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:

None

Glossary & Key References

Terms

Industry-specific terms contained in the standard defined here, where applicable.

None

Information Sources and Resources for Consideration

None

Context Rating Scales

Criticality

Q: What is the consequence of a professional being unable to perform this skill according to the standard?

Moderate risk: CRITICAL

Frequency

Q: How frequent and under what conditions is this skill performed?

Routinely, regular course of procedure

Level of Difficulty

Q: Under routine circumstances, how would you rate the level of difficulty in performing this skill?

Moderate difficulty or complexity

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.

Requisite Work Aids, Tools, Equipment or Materials

None