The Balance Between Emotions and Intellect: Emotional Intelligence Insights from an Air Force Pilot

High emotions and tense situations can mean trouble—and no one understands this more than recent Mindfulness Manufacturing guest Shawn Dawley! Shawn is a former Air Force pilot and the president of OT2 Consulting, where he uses his lessons from his combat experience and the aviation industry to help leaders overcome challenges, inspire their teams, and find the balance between emotions and intellect.

While manufacturing might not have as many literal life-or-death situations as the Air Force, Shawn’s lessons on emotional intelligence (and more!) are important reminders for all leaders.

Lesson #1: The Danger of a Hostile Environment

Have you ever been in a situation when you encountered a team member who was in a bad or downright hostile mood? How did you react? Most likely, you steered clear or avoided them until their mood improved. This is a natural reaction, but it can mean big problems for your entire organization, especially when one person’s negative mood causes others to avoid voicing feedback or expressing concerns. If a team feels like they can’t express their opinions or point out problems, it can lead to decreased morale, stalled productivity, and an increase in preventable delays or mistakes.

Lessons #2: The Impact of High Emotions

Anger and frustration aren’t the only options that can cause problems! In his podcast, Shawn stresses the importance of all emotions. While you might have trouble with decision-making when you’re angry or stressed-out, it can be equally difficult to make decisions when you’re excited or euphoric. Whenever you’re at “your emotional worst,” it can impact the way you make decisions and interact with your team.

Lesson #3: Know Your Emotional Triggers

To avoid getting caught up in your high emotions, think about your emotional triggers. What causes you to get upset or frustrated? Do certain situations cause you to react in specific or negative ways? Spend some time thinking about past experiences, how you reacted, and what you could have done differently. By learning your own emotional triggers, you can take proactive steps toward controlling how you react in high-emotion situations. Everyone has emotional triggers, but how you react to them is what sets you apart.

Lesson #4: To Understanding Others, Form Relationships

Along with understanding your own emotions, it’s important to understand the emotions and reactions of others on your team. To understand how and why your team members react in certain ways, spend some time getting to know them. In particular, be curious about their past experiences. This can help you discover new insights into their behavior and emotions. For example, you might learn that someone reacts negatively to feedback because of their history with a strict parent or a short-tempered former boss. Once you know the triggers behind someone’s emotional responses, you can work with them to find the best ways to move forward.

Learn More on the Podcast

To hear more of Shawn’s unique stories and lessons from his time in the Air Force, listen to his podcast here.

At Manufacturing Greatness, Trevor Blondeel works with manufacturers to connect the top to the shop floor. If you’re ready to improve your own organization, contact Trevor to learn how Manufacturing Greatness can help you build stronger leaders and develop a dynamic, high-performing workplace.

Mindfulness Manufacturing

Our show is about providing listeners with real stories that come from a place of experience, transparency, and authenticity. Most importantly it’s about what we learn from these stories and applying Mindfulness in our everyday work and personal lives.
Our intention is to create an environment where people can learn through open honest discussions on how we apply Mindfulness. Although our experiences and stories come from time in a manufacturing environment hence the title “Mindfulness Manufacturing”, we still see our discussions and topics relatable to any organization or profession.

When a mistake occurs on the plant floor, your mind might jump to one question: who caused this issue, and should I write them up for their mistake? But there’s a more productive approach you could be taking—and in this episode of Mindfulness Manufacturing, guest Dr. Jake Mazulewicz breaks it all down!

With a background as a firefighter, EMT, and military paratrooper, Jake knows the challenges of high-hazard industries, and works with organizations to reduce errors and create safer, more reliable workplace environments. In this episode, Jake shares why you can’t procedularize everything, including the way you handle errors and accidents, and offers great insights and stories about how to use connection and curiosity to improve safety, address errors, and strengthen your organization.

3:35 – Procedures and policies are the work that is imagined, and on the floor is how the work actually gets done

4:19 – The work as-done is almost always radically different than the work as-imagined

5:20 – Even when you have standards and people show up wanting to do a good job, you can still see issues that need to be addressed

6:44 – There will always be areas that absolutely need to have procedures in place

8:02 – There are also adaptive jobs, which leans less into procedures and more intro troubleshooting and tacit human knowledge

10:56 – In an ideal environment, both mechanistic and adaptive models are used and respected and needed

12:11 – There are four levels, ranging from strict procedurals to looser guidelines that show what to do, but not how to do it

15:36 – Tacit knowledge gets shared through conversations

16:22 – A way to share important information is to have frontline experts record videos sharing their insights to problems, especially those that are not covered in procedures

19:44 – Through conversation and connection, more knowledge is shared

21:58 – Debriefing also plays a central role

23:45 – If you have strong discipline, you’ll find more freedom

25:31 – In most situations, errors are signals, not defects

27:07 – When an error occurs, be curious and find the deeper cause of the problem

Connect with Jake Mazulewicz

Find him on Linkedin

Visit his website