Increasing our Emotional Wellbeing in the Workplace

Published in Kingstown College Coaching Magazine 2020/2021

if the client has a wide range of feelings, help them choose the most important one and work with it

Wouldn’t it be cool to have an effective framework to help us navigate through our emotions? Thanks to Pablo Calal, we now have just that – an effective Cognitive-Behavioral model to help us constructively deal with and manage our emotions called The DEPEND Model.

Whether your client is a business owner, a leader or an employee, they probably have their own beliefs about how the world works. We build up these mental maps based on our experiences, our learning, our upbringing, our culture, our friends, etc. Those beliefs help us to make sense of life as we know it but, are they always accurate?

If we extrapolated this concept to the organisation, we’d come face to face with the business culture. What does the organisation think about management? Is there room for learning and improvement? What about change? Is the business culture fostering growth, empowerment and meaning? The answers to these questions will have a massive impact not only at the business level (ability to be effective, productive and successful) but on a personal level as well (engagement, commitment, happiness and wellbeing).

Why am I talking so much about mental maps, beliefs and business culture? Because our thoughts (or the procedures and principles behind the business) are an essential component of our wellbeing.

If I had to summarize my seven years of experience as a Therapist in one single concept, it would be the following: what we think affects how we feel and what we do about it.

If we aim to feel better, we need to be aware of our thoughts/beliefs.

naming the feeling helps us to increase awareness, acceptance and accountability

The DEPEND Model

Wouldn’t it be cool to have an effective framework to help us navigate through our emotions?

For many years, I have been fascinated with the idea of creating a protocol to manage our emotions. However, it wasn’t until I completed my training as an Executive Coach at Kingstown College that all the pieces fell into place. The methodology of coaching has allowed me to create an effective Cognitive-Behavioral model to help us constructively deal with our emotions.

Benefits:

• Understand the relationship between thoughts, feelings and behaviors
• Explore our triggers
• Create emotional relief and emotional wellbeing
• Provides us with a framework to explore our emotions constructively while challenging our limiting beliefs
• Encourages us to find the most nourishing perspective that we can find at a time
• Allow us to create an action plan based on our needs

Works best: 

Covid-19 related situations, Working remotely, Burnout, Change management, Emotional wellbeing, Conflicts, Difficult colleagues, Difficult employees, Fear of failure, Performance and productivity issues, Adapting to new roles, Cultural shock. It can be used to explore any emotional situation in and out of the workplace.

D stands for Describe

It is always important to understand the situation that triggered those emotions. You will have plenty of time to explore your client’s perspective, at this point it is important to try to remain as objective as possible: this will allow your client to step back and detach enough to be able to explore it more openly.

Could you please describe what happened?

If you reframed to make any personal remarks, how could you describe what happened?

What are the actual facts?

E stands for Emotions: How did you feel?

In this part of the process, we look at how the person felt. For many of us, our feelings might be quite vague: it felt bad, it wasn’t nice, etc. Naming the feeling helps us to increase awareness, acceptance and accountability. I find it very useful to work with a list of feelings, as they help us acknowledge our emotions and bring more awareness.

Since I became an Executive Coach my love for using the 0 to 10 rating scale system has really grown. They really help us break things down into more manageable parts.

Naming the feeling and rating it on a scale of 0 to 10 helps us understand what’s going on. Additionally, something quite curious happens. Let’s say that I feel hateful, and I rate my hate at a 3 out of 10. As we begin to rise up the scale that hate begins to change and starts becoming its opposite, in this case, love. Opposite feelings differ only in degree. This is interesting because the gap between them might be smaller than it seems.

How did you feel?

How would you name that feeling?

How would you rate that feeling on a scale of 0 to 10?

If 0 would be the lowest rate of your current feeling, what feeling would be a 10? (Tip: the easiest way to find this out would be using an antonyms dictionary)

P stands for Perspective

We have explored the context, the client has named and rated their feelings, now it’s time to put things into perspective. The purpose at this stage is to bring attention to the thoughts they were having.

What was going through your mind when this happened?

What beliefs might have been present at the time?

Once we know what they were thinking we can move to explore the way the client reacted.

How did you respond?

What did you do?

What connection do you think there is between what happened, your thoughts, your feelings and the way you responded?

We might also take this opportunity to explore what might have triggered those feelings in the first place.

E stands for Evidence

This is one of my favorite parts of the model. We are about to put our Judge Judy hats on and step into the courtroom.

We have discussed how intrinsically related our thoughts, feelings and behaviors are. At this point, we have a pretty good idea about what happened, what they were thinking, how it made them feel and what they did. Now it’s time to see how accurate those thoughts really were.

How accurate are those thoughts?

How do you know?

What evidence do you have to support that view?

If you explained what happened to somebody else, would they be able to see it the same way you do?

N stands for Nice. 

What’s the most constructive interpretation that you can make?

We have been pretty challenging; it is time to show some love. I would say this is perhaps one of the most important steps. To understand why, there are a few things that are worth mentioning:

• When it comes to rating your emotions, it doesn’t matter how low your rating might be, it is alright, it could not be any different. Acceptance is key.
• What you consider to be constructive at a lower rate might look very different from what you would consider constructive at a higher rate. However, as long as it feels nice at the time, it’s alright, that is all you need.
• Typically, you can only go up one notch at a time. You can’t jump from 2 to 9 in one go. That is why focusing on finding the most constructive interpretation that you can make at a time is always so powerful. It will always lead you to the next notch.
• At what point will your current feelings turn to the opposite? At what exact moment will hatred turn into love? This might be an interesting conversation to have with your client.

D stands for Do

It would not be a coaching model if we wouldn’t take at least one small action step, would it? Hehe, that’s what the last step is all about.

What could you do to increase your rating by one point?

Looking at the situation, at your thoughts and behaviors, what have you learnt? What do you think you could do differently next time to make you feel better?

If you had your wellbeing in mind, what would you do to improve this situation? What if you considered the wellbeing of everyone else involved?

If there is something that you are struggling to accept, what could you do to be more understanding and loving until you do?

Recommendations:

• Use this model as a framework: grasp the concept and use your own questions. Listening at level 2 and 3 will provide you with way more powerful questions.
• Be flexible: sometimes you might only need to use some parts of the model or even change the order. Make it your own.
• The model works best when it’s applied to situations that have already happened.
• Make sure the client chooses an example that feels comfortable exploring.
• If the client has a wide range of feelings, help them choose the most important one and work with it.
• Please be aware that, even though this is an effective model to deal with our emotions, it might not be enough for some clients. You should always be open to the possibility of referring your client to a specialist.

what we think affects how we feel and what we do about it

Thank you for reading this article, I hope you enjoyed it. Before I go I have one last question for you, how could you implement this model to increase your own emotional wellbeing?

Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any doubts, I will be happy to hear from you. My Linkedin profile is Pablo Calal, my email is [email protected]