Raise Your EQ Culture: Persist in Mutinies
Jul 06, 2025
How do you react when your teammates mutiny at work?
When they dig their heels in and say, “Ain’t gonna do it. No way. No how.”
My mentor, Ed Friedman, had a fourth positive work culture truth in his book, Generation to Generation: have the emotional stamina to persist in the face of mutinies.
Anxiety drives teammates to look short-range. That narrow focus creates fear. Fear catalyzes mutinies. They revolt in fear and march off in all directions at once.
So with a mutiny going on, how do you have the emotional stamina to persist?
Here are three tactics to raise your EQ culture in a mutiny:
Access Emotional Stamina
You have more strength than you realize. Think back over previous experiences when anxiety surrounded you, short-sightedness afflicted your vision, and fear paralyzed you. Your teammates disengaged.
If you didn’t have a heart attack, congratulations! You survived it. That experience matured your emotional stamina.
Cue Kelly Clarkson: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger…
Access it as you recall it. Sense it welling up inside.
Tap it to face your current situation.
Raise your EQ culture as you access your emotional stamina.
Advance with Persistence
When you access your emotional stamina, you are equipped with the jet fuel that drives your success engine—persistence.
How many times have you said to a friend, “Hang in there!”?
That’s persistence. You call when they fail to answer your email. You mail a card when the call back is non-existent.
Your emotional stamina is strong enough to keep you moving forward toward your goal. You are equipped with persistence.
Just keep going.
Refuse to quit.
Persist and hang in there.
Raise your EQ culture as you advance with persistence.
Avoid Mutinies
You’re ready to contribute to a positive work culture when your emotional stamina fuels your success engine with persistence. Your last challenge is to avoid those teammates who would roll you under the bus just to cover their own anxiety, short-sightedness, and fear.
The way to raising your EQ culture so you Work Positive and avoid mutinies is to starve them out. Avoid giving any of your emotions or thoughts to the Eeyore Vampires who say, “It can’t be done” and would suck you bone-dry of positive energy. (Discover how to deal with Eeyore Vampires when you get your free copy of my best-seller, Work Positive in a Negative World: Team Edition.)
Attention is your most valuable emotional and mental asset. Divert all of your attention away from mutinies. Focus on how well you separated yourself from the anxiety, your deep commitment to act on the goals beyond the horizons that everyone else sees with the courage to define yourself within the community. These successful experiences turbocharge your emotional stamina which fuels your persistence.
Observe the mutiny.
Refuse to participate in it.
Access your emotional stamina, advance with persistence and avoid mutinies to raise your EQ culture and Work Positive so you create a culture that grows people and profits!
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