Emotional Agility in Nursing Leadership

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, FAAN

Ask any nurse leader about his or her work and they are likely to tell you it can sometimes be a roller coaster with things rarely going exactly as planned. In her recently published book on Emotional Agility, Susan David contends that the difference between leaders who get derailed by their challenges and those who successfully overcome them lies in their emotional agility. It is our own thoughts, feelings and most importantly self-talk that ultimately determines how successful we are. Through her research, Dr. David has found that emotionally agile people learn how to unhook themselves from unhelpful patterns, We will all find ourselves in situations where we will feel anger, sadness and grief and so on. Unless we can process, navigate and be comfortable with the full range of our emotions, we won’t learn to be resilient. We must have some practice dealing with those emotions or we will be caught off guard.

David believes that the strong cultural focus on happiness and thinking positively is actually making us less resilient. She believes emotions like sadness, guilt, grief and anger are beacons for our values. We don’t get angry about stuff we don’t care about. We don’t feel sad or guilty about stuff we don’t care about. If we push these emotions away, we are choosing not to learn about ourselves. We are choosing to ignore our values and what is important to us. She contends that positive thinking and avoidance have overemphasized the role of our thoughts. Emotional agility is a skill set that builds on our ability to face our emotions, label them, understand them and then choose to move forward deliberately. It is the ability to recognize when you’re feeling stressed, be able to step out of your stress, and then decide how to act in a way that is congruent with your personal values and aligned with your goals.

David proposes the following four-step path to emotional agility:

Step One – Showing up: The first part of emotional agility is “showing up” to your emotions or facing your emotions. One of the most important parts to being a healthy and whole person is to understand that life is as beautiful as it is fragile and varied. We don’t need to be dominated by one emotion or by a struggle with our emotions. We are big enough to contain all of our emotions. “Showing up” means you drop any struggle with yourself about whether your feelings are right or wrong or if you should or shouldn’t feel a certain way.

Step Two – Stepping out: The next part is called “stepping out,” a mindfulness practice would fall under this section. “Stepping out” is when we experience thoughts and emotions, we create space between ourselves and the emotion. It is that part of ourselves that is wise enough to know that when you have a thought or feeling, it doesn’t mean it is right, and it doesn’t mean you have to act on it. It’s just what you’re feeling.

Step Three – Walking your why: The third step is “walking your why.” So you’ve shown up to your emotion and created the space, but what choice do you make within that space? Before you can do anything, you have to “know your why,” or know your values. This step is about identifying the beliefs and behaviors that are important to you and then acting.

Step Four – Moving on: Then, finally, “moving on” and really that is about cultivating effective habits that are congruent with your values and creating want-to goals. A want-to goal is a change that is driven by your values, as opposed to a have-to goal that is externally imposed.

If you wonder how you do with emotional agility, Dr. David has a free test with a written report that is available along with the key areas that you can work on.

Read to Lead

David, S. (2016). Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work and Live. New York: Avery Press