7.1 – Manage Emotional Responses
Purpose & Context
Career Development Professionals (CDPs) reflect on their own values, beliefs, biases, emotions, and responses to client situations. This awareness enables them to acknowledge, and react appropriately to, situations that trigger emotional responses. This protects personal wellbeing while optimizing services delivered to clients.
Effective Performance
Competent career development professionals must be able to:
- P1. Recognize how own behaviours impact others:
- Interpret others’ non-verbal cues, e.g. facial expression, body movement and posture, gestures, eye contact
- P2. Process emotional responses, for example:
- Reframe negative thoughts
- Ground self in the present
- Consider alternative perspectives
- Visualize a positive outcome
- P3. Maintain professional composure, as required, for example:
- Stay calm
- Remove self from the situation, e.g. for a moment
- Take deep breaths with eyes closed
- Choose words wisely, use appropriate tone, volume
- Empathize with person who triggered the emotional response
- Debrief with supervisor
- Pause interaction and reschedule
- P4. Reflect on situations that triggered emotional response:
- Describe situation factually, e.g. timeline of events, people involved
- Recognize feelings triggered by situation, e.g. anger, sadness, disapproval
- Identify reasons for emotions, e.g. perceived unfairness, existing frustrations
- Describe actions taken
- Explore alternative courses of action, where appropriate
- P5. Reflect on impact of reactions on others, for example:
- Identify patterns of unintentional micro-aggressions
- Recognize judgments and assumptions
- P6. Incorporate lessons learned into practice
Knowledge & Understanding
Competent career development professionals must know and understand:
- K1. Anger management techniques
- K2. Conflict resolution techniques
- K3. Principles of reflective practice
Contextual Variables
Competent career development professionals must be able to perform this competency in the following range of contexts:
Glossary & Key References
Terms
Industry-specific terms contained in the standard defined here, where applicable.
Information Sources and Resources for Consideration
Context Rating Scales
Criticality
Q: What is the consequence of a professional being unable to perform this skill according to the standard?
Frequency
Q: How frequent and under what conditions is this skill performed?
Level of Difficulty
Q: Under routine circumstances, how would you rate the level of difficulty in performing this skill?
Time Required to Gain Proficiency
Q: What is the average length of time or number of repeated events that are minimally necessary for an individual to become proficient in performing the skill to the standard?
Career development professionals must continually reflect on how they manage their emotions in a manner that protects their own well-being and that of others with whom they interact.
Autonomy
Practitioners typically perform this competency without supervision, and alone.
Automation
It is unlikely that this competency will automate.