Managing People is Triggering AF
Many years ago, when I was negotiating a raise for a team member, I was appalled to learn that my company did not consider the promotion to “people manager” worthy of a pay increase.
I remember having a visceral reaction and exclaiming, “But managing people is the hardest part of the job!”
Managing people requires a tremendous amount of skill, both tactically and interpersonally. I was successful in advocating for my team member’s raise, but the sentiment stuck with me: for how challenging the role is, people management is drastically under-appreciated and under-valued.
Of course, there are intrinsic rewards to mentoring and growing team members—as a coach, I genuinely love connecting with people, working through challenges, and helping others reach their full potential. But much like any caring or helping profession, this requires a lot of time and energy.
What people don’t talk about is how emotionally taxing and evocative managing other people can be. Much like being a parent, your deepest emotional wounds are triggered throughout your leadership journey.
What do I mean by this?
When you are responsible for the growth and development of other people, and when these people “represent” you in some way, their behaviors can evoke uncomfortable feelings. Your direct reports may inadvertently trigger you (i.e., make you feel angry, annoyed, or out of control) in ways that feel both familiar and surprising.
For example, my daughter has been strong-willed and defiant since she was an infant. I love this about her, but the power struggle can be incredibly evocative for me. It brings up all of my feelings about control and my deep desire to have it. When my daughter challenges my control, it triggers my stress response and dysregulates my nervous system. When she refuses to sleep or use the toilet, I feel out of control and wonder if I’ll ever sleep again or if I’ll be potty training for life. My brain floods with frustration and fear. In these moments, I must actively work to become aware of what is happening inside of me and manage myself so that I can respond calmly and work with my daughter, not against her.
This dynamic happens in leadership all the time.
Throughout my early career as a manager, I would come home from work and unload all my frustrations onto my poor husband. I was a dysregulated mess, unable to handle the uncomfortable feelings that my team members unearthed inside of me. It wasn’t that I had a bad team (not at all); it was because I wasn’t aware of the baggage, patterns, and personal triggers I was bringing into these relationships.
When you work closely with other people, you will find yourself navigating a vast landscape of emotional terrain. This is how humans work. Throughout your life, you encounter unassuming people with behaviors and traits that feel familiar to you and activate your nervous system.
When an old wound is triggered, your body goes into defense mode and activates the stress response. This is a physiological response that exists to protect you. The most common responses are fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. This response can show up as anger, irritability, people-pleasing, or shutting down (just to name a few).
Often, when we are in close relationships with other people (as we often are with our colleagues and direct reports), we will experience an array of evocative situations that activate our stress response.
There will be people who hold up a mirror to the parts of yourself that you would rather not see. They might call you out, push back, or question your decision-making. They may give you feedback that’s hard to hear. They might be better at something or know more about a subject than you.
There will be people who trigger old wounds. It may be someone who doesn’t listen to you, makes you feel like you are asking too much of them, takes advantage of your people-pleasing tendencies, makes you feel disrespected, seems ungrateful, etc.
There might be people who make you feel small and inconsequential, a feeling you may have experienced as a child. There may be people who devalue and ignore your contributions, belittle your opinion, or challenge your authority.
It’s an emotional battlefield out there! This is why being a leader requires a lot of internal work.
As a leader, you are in a very vulnerable position. You might be a small business owner or entrepreneur putting yourself out there, pitching your idea, and making asks of your network. You might be a manager responsible for the success, growth, and satisfaction of your team. You might be an executive or senior leader who must delegate important jobs in order to be effective. The bottom line is: if you are a leader, you will need other people to help you reach your goals - you need to be in relationship with others.
And if you’re a good leader, you’re probably working on building empathy. And while empathy is a crucial leadership skill, it can also make the experience of being so deeply connected and reliant on other people that much harder.
Every day I work with leaders who are overwhelmed by the emotional upheaval they experience as they navigate the intimate relationships they have with the people they manage and work with (and yes, they are intimate, as demonstrated by a study that revealed that your boss has an equal impact on your mental health as your spouse and doctor). This is an aspect of leadership that is not acknowledged enough and can make the whole experience feel very isolating and stressful.
So what can you do?
The first step is self-awareness. We say this all the time at Noria: self-awareness is your superpower.
Here’s how to use it:
Become aware of the signs and symptoms of when your nervous system is activated.
It could be that you become shut down, unsure, or spiral into self-doubt (freeze). Maybe you become irritated, angry, and pissed off (fight). Perhaps you choose to ignore, avoid, or distract yourself (flee). Or maybe you fall back into people-pleasing behaviors and bend your sturdy leadership to appease everyone else (fawn).
Become aware of what triggered your stress response.
What made you feel this way? Was it a behavior? Something someone said? An action or inaction? Spend some time reflecting on what the trigger was and why it feels so familiar to you. Why is this so evocative for you, personally?
Hone your awareness around your triggers.
Work with a therapist, journal, or talk to a friend about it. The more awareness you bring to your triggers, the more distance you put between yourself and the feeling you are experiencing. You lessen the chokehold your reaction has on you. You begin to identify less with the feelings you are experiencing once you become aware of what is happening.
Re-regulate your nervous system.
This is the key piece in becoming a more effective leader. You do not want your emotional reactions to control your behaviors. You want to control your emotional reactions so that you can respond thoughtfully instead of react automatically. Some easy ways to regulate your nervous system are by taking a few deep breaths, moving your body, taking a walk outside, having a good cry or laugh, or listening to a song you love. Let your body know that you are safe. Awareness will help with this.
We encourage all leaders to hone their self-awareness around their personal triggers. The hidden challenge of leadership is that you will often be provoked and challenged at your deepest level. If left unchecked, this can cause undue stress for you and your team.
