How To Bring Reality Into Focus
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My friend Clarice called me last week frustrated because her boss told her that she and her team were moving to a different area and effectively immediately Clarice would have a new manager. Sounds familiar?
My friend was disappointed because her new boss is ‘more junior’ than her. When I asked her what she meant by ‘more junior’, she said ‘he is younger, does not know the subject matter I manage, and reports to a peer of my prior boss.’
Up to this point, Clarice’s reaction, which is completely normal and what I and others would have experienced, is entirely emotional. The reality is that Clarice does not know her new manager well – he may have more or different expertise and there may be good reasons why he has that position even if he is younger than his peers or direct reports. Clarice displayed low reality testing.
In the book The EQ Edge, Doctors Steven J. Stein and Howard E. Book define reality testing as the capacity to see things objectively, the way they are, rather than the way we wish or fear them to be.
If you can answer ‘always’ or ‘almost always’ to these questions, then you have high reality testing:
- I see situations as they really are.
- I make realistic plans to achieve my goals.
- I recognize my own biases.
- I have a good sense of my strengths and weaknesses.
- I know when I need to be more objective.
- I know when my emotions affect my objectivity.
- Even when upset, I am aware of what’s happening to me.
- I have a good sense of what is going on around me.
People with high reality testing can remain objective, stay tuned in to what is happening around them and provide clear, realistic direction to their team. By keeping their personal biases at bay, they make trusted and sensible decisions that people in the organization can support.
Like everything in life, we want to have the right amount of reality testing. Too little and we judge people too soon or go through life with rose-colored glasses. Too much and we remain in our comfort zone because we can measure it exactly.
Thankfully, reality testing, like other emotional intelligence skills can be learned, strengthened, and fine-tuned.
1) Listen to your gut
Emotions have a specific mission, which is to provide us with information about an event. Objective analysis and data can only take us so far.
When I am amid deciding something important that have several implications, I allow for time to see how each option feels in my body. If I go with option A, do I feel excited, scared, angry? What about option B? I incorporate those reactions as part of the overall analysis. This way I attempt to balance high reality testing and the emotional information that data cannot provide.
“Always trust your gut, it knows what your head hasn’t figured out yet.” Anonymous
2) Create a fact list
Last year I went through an experience similar to that of Clarice. My team was moving from manager A to manager B, and I was not happy. My reaction was completely emotional. Reality testing deserted me at that critical moment.
That was when I decided to create a fact list as if I were required to present my reaction in court. For every item I had heard on the hallway about my new manager, I asked myself if I had direct, firsthand evidence of that specific behavior. For all of them, the answer was no.
This exercise is also useful when we are evaluating people (across all aspects of life) who present themselves in an extremely positive light, everyone thinks they are the best thing since sliced bread, or who may not be as skilled in tooting their own horns.
This way we select people for specific roles based on their skills, talents, and demonstrated accomplishments instead of choosing the person who everyone likes the most.
“All theory is gray, but the golden tree of actual life springs ever green.” Goethe
3) Use questions
When Clarice called me to vent about her work situation and the fact that her new boss was more junior, my instinct was to gently guide her to a more centered place between objectivity and subjectivity.
I asked her ‘what do you mean when you say more junior?’ I felt her hesitate for a few seconds and in the tone of her voice in the response I could sense the slight shift towards that balance.
You can do the same with your colleagues (including your boss), family members, friends, and yourself. We all have irrational reactions to situations. In most stories there are three versions: ours, theirs, and the truth.
By asking questions we can start moving away from the irrational, purely emotional reaction to a more centered one where we allow facts to coexist. Some examples are ‘what do you mean by X?’, ‘what are you afraid of in this situation?’, ‘give me three examples of why you think Alex is the best person for this project’, and so on.
“There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.” Unknown
Reality testing is the ability to not make ‘mountains out of molehills’. When a situation arises, we face it as best we can, with the resources we have available, and we do not allow it to overwhelm us.
Strengthening our reality testing depends on our ability to identify irrational self-talk that distorts our logical thoughts, and dispute and debate this self-talk as it arises.
We also want to allow emotions to ‘speak’ to us so we can incorporate that information along with the data, objective analysis, and feedback from others.
How is your reality testing? Do you tend to catastrophize, are you going through life with rose-colored glasses, or are you somewhere in the middle? Please, let us know in the comments.
As a leadership coach, I enable talent to achieve bold goals with high standards. My mission is to help women transition from mid to senior level leadership positions by creating awareness, increasing emotional intelligence, and unveiling the tools and choices available to them, so they can confidently realize and fulfill their potential.