Aggression causes Brain Drain. Even minor rudeness impacts our job performance, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, because we expend so much energy trying to figure out what the heck is going on.
Why are they angry? Was it something I did? How can I stop it?
We use all of our mental resources…thinking about the problem… and even the smartest of people don’t have the ability to do anything else very well.
Brain Drain impacts cheerful people as well. It takes energy to be enthusiastic and kind, and faking niceness to deal with rude people “burns glucose the brain might otherwise use for cognitive tasks.” So neither smart nor nice preserves our much needed energy.
So how do we do our jobs well and deal with difficult people? The study concludes that “one and only” thing that preserves brain power is empathy.
emotional distance makes verbal aggression less taxing, and those that can step into an angry person’s shoes may be able to see that an outburst is more a reflection of a customer’s feelings than a referendum on a worker’s skills.
Listening for the feelings and needs of another helps us keep all of our energy for taking care of our own feelings and needs. Pretty cool, huh?
If you want to learn how to listen in this way, I highly recommend . Also check out other blog posts delving into the practice of NVC.
(Study from Journal of Applied Psychology authored by Amir Erez from University of Florida business school)
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