Everyone deals with their emotions in some way or form whether it’s eating tons of ice cream, talking it out with a loved one or exercising. Emotional flexibility is the ability to vary your approach to dealing with your own emotions and those of others (Mod 5). I find that emotional flexibility is important because growing up with a military father in the 1990’s, our feelings didn’t play a big part within our family. Short statements from my father like “Stop crying!” or “You’ll be okay” were words of comfort in my youth years.
I grew up with that tough love mentality so it’s hard for me to be that leader with emotional flexibility. To be that mediator or to lend an ear in certain situations that may arise with my subordinates. If there
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Having the flexibility to contain my emotions, I can start relating to other people’s concerns when they are going through something. If my airman came to me about having issues with his wife. My reaction to my troop before emotional flexibility would’ve been you’re being a bad husband or why did you get married then? Although, now that I am working on my emotional flexibility. I can put aside my way of feeling and start to help my troop by being in his shoes or asking questions to get to the root of the problem. If that doesn’t help, then I would help guide him to the right people to get the proper help. Another example is that there are times when I would see another Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) abuse his power or disregard any type of safety standard just to get a task completed. By understanding emotional flexibility, I can learn to control my anger and approach this individual with a calm demeanor to let him or her know that what they are doing is wrong. That way, the individual doesn’t think that I am trying to pick a fight or bully that person. Otherwise if I didn’t approach the person with emotional flexibility, that it would’ve lead that individual to become defensive and nothing would’ve gotten resolved since we would’ve both been in a screaming