“In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” —Albert Camus

When the economy takes a dive, ad budgets are often the first thing to get slashed. It creates a lot of anxiety for marketers and the agencies that serve them. Our digital media industry is also staffed primarily with 20 and 30-year olds who may not have been in the workforce for a previous downturn. That makes uncertainty particularly stressful.

I recently had the privledge of creating and presenting a workshop focused on “Managing Change in a Down Cycle” for a group of 100 digital advertising agency executives.

We interactively focused on three main areas:

1. Confronting Personal Fear and Anxiety in Times of High Stress and Change (put on your oxygen mask before helping your child)
2. Techniques to Manage Through Change
3. Being an Emotional Manager

First I covered “Faulty Thinking.” Then we learned about Cognitive Behavior Therapy and practiced some “MBSR” Mindfulness-based Stress Relief with a Calm-Abiding Meditation. Then we all took a Work/Life Balance Assessment and finally I shared with everyone the four key actions to take as a leader when your organization is experiencing anxiety and change.

I was coached on Emotional Leadership by Kelley Rainwater, organizational change consultant and leadership coach and her partner, Ben Thomson, founder of the Santa Fe-based, leading edge Self Care training company, Universal Self-Care Solutions. These are the four things you can do as a manager to increase calm and be a great leader through change. I am going to have Kelley and Ben on an upcoming DishyMix and we’ll go into great detail on these action items:

• Increase Communication
• Maintain Your Executive Presence
• Create A Culture of Self Care
• Harness “Anchors” in the Organization
What makes a great workshop? Participation.

We did a series of “exercises” that kinesthetically taught us new skills for coping with anxiety and change.

First we did an around the room survey of who might be “guilty” of various kinds of faulty thinking, including jumping to conclusions, mind reading, black and white thinking and “awfulizing” scenarios. It was eye-opening to see as I went through the list that the whole room raised their hand at nearly every example of “faulty thinking.” It just goes to show you that not only are you out of your mind but so am I! It gives one confidence to question the status quo and each other in our day-to-day work. And it proves that the humanity in us leaves a lot of room for improvement in our relating.

Next everyone wrote down a nagging fear that was causing them stress. Then each person stood in the front of the room and shared their most personal neurotic angst.

Just kidding for goodness sake! Do you really think I could get anyone to do that! We named the fear, put it to paper and put it aside.

Then I taught everyone about Socratic Thinking, which is a process for rationally thinking through issues. There are a million versions of Socratic Thinking exercises, but the best angle on questions to ask yourself to overcome your fears comes out of a really, really excellent book by Sarah Edelman, PhD called, “Change Your Thinking: Overcome Stress, Anxiety & Depression, and Improve Your Life with CBT*.” CBT is Cognitive Behavior Therapy. It’s a new practice in the field of psychotherapy that focuses on managing our thoughts to change our behavior.

If this is the least bit interesting to you, I cannot recommend Sarah’s book highly enough. Buy a couple copies, as you’ll want to give it to the craziest members of your family and friends the minute you finish it.

Do this exercise right now. What is your biggest fear? Write it down.

Go ahead… I’ll wait.

Seriously. Do it.

Seriously.

Waiting….

OK, good for you if are willing to do this.

Now, let’s confront that fear with these Socratic Questions created just for this situation by Sarah Edelman:

Using Socratic Questioning To Manage Fear
1. Describe the situation that you are worried about.
2. What do you specifically fear might happen?
3. Rate the likelihood that this will happen from 0-100%
4. What evidence supports your worrying thoughts?
5. What evidence does not support them?
6. If it did happen, what actions would you take?
7. Realistically, what is the worst thing that can happen?
8. What is the best thing that can happen?
9. Are there any useful actions you can take now?
10. What would you tell a friend who was in your situation?
11. Realistically, re-rate the likelihood that your fears will be realized from 0-100%

Feel better? Nearly everyone does.

And you can probably take some action now that will alleviate some of your stress. This is a great list to print out and hang in your office.

Now that you’ve learned how to use “Socratic Thinking” to get control of an existing personal fear I’ll teach you about “MBSR” Mindfulness-based Stress Relief in my next blog post.