Nutshell: How to recognise our emotions

Having the self-knowledge to decode how we’re feeling and why helps us to be more in tune with our emotions – and those of the people around us. Marc Brackett’s RULER shows us how.

It’s a common enough leadership challenge: one of our team members is not exactly firing on all cylinders.  Despite our best efforts, this has been happening for a while. The time has come for us to find out why.

That means a conversation that might be classed as difficult, first because of the subject matter (the underperformance) and, second, because difficult conversations inevitably involve a level of uncertainty: how will the other person react? Will I keep my cool? What if it goes badly?

When the stakes feel high and the emotional temperature is rising, having the self-knowledge to understand what we’re feeling (and why) can be an important precursor to managing and deploying those emotions for positive effect. 

Just ask Marc Brackett, founder of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.

Emotions at work

Brackett believes that emotions are the most powerful force in the workplace: “Our cognitive abilities, our creativity, the way we make decisions, our level of engagement and our productivity are entirely influenced by our emotional state.”

When we think about it, we instinctively know that’s right. We might not always acknowledge that we bring our emotions to work – for good or ill – but that doesn’t stop us feeling the way we feel.

Nor are emotions limited to higher stakes situations.

In a routine meeting, the chances are that we might be feeling frustrated by constant interruptions and that others will be anxious about contributing, disappointed that they’re not being heard and simply bored at being there in the first place.  

While received wisdom suggests that we mostly default to a palette of about 12 emotions on a daily basis, it’s been suggested – by Daniel Goleman and the Dalai Lama, no less – that we can choose from up to 34,000 distinguishable feelings.

That may be overkill, but we get the idea: emotions matter and understanding how we’re feeling matters even more.

Often, though, we find it hard to recognise our emotions, let alone admit to or manage them. We may vent to our peers about how bad it all is, but that’s unlikely to change how we feel.

Getting the measure

That’s why Brackett developed his RULER mnemonic as a guide to help us better understand and decode how we’re feeling – and take more considered action as a result.  It’s an important tool to help us boost our self-awareness and emotional intelligence.

Originally developed for use in schools, it’s a useful reminder for all of us when we’re finding it hard to understand not just what we’re feeling, but why.

He invites us to actively interrogate and label those emotions so that we’ll be in a much better place to express, deploy or regulate them more effectively.

It’s not about denying or suppressing how we feel; rather, it’s about being honest with ourselves about our emotions, being in tune with them – even those we might consider to be negative.

Going granular

Separating out the different strata of feeling – what Brackett calls going “granular” - helps us identify both the what and the why.

Simply saying that we’re feeling anxious about a big presentation might mask a whole range of other emotions we might be feeling at the same time, like excitement or fear or apprehension.

And once we’ve taken a step back, we can also start to think about how others might be feeling too and how they might react to us as a result.

But it’s not just about identifying those emotions. Once we’ve worked through the RUL… of RULER, it also asks us to manage and express them in ways that are appropriate and effective (The …ER). 

Using RULER

We can use Brackett’s tool by simply working our way through the letters of the RULER mnemonic:

R: this first stage is about recognising our own – and other’s - emotions.

For example, we might be feeling anxious and uncertain about that difficult conversation, but so might our colleague. Conversely, they might be feeling defiant or defensive, showing every sign that they don’t agree with our reading of the situation.

U: once we can identify how we’re feeling, we can consider why we feel like that and what might happen as a result.

For example, we might be feeling anxious because a previous performance conversation went badly or worried about the reaction we’ll face. This might be making us apprehensive about getting it wrong again and not achieving the outcome we want.

L: The R and U stages give us the insight we need to be able to label our emotions more accurately. Think about writing them down, and be as nuanced as possible.

For example, is it just anxiety we’re feeling about that conversation, or are we also a bit embarrassed that we feel like this in the first place? Or frustrated and angry that our colleague is not stepping up?

E: Once we’ve got as far as labelling, we can then start to use the intelligence we’ve gleaned. The E stage is all about expressing how we feel appropriately.

For example, one response in the face of our colleague’s intransigence might be to bawl them out in public. But that’s unlikely to get the result we want. Feeling anxious or even angry about the situation might be a quite natural emotional response, but we don’t have to go with our first reaction. We need to stop, think and manage how we feel.

R: the second R is about that management or regulation.

For example, what can we do to make sure our anxiety doesn’t get the better of us in our meeting? Would scripting what we want to say or playing out some possible scenarios help us to manage our anxiety or keep our cool? What can we do to make the other person feel at ease and able to contribute to the conversation in constructive ways?

Working through each of the letters might feel like overkill for many situations, but practising running through them will help us to develop the skill of identifying and anticipating our emotions more readily, of stopping and thinking more to help us take more considered action.

It also provides a common vocabulary for discussions around emotions with other people.

For Brackett, the key is that all emotions are information we can process and use.

Learning to understand them better provides the cues or signals we need to guide our actions.

And that will help us to build our self-knowledge for the good of ourselves – and the people around us.

Test your understanding

• Identify the two stages to understanding and regulating our emotions encapsulated by the mnemonic RULER.

• Explain what the first “R” in RULER stands for.

What does it mean for you?

• Download and use our RULER template to start practising this self-awareness boosting technique.