The Blue Square Method
We provide 1:1 coaching to help business leaders identify and eliminate their Blue Squares: emotional reactions that derail their effectiveness at work.
Traditional coaching often works well in reducing and controlling your emotions – managing and mitigating your Blue Squares. But anything that triggers stress hormones – stress at work, marital or financial problems, illness, an operation, or even a global pandemic – can cause the immediate and full return of negative emotional reactions. Researchers call this phenomenon the “Return of Fear”, but it can also manifest as the “Return of Anger”, the “Return of Panic” or simply the “Return of Overreaction”. Thankfully, there are techniques that eliminate, not just mitigate, your Blue Squares so you can be in stressful situations without having them come back.
At Blue Square Coaching we have adapted techniques originally designed to help combat veterans eliminate their Blue Squares so that they no longer get triggered by loud noises and cars backfiring. Through this method, our team helps you eliminate the emotional triggers that are powering your Blue Squares, giving you back the power to be more effective at work.
Our method takes a 4 step approach to help you eliminate your Blue Squares once and for all.
Identify: In our initial meeting we help you to identify your Blue Squares.
Mapping the Roots: We go through a set of exercises to help you map out the sources of your Blue Squares.
Rapid Reaction Reduction™ (RRR): Blue Squares trigger your fight-or-flight reaction. We create an “off-switch”, or RRR™, so that you can rapidly reduce your emotional reactions to your Blue Squares. But we don’t stop there.
Eliminate: Finally, we systematically remove each of the roots that are powering your Blue Squares, eliminating your hot-button reactions. You are now free to be your best and do your best work.
While traditional coaching can help you mitigate many emotional reactions that might interfere with your workplace productivity, research suggests that it has a massive achilles heel that can cause it to fail when you need it most.
During a recent New York University (NYU) study, researchers observed volunteers as they viewed various images. Each time the volunteers viewed a specific image, such as a blue square, they received a mild shock. Eventually, the volunteers got reliably anxious (rating their fear as a “7” on a 0-10 scale) whenever they saw the picture of the blue square, even when they weren’t going to be shocked.
Researchers then coached the volunteers to think logically about the blue square – for instance, pointing out that they weren’t even hooked up to the shocking mechanism so they couldn’t get a shock. It worked well. Even though it didn’t completely eliminate the fear, their fear ratings were reduced from a “7” to a “2”.
The volunteers returned the next day for observation, except there was one change – for 3 minutes, half of the students put their hands in ice water while the other half put their hands in lukewarm water. When presented with the blue square image, the “lukewarm group” maintained all of their gains made in their coaching – their fear remained at “2”. However, the “cold water group” had a complete relapse – all of their fear returned to the “7” rating. So, why did this happen?
The cold water acted as a stressor, causing the release of stress hormones that temporarily deactivate the part of the logical brain that controls emotions. And since the fear triggered by the blue square was mitigated but never eliminated, it came right back when the volunteers were stressed.
In the real world, you need to maintain your gains in all situations – you need to eliminate your Blue Squares.
Take the Power Out of Your Blue Squares Today.
Blue Square Coaching is designed to help you eliminate the triggers that are powering your Blue Squares, giving you the power to be your best.