Global Leadership Hub

Our ability to regulate emotions directly impacts how successfully we can navigate through various situations and environments. Without this skill, external events control us, leaving us disempowered. Once extremely powerful leadership strategy for emotional self-mastery is the ABCD Model, a concept rooted in 'Cognitive Behavioural Therapy' and beautifully aligned with Emotional Intelligence.

Emotional regulation is a vital skill essential for effective leadership. The key lies in understanding the interplay between our beliefs and emotional responses, as well as how we can transform limiting beliefs into empowering ones. It is important to unlock our Emotional Intelligence, a crucial leadership skill, and embrace positive, empowering beliefs, so we can truly take charge of our lives, both personally and professionally. 

It is often the general belief that our feelings and emotions are steered by external events. How often do we say things such as “Incompetent people make me feel annoyed and frustrated”, or “I’m depressed because I didn’t get the promotion”. This presupposes that somebody or something other than ourselves can directly determine how we are feeling. However, there is a step in between the external event and our emotional response; our perception of the event, or in other words our thoughts that create an internal representation (emotional state) of what we externally experience. 

“The quality of your thinking determines t
he quality of your life.” 
~  A.R. Bernard

The reality that we experience is largely determined by what we do inside our head; how we think and how we communicate with ourselves. Therefore, it is not necessarily the reality (the external events) that shapes us, but the lens through which our brain views the world that shapes our reality. And this becomes a crucial part in unlocking our Emotional Intelligence.

Understanding and utilising the ABCD Model allows us to regulate our emotions and adopt success strategies for personal growth and to stay in control of situations at work and in life. 

ABCD Model

Let’s further explore and unpack this concept with a model that is based on the ‘Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)’. It explains the process from an external event to decisions.

ABCD overview

‘A’ = Activating event
An activating event encompasses an external event that has occurred, a future event that we anticipate occurring, or an internal event in our mind, such as an image, memory, or dream. ‘A’ is often referred to as our ‘trigger’.

‘B’ = Beliefs
Our beliefs include our thoughts, our personal rules, the demands we make or expectations we have (of ourselves, the world, and other people), and the meaning we attach to external and internal events.

‘C’ = Consequences
Consequences include our emotions, behaviours, and physical sensations that accompany different emotions.

‘D’ = Decision (cognitive)
Decisions are based on the beliefs we hold about the previous steps and are hence either constructive or destructive in nature. 

ABCD explained in detail [including a case study]

‘A’ is an Activating event (also often referred to as our trigger), and it is either:

• A real external event that has occurred
• A future event that we anticipate occurring, or
• An internal event in our mind, such as an image, memory, or dream. 

The general assumption is that:

‘A’ (Activating event or trigger) causes ‘C’ (Consequence - emotion), and we experience a positive or negative physical sensation or feeling which leads to constructive or deconstructive behaviours and actions. 

For example: (A) “Incompetent people… = (C) … make me feel annoyed and frustrated.” 

But interestingly, it is not ‘A’ (the activating event/trigger) that causes ‘C’, but much rather ‘B’ (our beliefs) that cause ‘C’ (our emotional consequences).

For example: (B - our personal rules, demands and/or expectations) “I believe that by now they should know how to do their job!… = (C) It makes me feel annoyed and frustrated.”

A detour into Beliefs (useful vs limiting)

Our beliefs include our thoughts, our personal rules, the demands we make (on ourselves, other people and the world), and the meaning that we attach to external and internal events.

For example: “By now they should know how to do their job – hence I am feeling annoyed and frustrated.”

Beliefs are incredibly powerful, because they can create emotions and our reality. Therefore, we must adopt empowering, rather than limiting beliefs.

[bəˈlif] an acceptance that something is true, especially one without proof.

It is quite unbelievable what we can be telling ourselves and accept as true. We use our judgement filter in our thoughts to make sense of the world around us, and come to quick conclusion to what something means, without proof. 

“We know so much that isn’t so!” ~
 Ronald Reagan

Can we agree that quite often, beliefs are nothing but convenient assumptions?

“Whether you think you can, 
or you think you can't – you're right.” 
~ Henry Ford

How can failure be a convenient assumption? Well; as long as we tell ourselves that we can’t, we don’t have to step up and try and therefore avoid failure. Agreed? However, that is not a leadership mindset and if we want to empower ourselves and improve our emotional self-mastery to change our professional and personal life for the better, we need to decide to renew the beliefs that are no longer true.

Regrettably, we often buy into our fear-based limitations and choose beliefs that don’t nurture or support us in achieving the outcomes we are looking for. Those can include:

• I can’t…
• Just do nothing...
• It is impossible! (to succeed in today’s busy and ever-changing ecosystem)

We must be careful what we accept to be true, right, wrong, etc. as it is often based on comparing past experiences with what is now. Our beliefs are developed to support what we initially told ourselves during an event, and then we go searching for evidence, or proof, of this belief.  Our personalities, attributes, values and beliefs are shaped when we are fairly young, and unfortunately, we stop updating that information. The people who are central to our lives as children have a huge influence on what we believe about ourselves and what we communicate to ourselves during the next phase of our life. We go along, without questioning, with what we have absorbed like sponges when we lived with our families, our tribe, our school friends, etc. Unfortunately, most of us stay with these beliefs without questioning them at a later stage. Sometimes we are carrying around beliefs that we adapted possibly 25 years ago around events that we hardly think of as adults.  But if we want to empower ourselves and unlock our Emotional Intelligence to change our professional and personal life for the better, we need to decide to renew the beliefs that are no longer true.

So, how about ditching limiting beliefs and adopting these useful ones instead?