, we worked for 27 years together. So in that early stages, I started my career in when I was nineteen. So and by that time, I already had the experience of building teams, building companies. So I felt very confident, and I was like, fearless. I want to help people. I want to help boards. I I want to build the company. And, you know, I was kinda like, grooving along. And then when I was asked to serve on this board, I said, like, sure. You know, how hard can it be? I never served on the board. You know, why not? And when I started my journey, my gosh, IOPi, it was terrible. It was terrible. These board members wouldn't listen to me. They wouldn't take any of my advice They didn't care about my wonderful insight that I had. They interrupted each other. They interrupted me. And I thought to myself, something is happening here. It's not just the the the about the strategy or about the agenda. There's something else that's happening. And, you know, I was trying to kinda, like, teach them communication skills, and it felt like they would do it for a minute. Or 2, but then they as soon as they would stop, they would go back to their own way of blaming each other or withdrawing and shedding each other out. So, and I remember, yeah, I had that same similar situation when I was working as an HR manager, and I thought to myself This is really about something else. This is not you know, I really have to get to the point where so I run to the bookstore. And you know how as a young professional, you think every answer is in the bookstore. If you could just find the book, know, if you could just find

the book. Someone has obviously written a book about this already.

Yes. You know, the answer to life is in the bookstore somewhere. So I remember coming back with, like, stacks of books on on leadership and trust and emotional intelligence. And, I was reading them. You know, I love that good to great. I mean, this was my favorite book. Or primal leadership by Goldman or speed of trust, you know, all of these company. All of these books were, like, on my desk, and I was reading them and bringing them to my meetings and trying to figure out what is happening here. But the problem is none none of those things that I found in the books actually worked. So I started to outline, patterns. Like, I would say that I I happy to outline, but what is going on with our board meeting? We had 8 hour board meetings, and it would be like no progress.

So I

would run after the meetings, and I would like try to figure out who triggered whom and how we got off and then slowly and slowly and surely, I started to see patterns. And at that time, I was already getting my, doctor degree, in psychology. And my husband said, Hey. Do you want to, go to this couple's workshop? And I said, okay. And, the trainer was teaching us about attachment, about, the couple's relationship about emotions, And this process was called emotionally focused therapy. Basically, emotionally focused approach approach to couples therapy. And then she was talking about how how couples trigger each other and how one person, you know, start to demand and the other person start to shut shut down and and not talk. I'm like looking and I'm thinking, oh my god. This is exactly what is happening in our bedroom. Oh my god. This is exactly what's happening in the workplace. I was like, oh my gosh. Work conflict is all about attachment. And I'm saying this out loud and the, you know, the person next to me said, like, Oh, don't be silly. You know, adults are independent. They're so sufficient. They don't need attachment. I said, no. No. No. No, no, no, you don't get it. This is attached. This is exactly what John Volley talked about in all of his studies. When he studied mothers and children and the attachment relationship that he he he described. Do you want to -- Same. It's insane.

Do you want to explain? So I know the different attachments does. I'm familiar with attachment theory, but there could be some listeners today who are not really familiar with attachment theory, do you want to explain a little bit more about what the different or what, like, I suppose, how Attachment theory evolved and the different attachment styles.

Yeah. Yeah. No. Absolutely. Such a such a profound and I remember like studying attach in my psychology, master's degree, and I never could put together that it's, you know, the relationship attachment is basically relationship. How secure we are in the relationship is what makes us feel more safe with each other, makes our nervous system relax and, feel free and play. That's what makes us and and it's all really starts with the brain structure. I think if we if we talk about attachment, we have to understand how our brain works. And, Joseph Ledoux actually wrote a very nice book called the emotional brain. Basically describing the the the brain structure and how our emotional part of the brain, the amygdala has massive connection to all parts of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex. However, the prefrontal cortex does not have direct connection to the amygdala. What does it mean? What it means is that we can it's easy for our emotions to to control our thoughts, but it is very hard for our thoughts to control our emotions. So for example, I mean, you have, for example, like, if I'm stressed, like, you you probably heard about the fires in Maui and my daughter lives in Maui and, she is very stressed and she is very scared of what's happening and she has 5 children. So she is thinking like, she's like, mom, I'm so stressed. I just I tell myself, okay, everything is gonna be okay. And I still feel my body is completely, like fired up, always on the threat. Well, the same thing with our relationships. I mean, she has outside threat, you know, a fire, but this is exactly what happens in our relationship in a workplace when we depend on each other, our brain wants to be connected with the people we depend on. So when there's a disconnection happening, It is a threat. It is like a life and death situation. That's what attachment teaches us. That when we want to, when if we if we want our brain, our prefrontal cortex, to be engaged to be fully present, to be open to ideas and collaboration and engagement and creativity. We need our emotional brain to be calm. Otherwise, it hijacks the prefrontal cortex and now everything becomes very difficult for us to do. So in attachment, what we say is that when you have a secure connection. When you have a secure attachment with people, you are stronger as a person. You can be happy at work. You can, play. You can you learn better because your prefrontal cortex is open. It's not hygien. And when people have a disconnection in the workplace, like, if I see my manager, expressing disappointment or some sort of a rejection or my coworker doesn't wanna talk to me I start to feel what we call a separation distress. My brain starts danger. It's dangerous here. You are no longer is in a safe place. So what we what we noticed is that when we feel this disconnection, what we do is we often go to protective behaviors. We start to either pursue the connection which we go blame, criticize, judge, complain, lecture. You know, a tone of voice goes up. A speed of speech goes fast All of these are behaviors of a pre sew. We're pursuing the collection. We want that collection back. Or we go into withdraw which is avoidant. Right? So we have anxious, which is a pre sewer, or we have avoidant attachment style, which is we withdraw, we shut down, We, kind of, disengage. We avoid. We get dizzy. All of these things up with drawers. It's not like they don't wanna talk to us, but what they do is they preserve the connection. They don't want to say anything else that will create more disconnections. So that type of a mind shift understanding that number 1, we long for connection. We are wired for connection. We need connection to for us to to thrive. Number 2 is how we deal with this disconnection actually creates a negative cycle. And the negative cycle is, again, The most common one is one person says, why don't you respond to me? I've been sending you emails after emails. Why don't you talk to me? So they're pursuing the connection and the other person says, oh my gosh. You are so difficult to work with. I don't wanna talk to you. And they shut down and they withdraw. That's a withdrawal. So that cycle is called demand withdraw. One is demanding. The other one is withdrawing. So what we do in the emotional connection process, we help people, 1st of all, to deescalate their negative pattern, to see what they're doing to trigger each other and how they, get into stuck in this negative pattern and how to step out of this negative pattern but then we teach them how to be accessible, responsive, and engaged, which is a key attachment question in the relationship is are you their me. Are you accessible to me? Emotionally? Are you responsive to me emotionally? Are you engaged with me? Even though you don't agree with me, are you still engaged with me? So ARE is a key defining moment And how do we build that relationship? So if we are ARE to each other, we have a secure relationship. If we if we are in a negative cycle, we have insecure relationship. Sorry. It's been a long answer. It's

not an explanation. But, no, like, I think it's really it's really important to understand that. And one thing that I picked up on that I want to come back to you. And you said it a a number of minutes ago, but in all of the work that I've done around attachment theory, and that's kind of more from a personal side, understanding myself in the relationships that I have with other people as opposed to in a work context. So I'm really excited to kind of understand more in the rec context of, you know, how it shows up and what it looks like. And I imagine it's probably the same as it does in our personal relationships as well. But, Doctor Lola, one thing that you said was how secure we are in the relationship is what has the impact, and I suppose my understanding the reason I kind of picked up on that is my understanding is you're kind you kind of have a default type, let's say. So you can even either and this all comes from childhood. So you have your secure type where you grew up in a in your needs were met as a child, essentially. Then you have the, as you describe the anxious, which is you're you if you if your mother or your caregiver's love was withdrawn in some way, you made demands to get it back. And this is how you got love, essentially. And then the avoidant where if your mother returns, you kind of ignore her because she's been absent, and that's how you respond to that. But I'm fascinated with this idea of, it's it's also dependent on the nature of the relationship as well. It's not just It's not just simply. I am naturally tend oh, you have this natural tendency to be in a void in person. So if someone's demanding something for me, then I'll withdraw, and I won't respond to them. What I'm interested in the nuance of, it depends on how the relationship is or how you feel about the relationship yourself. And if you feel secure, then maybe you're less likely to get triggered into an anxious or an avoidant response.

Absolutely. Aofie, you could kinda like hit it on the on a nail on the head. This is exactly we actually did a study recently with 169 participants, and we were, measuring the relationship between anxious avoidant behaviors with workplace conflict, employee engagement, and, turnover intentions. And everything shows in in this direction that the more anxious avoidant behaviors you display in the workplace, the more workplace complex you have. The more anxious avoidant, the less engagement you have. The more anxious avoidant, the more turnover intentions you have. So I think, you correct. All of these behaviors and styles have been developed, with us by us through our caregivers in in our childhood. However, they transfer into adulthood. So, for example, it actually travels with the relationship. Let's say you have a secure relationship with your parents But when you go into your personal relationship or your work relationship, like specifically relationship between the your manager or your your direct supervisor, it's a key attachment relationship you have. So but the the manager may, be very open and responsive and accessible to you. Now you're, building that relationship, security where those, your attachment styles are not being triggered. And you're able to talk to them about it and easily. Now if your manager, does not recognize this, and not open and and accessible and responsive and engaged. Now guess what? Your attachment styles all come up as a life and death situation because your relationship depends on how successful you are in your job, how progressive you are, how developed, and how well, you can thrive. So, we we recognize this number 1. And what we do is we teach people what we know now which we have not learned before is that attachment science, provides us a map on how to restructure your interactions where you start to create that more secure bond, even though let's say the manager is more, less less accessible or less responsive through the EMC process. They learn how to be emotionally attuned, how to be emotionally responsive to each other. So for example, one of the things we teach is called bonding conversations. And in bonding conversations, we help people to share their emotions, their not only surface emotions, but soft emotions. We try to, like, give them a list of emotions, like, so they can pick and it's much easier for people to talk about emotions when you have a list. We also talk to them about sharing the raw spots. So they become more aware What's triggering them in this conversation or in this relationship or how we interact each other? So as they, start to have this language of emotions of raw spots and triggers. And also, we we give them a list of What's happened to them in their thoughts? Like, automatic thoughts. So when they get triggered, what do they think? You know, I must I have to get away.

Where did they go? Where does their head go? Yes.

Where did their head go?

Yeah.

And what do they do in terms of the protective behavior? So we have a list. So everything by just giving them this roadmap, they start to become, more aware. Like, oh my gosh. When I get triggered, I start to yell. And when I start to yell, I start to trigger the other person. Yeah. Oh, oh my gosh. When I get triggered, I shut down, and my shutting down is actually triggers the other person because I shut them out. So they start to see the pattern, and they can say it now. Oh, wow. We're getting stuck in a negative cycle. Yeah. Instead of saying, You are not listening to me. No. No. It's you who are not paying attention.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So now we are fighting the now we're fighting the cycle. Now we'll be stretching the cycle instead of fighting each other. So that creates a lot of safety. That's a lot a lot of safety medication.

I mean, I've had so many conversations on the podcast about emotions at work and and one that's that kind of sticks in my mind to us with Ashley Collins and and One of the things that she said was we're basically all just triggering each other at work or emotional wounds and and things like that. They all come out in the work place, and they all get played out in the workplace. And I suppose you're bringing it back to be a bit more practical if there's someone listening today How can they best identify what's triggering them or how they're reacting to being triggered at work? And I and I love the example that shared there about the manager because that's such an important relationship. We feel like our job depends on our manager. And if we have a really positive manager and a really positive manager relationship. I think it has a huge impact on our overall experience of work. But what if that's may be less positive. And I'm kind of thinking, as you described, the manager who's not really that involved who leads you to your own devices, but equally a manager who's overly involved who's maybe micromanaging you. Do you wanna kinda talk about some of the those as triggers and and the responses that people can recognize in themselves?

I think that's a very, very important question, and I, I've I've I've been asked that question all the time. And I have to say, we have to go from the back. Like, what is the end in mind, you know, like, frankly, covering who said, what's the end mind? Right? Start

with the end in mind. Yes.

We'll start with the end mind. So let's start with the end of mind. If we are paying attention to what do we want in our relationships.

Yeah.

In our work, we want connections. So that's very important. It's like, you know, when pilots are flying their plane, it's like they know the plane works. They know how to get back to come to the to the place where they're going. The same thing if we use attachment is our framework. We know every single time the human being needs connection. How do they get this connection? They need to feel valued. They need to feel important. They need to feel that the other person cares about them. They need to know that the other that their feelings matter. So when the boss or when the manager is not accessible, responsible, engaged. You have to be accessible, responsive, and engaged. You got to learn how to recognize the negative pattern how to recognize what is triggering myself, like, and the things, like you said, like, how do people know what triggers them? There are so many things. Words people say.

Mhmm.

Actions people do facial expression and, you know, the the the speed of speech. Right? So people recognize the words it be complaining, blaming, or micromanaging. All of these things demonstrate that, oh my gosh, I'm in a negative cycle with my manager. Okay. Now I am no. Wow. I'm in a negative cycle. So how do we trigger the cycle? Okay. So I hear the manager is lecturing me. Wow. I'm paying more attention. Wow. I'm sensing that something is happening with my body, you know. I'm getting tense. That is the sign of a disconnection. So what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna slow it down. I'm gonna take a breath I see that the the the manager is lecturing me. I'm going to try to pay attention. What is happening with the manager? What's happened before they started to lecture? How did they get triggered? So I'm going to pay attention. Okay. They probably feeling stressed. Okay. They're lecturing me. They're probably feeling scared. Oh, they're lecturing me. They probably are scared of something is happening for them. Maybe they're they feel like not heard. So I'm gonna slow it down. I'm gonna really tune into their music, into their emotions, right? It Interaction is a dance, and emotion is the music of the dance. So I'm gonna really tune into that emotion. I'm gonna give them reassurance that I hear them. I'm gonna give them reassurance that everything is gonna be okay. They are not alone. I'm with you, and I'm gonna say it in this way so they can feel safe with me. Do you see what I'm doing? I'm tuning into the experience. That's very hard.

I was about to say, easier stuff than done. And if someone is shouting at you, I think the last thing you want to do is tune in to how they're feeling there. Think you're focused more on the threat that's going on for you and how you feel, but I can see how easy it could be to get triggered by that response and then kinda either go into yourself if you're an avoiding type or yell back if you are a bit more confrontational if you're maybe that anxious type that you're gonna defend yourself to, at all costs. But, like, you know, I guess it's understanding yourself and having that self awareness of I'm triggered and that little pause in between to go what's going on here. And I think for people to understand that that if something is happening in your body, if you're feeling tense or if you feel like you need to retaliate in some way or withdraw out of the conversation in some way, then something's going on and you need to just have that awareness and catch yourself And maybe you won't get it right all the time, but with practice, you'll start to be able to recognize it more and more, I think.

I agree with you. It's it's practicing. It's being more aware, and it will come back again. The pattern will always come like, you know, I say to people, if you don't change your pattern, the pattern will start to change you.

Yeah.

And you, you know, you're asking question, like, what what makes people happy at work. The pattern makes people miserable. The the negative pattern starts to change people. I and I feed all the time, and it has changed me. I remember I would come to work, happy, and then boom, you know, like I hit a wall and we get into a negative cycle and I'm crying in the office. You know, I I walked the door and I cried and I can't get my thoughts. I can't do my work. I start to become more demanding. I start to become more bitter. And then people say, Oh, you're so it's so difficult to work with you. The only thing you do is you complain. Oh my gosh. That's not who I used to be.

Yeah.

So the negative cycle, or I shut down, you're so difficult to work with. You don't even respond to me. You don't care what we're doing here. Oh my god. That's not how this person was before. So if you if you can recognize that negative cycle is so horrible to company cultures, to team dynamics, to productivity. That's what you need to change. You start to change the cycle by recognizing emotions by tuning into your emotions, by tuning into the other person, and learning how to respond to these emotional,

yeah,

negative cycles because I think one of the things that people really afraid of, I don't think, is that to work with emotion. Yeah. Emotion is the most powerful thing in the room. And it is almost the most powerful agent of change. Yeah. But in order for us to change emotion, we have to go into emotion. We can't we can't ignore, like, like, your friend, Ashley Collins, right? She you said, she said that emotions are the most powerful thing. We need to learn how to work with emotions, and how do we work with emotion? We slow things down. We have the language for emotions. We make the emotions as granular. There's a researcher, her name is Lisa feldman Barrett. She talks about granularity of emotions. She said that in order for you to organize your experience, you have to be as specific as possible with emotion. That means that when I when I do the, like, when more people learn the process, They learn about not only just the language, what happens like 3 levels of emotions, but what's happening in my body? You know, do I feel it in my chest? Because that's fear. Do I feel it in my neck? Because that's sadness. Do I feel it in my stomach? That's shame. What's going on with my body? How do I describe an image? If I would draw an image of what's happening for me in that moment, what would it be? You know, a lot of people say, like, for preschoolers, they say, I'm all alone. I'm all alone on an island. Oh, I feel so desperate that this person doesn't respond to me. I completely lose it. I feel like I'm falling through space. That is becoming more and more granular with your emotional experience. When we do that, actually, what happens to our amygdala it relaxes because it has a structure to it. It's like everything becomes more organized in your brain, so you can relax. And then you talk about fears. I, you know, there are 3 fears. What is your most fear about yourself? What's your worst fear about yourself in that moment? What is your worst fear about the other person in that moment? What is your worst fear about the relationship? You know, like, a lot of people I hear, my worst fear in the moment is I'm a bad manager. I'm just not I'm ineffective as a manager. My worst fear about my people is that my people think that I am I'm just I don't care. You know, when I shut down and I don't know how to talk to them, they just start feel I don't care, but I do care. But I just get overwhelmed. I don't know how to respond. And about my worst fear about my relationship is that we are becoming more and more distant. So as I take you through these, the stages of just recognizing emotions, I'm becoming more clear on the message. Oh, so I can say, you know, the other day when we were in a meeting, I felt so small when you yelled at me. I felt so small. I felt like My whole body just just sunk in. And now my worst fear is that I'm just not valued here as a member of a team. I'm just not a valued member, and I start to feel like you don't see me as valued. And the other person says, oh my gosh. That's not what I meant. Oh my gosh. I had no idea. I don't want you to feel not valued. That's not my intention. That's the I go up like this because I don't know how to get that is spots from you. So I yell because in that moment, I feel like I'm not being hurt. You don't hear me. You just aren't completely alone. Do you see? Now you have a bonding conversation happening to people where they start to hear each other, and they start to feel vulnerable with each other. And they can be ARE. They can be accessible, responsive, and engaged with each other. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think on on the kind of the more general topic of emotions at work, we're we've always been told that the workplace is no face for emotions, and we shouldn't show emotions at work. But like you said, that, you know, you had instances where you cried at work. I've had instances where I've cried. I'm not a typically acquired and cry in front of other people, but I have had those times because I was triggered so much. So I think understanding ourselves that way and and under signing that emotions are what, generally, what rule us. So being able to identify and manage what those are is so poor at work, and they do along at work, and we need to have more conversations about them, I think.

I agree with you. I agree. I think the paradigm is changing. You know, the old paradigm is especially with COVID. My gosh. It has triggered our human basic needs. Yeah. And emotions cannot be it's it's part of our system. It's like, telling somebody, okay, when you come to work, you can't breathe. Right? Yeah. You can't in. Emotion is our is our

-- Hold your breath for 8:8 hours today.

Holding breath. Exactly. You can't drink. Right? Emotion is part of us. We we, thrive of being emotionally engaged in our, you know, being happy at work. Remember that book flow, the, you know, flow that he talks about, about how you get into the flow of things. Well, how are you doing that? You are emotionally engaged in the work. So we absolutely can't, and we can't really reconnect with people. When we don't talk about emotions. You know, if I'm going to start convincing you what you did wrong and you're gonna convince me what I what I did wrong, we're gonna be at content level. We are going to be in the negative cycle. We will never get out of the cycle. And that's that's another thing. You know, people say to me, oh, we get off because of strategy. We have differences of because we can't agree on strategy or agenda. No. No. It's how you talk about the strategy and agenda that your attachment needs and fears all flare up, and then you start to be in the negative cycle, blaming, complaining, and shutting down. That's what what that's what happens, but when we slow things down, we can tune into our emotional fears and feelings and needs. We can reach out and say, I get so scared when that happens I start to feel this way, and what I need to know is that you do care about me. And I'm important to you, and my feelings do matter. And the other person's response. Oh my gosh. You are important to me. Your feelings do matter, and I'm right here with you.

Yeah.

Now you have a bonding moment, and every time I say to them, what happens to you when you hear that? When you hear that you important that you valued. The person says. I feel so relieved. I feel so relieved that I'm I am important. My gosh. We just got off because we of this, not knowing how to repair this disconnect. But I feel connected. I feel happy. I feel secure. I feel energized. And I said, what can you do when you feel all these emotions? Happy emotions? Oh, we can do anything.

Yeah. And and and and I think there's kind of a few sides to that. So to me, the amount of energy that is taken if we're in that negative cycle. So like you said, you shut yourself away in a room or you yell at people, the amount of emotional in energy that's expended on those things that are going on, you're not getting your work done. You're not being productive. And then on the flip side, exactly like you said, a couple of seconds ago, is that when we are feeling the like, more positive when we're feeling that sense of relief when we're feeling secure, we can be more productive at work, and we can kind of bring our whole selves to work, essentially.

Absolutely. I see James Gross actually put a study saying that, that shutting your emotions down is very hard work.

Yeah.

And you can't do it for long. It's very, very exhausting. So what we do, we shut our emotions down when we feel disconnected we shut, shut, shut, shut, shut, and then we blow up. Right? And then we shut back again. So, and but when we are able to pay to the disconnect and repair those disconnects in the moment before they turn into the negative cycle. Then we are happy at work, and we actually in those bonding conversations, we produce oxytocin. Yeah. Oxytocin is is a a caring, loving hormone, that reduces the level of cortisol in our body, which relaxes our amygdala, which engages our prefrontal cortex. And everything becomes a lot easier for us to do.

Brilliant. My question is around, like, I'm thinking of people who maybe have been stuck in that type of negative cycle in work for a number of years, or another example I'm thinking is someone who's been stuck in a negative cycle changed jobs and realized they're having that same pattern repeat again and again, which is same, I think, in personal relationships as well, unless you identify and address the underlying issue around the pattern. So any kind of suggestions for what people can do if they've been in in that situation for a long time. You know, if they've had those relationships for a long time, how do you introduce this type of new way of behaving with someone if you've been stuck like that for a while?

It's very hard, ma'am. It's very hard because you are you have so many raw spots. So you get triggered yourself. I think the the the best thing that happened to me is calling out the cycle. Like recognizing it's not my fault. It's not the other person's fault. It's a negative cycle fault. And just calling out maybe not out loud, but even to yourself, like, oh my gosh, we are in a negative cycle. We are in a negative cycle. I know it's not the other person's if the other person is not a bad guy. They wanna be connected to me.

Yeah.

I wanna be connected to them. I think that's kinda like you have to almost like train your brain to see the attachment relationship differently. Right? You you have to you have to start to become more in tune to the steps in the dance that we do that triggers the negative cycle. So, it takes the time. I mean, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna lie to say, like, oh my gosh. You take the score, so you read this like, even by more.

Yeah. Yeah.

And and suddenly, you become like this wonder kid. Yeah. And then you can really it takes time. It takes track is. It's a lot, a lot of conscious, dedicated, committed work of, look. I want to understand my relationship. I want to change the pattern. I don't want the pattern to change me.

Yeah. Yeah. I just make a note of that.

Yeah. And and that's I think that's the reason also why I created tools in the EMC Master class that the that we provide. It's it has like a list of spots, list of emotion. It has a reconnection form that gives you step by step. If you if you have to practice, like, I've I've done over 900 of these cases with using, I always use that in connection from all

of them. Yeah. I think oftentimes sorry. Go on. Yeah.

Yeah, because it gives me structure. If I don't use the reconnection form, I start to listen to people's stories, I get off its story after story after story after story.

And she

said this. We and

he said that. This is why it can never work. And yeah. Yeah.

And then you take sides, right, because you have to you wanna fix it. You wanna fix it. But the problem without the reconnection form is you're fixing the wrong thing.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. --

fix the connection. Not the story.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, that's you're not gonna change someone else. You're not gonna change their behavior. You're not gonna change their story or or their actions, but what you can change is your understanding or your interpretation of it. And as you said, solve for the medical cycle. And the connection and the connection.

And the connection because you start to you start to be more co more comfortable with sharing emotions and you start to say, oh, we in the negative cycle. I start to feel scared. In that moment, you are important to me. I care about you. You see, I'm I'm addressing attachment needs. You're important to me. I care about you. You're a very important member of this team. I get scared when you don't turn when you don't respond to me, I get scared. I start to feel alone. Now you see, I'm already changing the message, and the other person may not be ready to receive that, but that's okay. Yeah. That's okay. We understand that they're struggling. That's another thing that I say to people. People are struggling with disconnection. They don't know how to respond. So we need to be, Renee Brown, she loves talking about empathy, right, unrelenting empathy. Well, how are we going to have empathy if we don't understand that people are actually struggling for connection. So I think really important to start to see, oh, this person is blaming pointing. Oh, they're struggling for connection. That's the cue. Oh, you know, this person is shutting down. Oh, they I know they're struggling for connection. That's the cue.

Okay.

So you have to constantly constantly learn this and being this, but I think the very connection form to me, I felt like it was my savior to any conversation. I would just grab it and, like, use it, and it was it would always get me back home to safety,

which

is connection.

Yes. Always. Yeah. And I think, you know, from everything that I'm hearing, what you're saying is that I and I think oftentimes what we want we want a quick fix, don't we? So if someone wants to listen to the podcast today, go out and buy a book, or having listened to the podcast, now they're all of their relationships are fixed. It's like, it's not It's not that easy, just because you know something, you have to constantly work at it. So being aware of it, being able to catch yourself in the moment, and having that language and identifying for yourself, this is a negative cycle. We're in a negative cycle. How do we come back to safety? How do we come back to connection? With the acknowledgement and the acceptance that the other person still may not respond or they may not be ready to kind of reciprocate what it is that you need. But you need to kind of hold yourself so that that you have that understanding that that maybe they still meet meet you where you are or or kind of respond to your the needs that you have. That's kind of how I would summarize what we've talked about today.

Very absolutely. And, again, once you start to changing yourself in terms of responding to the negative cycle and to understanding, you stop to step out of those negative cycle. You are changing the dance. You are changing the music. I I love I love Argentina tango. I dance tango. And, in the Argentina, if you if you watch amateurs, with the professional, the difference is is how they tune into each other, how they hold their emotional balance. So your job as a professional, as a person individually is to learn, how do you regain your emotional balance? How do you hold that there? Yeah. There's a negative cycle happening, and there's a, you know, somebody is like throwing bullets at me. How am I how am I going to recognize what they are actually doing is reaching for connection for me? What they're actually doing is saying, I'm so scared I'm alone. I'm so scared I can't find you. So that is a big shift. It's like, going on the sideway and letting the bullets come just, you know, buy you instead of hitting you.

Yeah.

So, you are dancing every time you're interacting with somebody, you are dancing. You are dancing, miss Dan. And the music that is you are tuning into emotion is what's going to help you to change that dance. Is tuning into that emotional music.

I love that. That's an explanation. Is there anything that we haven't covered today that you want to to get across?

Well, I I just want I just want, I think, listeners to know is I know how difficult it is. It's so so difficult. I went through that whole difficulty thing in my work, but it's also I want people to know that there's hope.

Yeah.

If you don't have to be stuck in whatever team duration should be or currently right now, not that you have to move away and move to another job, but you can change your pattern. You can be the changemaker by learning how to work with emotion. You don't have to be a therapist. You don't have be a psychologist, but you can learn how to respond to emotions, how to articulate emotions, and you start to actually change not only your professional relationships, you start to change all of your relationships, your personal relationships, and everything around you becomes like a a nurturing ground for you to evolve, to grow, to to blossom. And I I want just people to know that there is a road map you can learn. There is hope You don't have to be stuck. You're not alone. We're right here with you, teaching you that roadmap, and telling you that you can change the pattern. So it doesn't change you.

Brilliant. I love that. So the question I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, what is being happy or out of work mean to you.

Being happy to me is having strong relationships. Strong relationships with your managers, strong relationship with people that you depend on at work, with your teammates, strong relationship with other teammates, the relationship is most important. Once you have the relationships, you can resolve anything. You can work on goals. You can work on teams. You can deal with whatever challenges you have. But the most important thing is that connected relationship, the secure relationship in your workplace. That's what makes people happy at work.

Brilliant. Love that. And if people want to reach out, if they want to connect with you, what's the best place that they can do that, or what's the best way they can do that?

Well, they can definitely reach out to me and connect with me on LinkedIn, Lola Gerspelt. Right? But, I have a we I have a company, EMC Leaders dot com. They can get my book at an Amazon two books, emotional connection and the connected culture. I just love the connected culture because it's full of artistic designs and easy ways of people how to reach for each other. How to respond to each other. We have the emotional connection course, ENC Master class that, they can look into, and you actually can become the certified EMC trainer. So you can integrate the EMC model into your culture at work. So I'm always here. You can email me lola@emclegers.com, and I'm always here to help.

Freda has loved that know you have a podcast off your own. Do you want to give a shout out to

the podcast as well? That's right. That's right. Thank you. I see. The leader in you. That's a podcast, and I talk about emotional connection and, the skills and techniques. And I love I I can talk about emotional connection attachments, like, I think all day long for for hours and hours. So

-- And I think we could have had this conversation. Well, you know, it's gone on for longer than I anticipated, but I was so enjoyed conversation, and I think it's very practical in terms of what people can do when they're listening to to the episode today. And also bearing in mind that it's not just right listening. It's about putting into action what it is that we've talked about. It's one thing to know these things but, you know, it's gonna take a while for things to change, and it's it's gonna take practice. So for anyone listening today, you know, now is there's no time like the present to start putting these things into practice, but I wanted to extend my thanks to you, Doctor Lola. I've absolutely thoroughly enjoyed this conversation today. And I look forward to more conversations in the future. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I so appreciate it.