Category Archives: Emotional Intelligence

Reflections from the dentist’s chair

Emotional Intelligence

Yesterday I went to the dentist to have a filling.  In the midst of a busy morning – getting things done before going up to Blackheath – I didn’t give it a second thought.  When I sat down in the dentist’s chair, however, I could feel my body tensing and I experienced waves of emotion.

My dentist, Lydia Pink at Sparkly Smile Dental Practice in Blackheath, is utterly fantastic and I knew – my rational brain knew – I had nothing to fear.  We’ve done work together with nary a problem.  No, this was the emotions of a much younger me, stimulated by being in the same situation many years earlier.

This was not “the same situation”, of course.  As a child having my first fillings, I don’t remember ever having an anaesthetic.  Dental techniques were not as developed then as they are today.  More importantly still, empathy was not then in fashion:  I don’t remember anyone showing any understanding of my fears.  Back then, I didn’t have what I needed to handle the situation alone.  No wonder it still casts a shadow in my adult life.

I wonder what responses are stimulated in you by reading this posting.  Perhaps you, too, have fears about letting someone loose with your teeth.  Perhaps you are ready to shut out these or other emotions – in yourself, in others.  It’s easy to deny them (by projecting them onto others, for example).  It’s easy to judge them.  And still, the bottom line is this:  both you and those you live and work with experience emotions in the here and now that reflect your childhood experiences.

The role that emotional intelligence plays in our effectiveness at work and at home is now well studied and documented.  As a leader, you are likely to be far more effective if you are able to embrace emotions – your own, others’ – and have ways to respond.  Your ability to respond effectively makes a difference in the moment.  It also makes a difference over time.

And Lydia?  She was quick to acknowledge my emotions and to accept them.  She took time over her work, telling me ahead of time what would happen and checking in with me to see how I was doing.  What I did notice and welcome were tears, which I take to be the grieving of a much younger me for the needs that were not met in my childhood dentistry experiences.  I wonder if I am letting go of the fears I felt then and everything that came with them.

Locked in conflict?

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, , ,

If you’re locked in conflict and don’t know which way to go, take a moment to watch this short clip on YouTube.  I offer it because it may help you to reconnect with your sense of humour (it’s funny!) and also because it offers a key insight into conflict and why it persists.

A number of thinkers in the fields of negotiation, mediation, communication and conflict highlight the need to let go of positions and focus on interests.  Maintaining a position involves taking the view that only one course of action – often requiring a particular response from another – will work and seeking to persuade that other to follow your path.

When you can understand what needs will be met by your preferred course of action you can find alternative ways of meeting those needs.  Equally, if you’re willing on both sides to understand each other’s needs, you can explore ways in which both people’s needs can be met.  Strangely, when you identify actions you can take to reach your desired outcomes and which do not depend on a particular response from another, the conflict tends to go away.  In case you need it, remember the mantra “you can’t change the others, you can only change yourself”.

Marriages can be saved, business deals can be struck, countries can avoid war by letting go of positions and connecting with underlying interests.

On shame and guilt

Emotional Intelligence,

It’s a few days since I wrote about Milton Rokeach’s book The Three Christs of Ypsilanti and something is lingering with me still.  It takes a while to trace it back to Rokeach’s book and then, in turn, to its final pages.  Nor do I find it all in one place with a neat quote to share.  It is the difference between the feelings of shame and guilt.

Rokeach, sharing conclusions towards the end of the book, highlights the difference between two (whom he names Clyde and Joseph) whose feelings of shame seem to be linked to a sense of incompetence.  The third (whom he names Leon) has feelings of guilt which seem to be linked to forbidden impulses and the striving for goodness.  Something about this distinction is sitting with me.

Perhaps the quote I seek is contained in the final paragraph of Rokeach’s Afterword.  He says:

“I found out from my “teachers”, the three Christs of Ypsilanti, exactly in what sense they were trying to be God-like.  They were striving for goodness and greatness, and such strivings, I came to understand, are really the strivings of all human beings.  The main difference between the three of them and the rest of us who are also striving to be God-like is that whereas the rest of us can bring ourselves to admit the impossibility of our ever becoming absolute or infinitely moral or competent, the three Christs found it difficult to admit such an impossibility.  Nonetheless I learned that what all of us have in common with the three Christs is that we all strive to maintain and enhance our self-conceptions and self-presentations as competent and moral.  This is one of the major ways in which humans who would be Christ or Christ-like are distinctively different from other human beings”.

As I write I reflect on the implications of what Rokeach says.  It seems to me, for example, that having made this distinction, our feelings of guilt and shame can guide us to our deepest yearnings towards goodness and greatness.  And when the emotional charge is high, there is scope for us to understand the underlying beliefs we impose on ourselves and perhaps the disproportionately high expectations.

Equally, as leaders, observing such feelings in others, we are able to make finer distinctions for understanding that feelings of guilt reflect yearnings to do good, whilst feelings of shame reflect yearnings to be competent.  If we know what our staff may be telling themselves, including those things of which they may not be consciously aware, we know better how we might respond.

More deeply still, I notice that reflecting on this distinction stimulates compassion in me for self and others.  For surely such feelings reflect not only our yearnings and strivings, but also a lack of acceptance of – and compassion for – our fundamental human nature.

I wonder, what does this posting stimulate in you?

Great expectations

Emotional Intelligence, ,

Yesterday I wrote about beliefs in a posting about Milton Rokeach’s wonderful, touching and thought-provoking book The Three Christs of Ypsilanti.  This book raises an issue which is present in all our lives – the seemingly intractable nature of some of beliefs.  I am thinking especially of those beliefs formed in childhood which continue to have a strong emotional resonance and often to hold us back, even when our thinking brain knows they are irrational and has every proof that it’s time to let them go.  Thinkers in the field of neurolinguistic programming (or NLP) have coined the term “limiting beliefs” to describe such beliefs and offer techniques for changing or out-framing them.  These are the beliefs that, quite simply, hold us back.

Recently, the issue of limiting beliefs turned up for a client in one of our coaching sessions.  Positioned in a new and senior job she reported significant progress across a number of areas.  Everything was on track.  Why then, I wondered, did she not seem more happy and optimistic?  When I explored this with her up came a stonking great limiting belief: roughly, if I celebrate my successes and expect too much (hence “great expectations”) it will all go wrong.  As part of our discussion, she recognised that if only she could celebrate her successes more she would feel less anxiety about the future and be more relaxed.  Still, knowing this was not enough to allow her simply to let go of her old belief.  (It rarely is).

There are all sorts of ways to respond to a limiting belief.  One way, for example, is to act as if it isn’t true – in the words of Susan Jeffers to feel the fear and do it anyway.  Using this approach implies, in this case, taking small steps to notice and celebrate each success as it comes.  The benefit of this approach is that, over time, we have real experiences that demonstrate our old belief is not true.  This is about beginning to walk new neural pathways.  Another way is to demonise the part of us that holds the belief, calling it our “gremlin” for example, subjecting it to ridicule and, in this way (or so the theory goes) laughing our limiting belief right out of town.  Perhaps you can guess that I’m not a great fan of this approach, both because I prefer a more compassionate approach and because I’ve seen how often the limiting belief, banished in this way, continues to exercise a powerful force in the lives of the very person who has dismissed it as rubbish.

At the same time, part of making changes is to recognise that you don’t have to have all the steps to your end goal mapped out in advance.  Sometimes it’s enough to know that you don’t want your life to be circumscribed by the power of a limiting belief and to ask yourself, if this is my end goal, what might be my next step?  This question draws on the wisdom of the person who is going to make the change.  For me, a useful first step when it comes to limiting beliefs is simply to get curious – not with the aim of changing or suppressing your limiting belief, but simply to understand the territory you’re in.  To this end, I offer some questions to ponder next time you find yourself bumping up against your own limiting beliefs:

  • What is the belief you’re holding?
  • What is the impact in your life of holding this belief?
  • What more might be possible if you didn’t hold this belief?
  • What part of you is holding this belief?
  • What does it want for you?
  • What relationship do you have with the part of you that’s holding the belief?
  • What relationship do you have with the belief itself?
  • Was there ever a time in your life when you remember not holding this belief?  When?
  • Does anyone else in your life (especially but not only family) hold this belief?
  • What is it you’re really wanting in relation to this belief?
  • What else do you know about this belief?
  • What more does this belief want to tell you?
If you’re willing to share, please use the comments section to tell us about your limiting beliefs – from your experiences of successfully moving beyond the limitations of an old belief to your experiences as you play (yes, play) with the questions above.

 

Reflecting on the nature of human beliefs

Emotional Intelligence,
“Every man would like to be God,
if it were possible;  some few find
it difficult to admit the impossibility”

Bertrand Russell
Power

Some things have to be done.  So for me, no good holiday is complete without seeking out the best book store in town and having a root around.  This is one of the things I did in New York recently when I visited the wonderful Strand book store, which boasts 18 miles of new, second hand and rare books and the tag line where books are loved.

Often I come away from my book shopping experience with books I have been hankering after for a while and this was no exception.  In addition, I also came away with a book which was new to me – though by an author known to me – Milton Rokeach’s The Three Christs of Ypsilanti.

Rokeach was a social psychologist practising in the US in the middle of the twentieth century and with a particular interest in beliefs and values.  In July 1959, Rokeach brought together three men at the Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan, who had all been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic and each one of whom believed himself to be Christ.  Rokeach’s interest in the nature of beliefs and values was such that he wanted to study the impact on the three men’s beliefs about their identity of meeting with other men who also purported to have the same unique identity.  Rokeach and his colleagues worked with the three men for a period of two years, organising regular meetings between the men and observing the men’s responses.

Many years later, writing an Afterword in 1981 to the book he had written in 1964, Rokeach had cause to reflect on the nature of his experiments, recognising that he, too, had played God in the way that he imagined he could change the men by “omnipotently and omnisciently” arranging and rearranging the men’s daily lives, expressing some regret that he had not seen this at the time he first wrote the book and sharing his growing discomfort about the ethics of the experiment he had conducted all those years before.  It does, indeed, seem unlikely that such an experiment would be conducted today by Western scientists.  It seems to me that this fact serves to highlight rather than to diminish the book’s value.

Rokeach approaches his task from the point of view of the theoretical scientist, beginning, for example, by making some theoretical distinctions about different kinds of beliefs and ending – even in his afterword – by sharing key learnings.  His aim in conducting his experiment was to test some of those beliefs, which he did.  Even so, it’s striking to me that his book serves to bring the reader into close contact with the three men he studied.  It is by no means easy to understand the way they view the world and still, I found myself responding to them with compassion – that is, a fellow feeling with three men seeking to make their way in the world.

Throughout the book, Rokeach underlines how the delusions adopted by the three men serve a purpose even though we may not know what that purpose is.  As it happens, their beliefs are sufficiently far from reality that it’s easy to dissociate ourselves from these men.  At the same time, for me, Rokeach’s study serves to illustrate how we form certain beliefs in response to our early circumstances and how we continue to maintain those beliefs long after our original circumstances have changed.  It also highlights to me how a belief does not sit in splendid isolation in the human psyche.  Rather, it is part of a system of beliefs which are inter-connected.  To change one belief is to open up the need to change other beliefs that are connected.  This issue affects not only the three Christs of Ypsilanti.  Rather, it is one with which we all grapple.

I write more about the nature of beliefs elsewhere.  For now though, as I write, I am sitting with the experience of reading a book which is, in some ways, the most intimate of books.  It is a study about three (perhaps four) real men.  And as we read about those men we get to see glimpses of ourselves.

The missing dialogue

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence,

Just before I turned off my Blackberry at the beginning of my flight to New York last week I picked up a message from my friend Len Williamson about an article he is planning to write.  It’s called The Missing Dialogue.  I reply and ask him, can I share his thoughts on my blog?  I’m pleased to pick up his yes as I land at Heathrow on my return.

Len points to the work of a number of thinkers in this field – David Bohm, Bill Isaacs, Daniel Yankevich – and highlights the phrase from JMW (Len, who is JMW?) – “all that is ever needed is a conversation”.  He also notes how easy it is to fail to have those conversations we most need to have.  On a teleconference with clients he hears three missing dialogues being played out and reflects on the pain and expense of failing to hold the dialogue.

In his brief sketch for his article Len writes:


The missing dialogue is the one that has the most potential to reduce stress in your life, move you towards meeting your goals and help you to fulfil your potential.  Everyone has at least three missing dialogues and most have many more.  The three you will have will be at least one at home with your partner, one or more at work with your colleagues and at least one at play with your friends.  The dialogue is missing because you avoid it.  You avoid it to protect yourself and others from the assumed consequences of having the dialogue.  Paradoxically, this avoidance creates stress for you as you do not follow the path you want to take.  It also holds you back from progress towards your goals and it limits your potential.  This paper shows it is possible to have these missing dialogues in a way that does not lead to all the fears you have about the consequences of doing so.

This is a rich topic.  I agree that all sorts of people fear the possible outcomes from conversations and I notice how this keeps people from dialoguing with themselves – let alone each with other.  I notice how much people lack skills in this area and how, even when people have skills and choose to open up the dialogue, this offers no guarantee of a constructive response.  In my own life I increasingly put out the invitation even when I believe there will be unwillingness or lack of skill on the part of my partner in dialogue:  whatever the response I know more as a result of opening the dialogue than I did before.

One dialogue that is often missing in key relationships in the workplace and elsewhere is this:  how shall we dialogue with each other?  As a regular reader you already know how much store I lay by establishing ground rules for dialogue in a wide range of conversations.  Sometimes these are ground rules I follow myself and which help me to stay centred and on track in the most difficult of conversations.  In some relationships I have agreement to a shared set of rules – amongst fellow practitioners of Nonviolent Communication, of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and of the Skilled Facilitator Approach (and because I’ve written about all three on this blog I have created links to the library of postings in each area).

I wonder, what are the missing dialogues in your life at present?  I encourage you to take time to identify and reflect on them and, if you feel bold enough, to share one or two of them here.  I also wonder what this subject evokes for you and what more you’re interested to know.  Please leave your comments as a way of supporting Len in writing his article.

Embracing my inner diva

Emotional Intelligence, ,

Hurrah!  I’m here.  Today I have my first rehearsal in New York for two concerts.

In recent days I have been sharing a joke or two with clients about coming to New York to indulge my inner diva.  I recognise that it’s only relatively recently that I have felt comfortable to own the diva within, because of the negative associations I have with the word.  I remember, for example, singing a number of years ago in a concert with Jessye Norman.  The choir and orchestra members were banished from our normal backstage areas in order to keep our humble germs out of Ms Norman’s breathing space.  This, surely, was the behaviour of a diva.

Today I take a moment to reflect.  What does it mean to be a diva?  I turn to Caroline Myss, whose book Sacred Contracts highlights the presence of archetypes in our lives and explores their implications for our learning.  One of the key messages I took from Myss’s book is that each archetype has a light attribute and a shadow attribute – if you like, the power to do good or the power to do harm in our own lives and to the lives of others.  I was sufficiently intrigued by Myss’s theory that I bought her Archetype Cards and I take a moment to look for the card which relates to the diva.  I am disappointed when I find none.

I turn next to Roger Hamilton’s book Your Life Your Legacy, in which he explores what you might also term archetypes in relation to generating wealth.  I know that one of these archetypes is the first cousin of the diva – the star.  And I also know – because I have completed Hamilton’s on-line diagnostic – that my own star energy is high, second only to my creator energy.  Turning to the brief initial descriptions of each archetype, I read The Creators set the stage, the Stars steal the show.  This, I think, begins to tell me something about my inner diva.

Applying Myss’s concept of the light attribute and the shadow attribute to Hamilton’s description of the wealth profiles I begin to explore the two sides of the diva.  The origins of the word diva are, of course, in the Italian word for a female deity – a goddess.  More recently the word has come to be applied to – as Wikipedia currently has it – a celebrated female singer.  Hamilton says of the star:  Stars get their most valuable feedback in the limelight, and find their flow while on their feet.  As a result, they are able to evolve their attraction on the fly, and it is their personal magnetism that is their greatest value.  The essence of the star is to create a unique brand which attracts others and in this way to touch the lives of many.  For the diva this unique brand centres around singing and performance.  Building on Hamilton and Myss, I recognise the role the diva plays in stepping into the limelight and shining a light out into the world.  She is there to express herself through her singing and in this way to inspire others.

What then, of the shadow attributes of the diva?  The diva in her shadow side can seek to eclipse others for personal gain.  Or she may compromise herself in some way, failing to express her unique brand and in this way eclipsing herself and depriving others of her own kind of leadership.  Perhaps the heart of the shadow attributes of the diva is, by failing fully to embrace her inner diva, to keep herself or others small.

I think back to that backstage experience of Jessye Norman and recognise that it’s not always comfortable to be around a diva, even when she’s doing what she needs to do in order to perform.  Perhaps my own inner diva was challenged in the presence of someone who was so fully embracing and living out her diva identity.

If my own fate includes a strong dose of the inner diva, I wonder, what about yours?

   

When emotions rise high in the workplace

Emotional Intelligence
Recently, I was surprised when someone responded to a posting I’d made on a discussion forum by saying that I’d been a bit “harsh” in my posting and describing it as “inquisitorial”.  Initially I was stunned:  I couldn’t square the response with the content or – more importantly – the spirit and intention of my posting.  It took the response of a second member of the forum, which included a number of inferences-presented-as-truths, for me to become aware that a misunderstanding of gigantic proportions had occurred.
One member of the forum responded by writing an impassioned plea:  “I have watched the ‘warm’ exchanges and have become more convinced of the futility of communicating anything other than data via email, forum postings or equivalent batch communications.  Texting with emoticons helps but it is still a very poor option.  Chatting helps because of the instant nature of the responses.  Face to face is the name of the game or telephone/Skype as a second best.  To communicate well we need the subtleties of body language and tone of voice…  Have we not learned the lessons that we teach to others?”  Niels Bohr, physicist, is variously quoted as saying that the opposite of a fact (or a trivial truth) is a falsehood but that the opposite of a great truth may also be true.  I wonder:  what are the opposing truths of electronic communication in the third millennium?
My colleague on the forum summarises one side of the case and echoes a view which is widely held by those who train others in communication in the workplace.  They point to the greater risk of misunderstanding between people by e-mail, when inferences are easily made.  They also point to the greater likelihood that people will reach a new understanding if they take time to communicate directly.  Receiving an e-mail from a colleague who is angry or upset, you may choose to respond in kind – it’s easy for one angry e-mail to stimulate strong emotions in the recipient who may well react in the same vein rather than taking time to process the emotions the e-mail stimulates before choosing a wise response.  The wise response may well be to pop your head round your colleague’s door and say “Wow!  I got your e-mail and I can see you’re not happy.  Can we talk?”
So what is the opposite of this point of view?  Personally, I wonder if it’s good enough in the third millennium to say that e-mail is simply for communicating data and anything else belongs elsewhere.  There is, of course, the question of what constitutes “data” – isn’t it all (including the angry e-mail) data?  There’s also the question of how we work today.  I have any number of clients who have colleagues, clients and other key contacts on different continents and who need to communicate effectively across geographies and time zones, making face-to-face and even telephone communication challenging.  Above all I wonder if the opposite point of view is this:  that it’s not the medium of communication (e-mail, phone, face-to-face) but the skills we have in communicating – the emotional intelligence – that make the difference, no matter what medium we use.  Even the man or woman who stops to think “Oh!  This is not one to respond to by e-mail”, for example, is succeeding in his or her communication because s/he brings insight and understanding as much as because s/he chooses to communicate face to face.
For me there are two truths to add here:  that communication is inherently difficult and that organisations could be far more effective in addressing the challenges inherent in communication.  On reflection, I wonder if my posting stimulated strong emotions in at least one of my colleagues.  I say this without judgement – not least because I, too, experienced strong emotions on reading his words.  This is the “amygdala hijack” Goleman describes in his books on emotional intelligence.  At the same time, there are things we can do that make it more likely that we will be successful in our communications.  Some of them take time and effort to learn – it’s not easy to master your emotions in the moment, for example.  Some of them can be translated into simple rules, such as “check your inferences before you respond”.  One of them is to accept that successful communication is possible only when we accept and embrace the full panoply of human experience and the role it plays in communication, which is often messy and difficult before it’s successful.
Recently I pointed to some of my favourite resources in this area in a blog posting entitled Handling Objections.  I wonder, what is your truth when it comes to communication in the workplace?

As a leader are you “judge and jury”?

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,

On Monday, after spending four years in jail, the young American Amanda Knox was dramatically cleared of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher after her initial conviction was over-turned.

Knox’s original conviction was based on DNA evidence which was later found to be unreliable.  As I write, an article in the New Scientist has highlighted that even before the trial that led to the conviction of Knox and her then boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, there were questions about the strength of the DNA evidence on which the case against the pair rested.

It’s hard to imagine the experience of Meredith Kercher’s family members following her death.  We can barely understand the depth of grief and loss, the yearning for answers (Who killed her?  Why?), the desire for justice for their daughter.  It’s a little easier to understand the pressures that members of the police face to get to the answers to those questions.

There is a risk that, for all sorts of reasons, the police respond to the pressures they face by seeking not so much to uncover the truth as to construct some credible “truth” that will lead to a conviction.  A point comes when evidence is met not so much with open curiosity (what is this telling us?) as with a clear intention to convict (can we use this to support our case?).  After a while, the detective is blind to the very truths he has uncovered because they no longer support him in his aim to convict.  Perhaps the original case against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito was built in this way.  Perhaps it was not.

All this is a long way from the workplace of my readers and still, I wonder if there is some message here for you as a leader.  I wonder if, at times, it seems easier to you to make a case against a member of your team or a colleague in the board room, in order to meet some needs of your own.  Perhaps, for example, it’s easier for you to judge your team member as “lazy” or “incompetent” than it is to see how much s/he is struggling in a new job and to recognise how much you, as manager, have failed to provide the guidance and developmental support s/he needs.  Perhaps, in the Boardroom, it’s easier to dismiss your colleague with a few swift judgements than it is to wonder, “what are his real concerns?” and to explore together what needs you both have that need to be met if you are to come to an agreement that works for your department as well as hers or his.

The signs that you are doing this are easy to spot.  Maybe you are looking for the evidence that supports your case, for example, and dismissing any evidence that might tell another story.  Perhaps you are more concerned with being “right” (and proving that the other person is “wrong”) than you are in building mutual understanding.  Perhaps you are rooted in a single truth rather than open to new information and the possibility that you may, in time, come to a new perspective.

As a leader are you “judge and jury”?  Do you want to be?  If you do, I recommend you ask yourself why and explore your answers fully.  Maybe, in time, you’ll come to a new perspective.

Working as a team to handle objections

Developing as a leader, Emotional Intelligence, ,

Recently, I wrote a posting about handling objections, in which I pointed to a number of resources that are available to the leader who is learning to handle objections in negotiations.  I also asked colleagues about their experiences and fielded an interesting example from someone who, like me, is interested in what Roger Schwarz calls a ‘mutual learning approach’.

Using this approach an objection is not taken as some kind of tactic to achieve the best outcome for the person raising the objection.  Rather, it’s seen as a statement of genuine concern.  By understanding the concern that sits beneath the objection, the person negotiating can think about whether he (or she) can adjust his approach in order to meet the needs of the person objecting, whilst still meeting his own needs.  This is negotiation with the aim of creating outcomes which meet everyone’s needs – a “win, win” outcome.

My colleague’s example speaks for itself so, with his permission, I share it here:

Recently, I had an experience that may be relevant.  When I work with clients I use a charge sheet for different services with different rates for non-profits and for commercial organisations.  I show this to clients on the first business development meeting and I am transparent on how I come to the figures and engage in discussions about the costs and numbers involved.


In a recent discussion with a client there was an objection to the amount listed in the invoices.  I kept the discussion open through my choice of questions.  Originally I didn’t understand his needs with regards the objection.  I also had a need that I didn’t want to have to manage a unique costing structure for this client and potentially for every client.


Exploring the need to modify the amount listed on the invoices, I learned it related to the charge rates of another consultant who happens to be the former MD within my client’s company.  My rates were considerably higher.  Now that was a potentially embarrassing, risky situation!  I can remember the slight glow in my cheeks as I realise the comparison and how my client explained that “Head Office” would see these rates.


In exploring the rates using the mutual learning style, we were able to accommodate and resolve this issue through increasing the transparency of the documentation to show the time I spent on planning and documentation.


I was genuinely trying to be transparent, curious about the client’s needs.  I explained my reasoning, understanding that we both had information that was different – me and my client.  We were doing our best to be mutual learners.