Many of my delegates will know that I’m a big fan of self-development; in the duration of any given programme I’ll normally make references to books I’ve read or courses that I’ve attended that have helped me to grow and develop as an individual. I’m currently re-visiting The Chimp Paradox by Dr Steve Peters and am finding it hugely insightful all over again.
Without giving too much away for those who haven’t read it, the book talks about dealing with an emotional, sometimes destructive part of our brain that tries to take over and dominate our thoughts and behaviour and how we are able, with self-awareness, to recognise when the ‘chimp’ is trying to take control.
I’ve recently slowly re-introduced myself to social media, having taken a significant break from it and have been fascinated and appalled in equal measure to see the amount of people who have a chimp in control of their words and actions, from angry, ranting posts from people lambasting others for daring to see the world in a different way to them to vicious personal attacks on others who, in all probability, the perpetrator has never met. In many ways it is a dangerous enabler that allows people to subject others to what amounts to bullying.
In some respects, you might expect to see this on behaviour on Facebook or Twitter but more surprisingly for me are the amount of ‘chimps’ that are having free-reign on LinkedIn. I’ve always considered LinkedIn to be a platform where professionals can connect, share their experiences, ask advice or interact with others who are specialists in their field. However, of late I’ve seen more and more examples of ‘chimps’ taking control.
For me, there’s a simple solution to this. We all have a chimp (mine is called ‘Axl’ and wears a studded leather jacket!) and we can recognise the signs if we are intelligent and self-aware enough of when the chimp is taking over. My chimp is very active, and I apply a rule when I can feel the emotion taking over – I ask myself the question (calmly) ‘is the action you’re about to take going to be helpful in the long term?’ If it isn’t, let it go.
I also have another coping strategy which works; if you want to send an absolutely furious email to someone then go ahead and write it – but don’t put the recipients name in the ‘To’ field and save it to the draft folder. Re-visit the email again 24 hours later when the chimp has calmed down – either amend it or (as happens 99% of the time) delete it. If people applied to same logic to social media then the world would be a much calmer place.