HOW TO PAY ATTENTION TO EARLY WARNING SIGNS

Managers, like most people, generally do not see emotions until they leap out into the open . This is because most employees are busy working and normal emotions will stay hidden, protected, private or underground . Emotions can remain covert for quite a while picking up speed and volume.

Managers don't want to spend their days in hyper- vigilance watching for signs of covert emotions. What fun is that? Good managers just want to do their jobs and not focus on the negative. Unfortunately while others are allowed the luxury of ignorance, today's cutting-edge managers have no choice. Neither do administrators, owner, directors, and CEOs who want to increase the bottom line have the luxury of turning away from watching for changes in the wind..

Learning how to keep an eye out for signs of emotional spinning means raising your awareness levels and creating a fine- tuned set of recognition skills. Managing emotions does not mean becoming a psychologist or a spy, although there are skills in these areas you must learn. Emotional Continuity Management is risk management . When everyone in your company becomes aware of the risk of emotional mismanagement. your company will have the upper hand in predicting, managing and avoiding unnecessary emotional spin events.

Managers are concerned if they spend time trying to recognize emotional spinning they are wasting company time looking for trouble. They complain that they are not showing faith in people. Regular people don't want to appear paranoid . The hard fact is that emotional spinning does not care about your opinions or resistance to learning how to manage, because emotional spinning has a life of its own. And intentional spinners, like Emotional Terrorists, are counting on your resistance so they can take more emotional or physical territory. Emotional Terrorists are expansionists seeking new collections of people, places and things to increase their empires. Ask yourself if you really think it a waste of company time and money, not showing good faith, or demonstrating paranoia to purchase a fire extinguisher? Then go have that discussion with a fire. Then go ask an arsonist. If you are still worried about good stewardship over the corporate dollar, call five attorneys and ask them to give you their hourly fees for court appearances . Pay attention.

A set up for an intentional emotional spin can look like this:

• Andrew starts a rumor about layoffs

• Bryan tells Nora that his marriage is ending and asks whether she would be willing to listen to him later after work because he needs a special friend right now, someone who would understand and appreciate him like she does. He tells Nora she is special.

• Lonni cozies up to Desmond and tells him that she thinks it is a crime that Frank was given the assignment he wanted and now she thinks that Frank might be having an affair with the supervisor. She tells him she is on his side if he wants to fight it

• Gena repeats Jeanne's rumor, but adds her beliefs that it might have something to do with Bruce getting an attorney

• Carl calls all his team members after work encouraging them not to go to the meeting with the new consultant, because he heard that he might be taping the meeting, and then would share that with the bosses

• Krissy blows off the new training meeting and tells her co-workers that if they go they are just "kiss-asses" and that if they want to keep their jobs they should just let the manager know how absurd it is to keep on getting all this training when it doesn't help

• Hanna tells the manager what Gene said with the additional information that "everyone is now upset" and that Jared, the assistant manager, mentioned he might quit over this

• Karen has been trying to stir people up for years to keep her power and control base. She is in a union. The rest of the business is not union. She brings in union reps that start promoting their cause. She uses this information to terrorize people who are under-represented.

• Jorge is an anti-union manager who uses threats of lay-offs and bankruptcy to terrorize people against joining a union