Intuitively we all know that emotions are contagious. How else do evocative stories have impact on us? Neuroscience seems to have uncovered the biomechanism for the catching of another’s emotions: mirror neurons. These neurons allow us to understand the emotional state of others and to adopt to some degree those same emotions.
Interestingly, this can happen remotely. Remote in the sense that you may not know the person you are catching the emotions from – you need not have a pre-existing relationship with someone to have their emotions ‘infect’ you. Remote in the sense that you even need not be with them – you can simply observe emotions in two dimensions on a television or a computer screen. You may well have seen the YouTube phenomenon that is Christian the Lion; try watching it without feeling generosity, goodwill and affection.
So it seems that these positive ‘Blue Zone’ emotions are very contagious, particularly when we observe generosity or vulnerability. As it turns out, the negative emotions associated with our Red Zone states are far more contagious, more rapid in their adoption and more persistent after the event. Something like the above video may have a ‘contagion impact’ of minutes, but road rage, recalcitrant teenagers and angry customers can affect us for hours or longer.
Take something I witnessed last week whilst travelling by car and stopping for lunch. I was in a queue for one of the ‘healthy’ fast food chains that make your order in front of you. The first inkling of a problem behind the counter was the rather offhand impatience with my hesitation in making a choice. “The menu is there right in front of you” was inflected with enough emotion (frustration) for me to feel my feathers ruffled so to speak. While this was a minor incident, it led me to watch further as I ate my lunch nearby. Sure enough, a young man, unhappy with what had been made for him and, more to the point, the way he was treated around this, rather grumpily pushed back his food, and words were exchanged. Clearly, his choice was like it or lump it, and he lumped it asking for a refund.
What happened next is possibly the worst example of customer service that I have witnessed: the person serving him threw the refund back at the fellow, accompanied by “you shouldn’t have f****ng thrown your food at me”. The impact of this was immediate, not only on the customer – who responded by upending the contents of the counter on the floor – but on all who witnessed this. Anger, embarrassment and distress were rampant, and several people left the queue.
Research suggests that red zone emotions, such as those displayed in the above interaction, are more contagious than blue zone emotions. Further, the greater the energy in the exchange, the greater the ‘infection’. This would explain the contagiousness on one hand of Christian the Lion (with its attendant highly demonstrative affection) and, on the other, road rage.
To further add to the ‘hair trigger’ state that accompanies red zone emotions, it seems that leaders are more contagious than peers. Teachers in classrooms, bosses in boardrooms, parents with children: all are in the most infectious positions.
Knowing this, particularly if you depend on the provision of a service or product, is critical. In literal terms, injury is added to insult to a degree by the rapid hard-wiring of emotional memories in our limbic systems, particularly the amygdalae. In other words, highly charged red zone emotions that are caught from others are sticky and easily recalled. It is likely that I will take some time to forget what I witnessed in that food court.
The lessons then? Be remembered for infecting people with the blue zone emotions of generosity, goodwill and affiliation: “attitudes (and emotions) are contagious – are yours worth catching?”
Last post I discussed the Red and Blue Zones, and linked each to ineffective and effective communicators respectively. Reactive Red Zone people use their limbic systems to manage communication and conflict, while those who can deal with conflict and communication with equanimity and care use far more of their prefrontal cortex capacity (that is, the Blue Zone).
Interestingly, the type of question you ask can help alter this red/blue balance.
Imagine that you have a direct report very much in their red zone, blowing off about one of their colleagues. A question that might be close at hand for many leaders is “so why do you think this is happening?”. Result? The direct report reengages with the emotion and the detail of the problem, further ramping up the Red Zone. Given that resolution can only come from the Blue Zone, the question used above turns out to be pretty poor in assisting the direct report forward.
Coaching has been getting this right for some time now, and a coach might ask “if things were as good as they can be tomorrow, what would be different?”. This sort of question lifts the thinking state of the direct report out of the red into the blue because it demands reflection. While success is never guaranteed, using questions that direct attention to the present or future, not the past, is a key here. For example, simply asking “on a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate how angry you are now?” perhaps followed by on the same scale, how important is this issue amongst all the things you are facing now?” are good ‘current reality’ questions. For most people, these questions will cause activity in the prefrontal cortex, the Blue Zone, cleverly shifting the balance away from the Red Zone.
Coaching has much to inform leadership, particularly around the language of questioning. Knowing the right questions to ask that helps direct the thinking of another towards reflection and and solution. Unfortunately, most questions that come to mind for leaders, by default are problem or detail focused, and are not particularly helpful.
Learning some coaching questions can very much lift the effectiveness and influence of leaders when conflict comes to town.
Using our concept of Blue and Red Zones, take a moment to consider your default state. If the Red Zone is based on the limbic/reptilian part of your brain (reactive, threat aware, rapid, self-aligned) and the Blue Zone ‘points’ to your prefrontal cortex (compassionate, creative, collaborative, reflective, goal oriented, slow, socially-aligned), which of the two do you lean towards habitually?
If you are biased in the Red Zone, then you:
react before you think
think or say things like “I was here first”
engage with impulses
move from neutral to an energetic negative state (anger, disgust for instance) quickly
easily adopt Red Zones belonging to others
infect others with your own Red Zone
feel anxious easily, particularly where you are lacking control or where there is some uncertainty
A metaphor here could be seeing a train on a platform about to depart and jumping on it before you see where it is going. In other words, people often engage with your Red Zone without cognitive choice.
Think of a person that you know that you would say is the most calm under high pressure. This person is very likely to be very heavily biased in the Blue Zone. In this state, they would
be aware of their internal state and could label whether they are in the Blue or Red Zones
seem to be always considering situations from a socially-oriented perspective (ie the needs of others)
use a variety of strategies to manage down the impact of their Red Zone triggers
be able to make clear thinking decisions in the face of pressure and stress
are not overly impacted by a perceived lack of control or of uncertainty
are not impacted by the Red Zone states of others
do not act as a Red Zone contagion
In terms of a key measurement of EQ, the two dimensions of self awareness and self management are highly expressed by those biased toward the Blue Zone.
To compare these two zones to transactional analysis (TA), it would be easy to see that in their negative ego states Child and Parent are both Red Zone states, while the Adult is very in the Blue. Interestingly both Child and Parent have Blue Zone states too, and in these states they are growing (Child) or helping another grow (Parent).
One of the outcomes of TA is the concept of win-win through “I’m OK, you’re OK”. A closer look at this dynamic shows the four states possible:
Clearly, three of the four have the strong potential to create a Red Zone response in either ‘You’ or ‘I’. In our research, where we have looked at the dilemma of respect in organisations, we often find different internal maps of respect. For instance, teachers often express conditional respect (if you do what I ask then you will get what you need). Students, however, need unconditional respect to thrive. For them, this looks like “in spite of perhaps not knowing how to behave or how to do the work, I need you to listen to me, believe in me and to take me seriously. Indeed, only unconditional respect (or love) can trigger deep, higher-order change and growth. The only quadrant in the table above that describes unconditional respect is I’m OK, you’re OK. The only unquestionably blue quadrant.
Research has shown the contagious nature of emotions, with Red Zone emotions being more easily ‘caught’ than Blue. Given that emotions ‘leak’ (in other words, they are evident to others in spite of all of our efforts to contain them), any significant Red Zone emotions that you engage with will push an interaction with another into any of the quadrants above apart from the blue.
Part of the answer is to know which zone you are in. The rest of the solution lies with how you manage down your Red Zone, and how you can ramp up your Blue. Watch this space…
Group 8 Education has developed a framework for understanding particular aspects of behaviour and the brain. Based on two ‘zones’, the Blue Zone and the Red Zone, this framework builds self awareness and self management, the two cornerstones of emotional intelligence according to Daniel Goleman.
Hear more in this short videoblog introducing the concept:
It’s been some time since I’ve managed to add something here, though this has been in part to do with some massive reorganising in my brain around the whole web 2.0 phenomenon. Seeing a real use for blogging, having clarity on the content and knowing how it integrates into the web 2.0 world has taken some time for me. Not that I have arrived, but at least I’m on the way…
I’ve recently joined Thought Leaders, and I’m very excited about the development of this as a social, innovation and entrepreneurial network. Indeed, a part of my return here has been as a result of lots of contact with very interesting people in the last 12 months, with Thought Leaders playing a prominent part. By way of introduction, watch the video.
