If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got… but sometimes you tick someone off because you did what you always do and what others always do. So if you want something different and don’t want someone to get ticked off, learn to do things differently.
Good morning, Francois!
Hi Frank. What have you been up to?
Well, I’ve been delving through layers of information, diving for pearls.
Yeah, that’s sounds like you. So what pearls did you come up with?
Now that would be cheating – you have to dive for your own pearls.
OK Frank, you have the knack to guide me to the richest oyster beds.
What do you have in mind?
Oh, what comes up immediately is: Why is Emotional Intelligence so important? There are many people that are brilliantly intelligent and maters in their field of expertise – and perhaps it’s just my perception, but many of them don’t have and don’t need EQ. Knowledge and intelligence, being unemotionally rational, logical, brilliantly analytical – doesn’t that have the highest value?
Ah, the heart/head dichotomy…
Dico-what!?
The debate about two poles… duality… either-this-or-that thinking… Yes, for a long time logic, rationality and intelligence in that sense was seen as the ‘higher order’ functions of our minds and emotions as lower order functions. We had been taught to avoid emotions, even cut them out completely. Go read any encyclopedic entry and Wikipedia’s criteria for them… it is devoid of how anyone feels about the topic at hand.
You see what I mean?
What I see is that in academic circles they prefer the writing to be factual – as factual as possible. What I know is that even the brightest, most critical and clinical of academics have used emotions to discover the facts that matter, to learn what they are.
Really?
Yes, really. Remember, emotions are a tool to tell us if what we are experiencing is pleasurable or painful, good or bad – so that we can learn to avoid the painful stuff and move towards the pleasurable stuff. We use our emotions to steer our minds and our actions.
Well, I’m sure I’m reflecting what most people think about emotions when I say that they seem to be the end result of what we experience. We see someone doing something and immediately it makes us feel a certain way – we like it or we don’t.
Sure, and that is only a fraction of the whole story. We see/hear someone doing something. Then, if you slow down the process quite a bit, we non-consciously compare what we see and hear to other similar experiences, it passes through our values and beliefs filters (or not), and we tell ourselves something about what we see and hear. And only then do the emotions kick in.
So what you are saying is that if we see and use our emotions as a tool to tell us whether something is good or not that we can actually be more rational, more clear?
Yes, nice pick-up! And it goes hand in hand with what emotional intelligence is: self-awareness – knowing what emotions you are experiencing and where they come from and awareness of others’ emotions; being able to manage emotions in yourself and others by using empathy; using emotions productively to, for example, increase motivation, concentration and attention; being able to handle relationships skillfully.
OK all of that sounds very good, but how is it useful to remain clear and logical?
Remember SCARF?
Yes, it is about not threatening someone’s sense of Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness because they will go into a threat response – fight or flight.
And at that point the reactions become irrational, pre-programmed, even instinctive – logic, rationality and emotions as a useful resource have left the building. In short, emotional intelligence is the thing that helps you to maintain someone else’s and your own SCARF.
So what you are saying is that, if I am able to notice my emotions and not let them run away with me I will always be able to think clearly… and if I help others to maintain their SCARF, they would be able to think clearly… and that thinking clearly is not unemotional, but where emotions are useful to navigate our behaviour… and that the better we are at using our emotions in this way, the more emotionally intelligent we are… and-
You got it! So tell me about a situation where you think emotions got out of hand and we’ll see how applying emotional intelligence can prevent a similar situation from going nova in the future.
A good friend told me something... In their office cutlery and crockery are available for lunch. The tea lady does not collect dirty dishes from the pause area and she does not work every day, so sometimes the dishes are left on the lunch room or heap up in one of the kitchens. One of her colleagues had sent an e-mail to all to remember to put their dirty dishes in the dish washer. For some days it went well, but then the dishes started collecting again. So another colleague sent an e-mail asking for the same. This time another (third) colleague responded on the e-mail, very emotionally, threatening, using bold red typeface and also had a bit of an angry outburst in the office about the situation. So my friend, who overheard the altercation, was quite surprised about the outburst from someone who is normally quite easygoing. What do you think?
Are everyone now too scared to have lunch or have tea?
*both laugh*
No Frank, but there are no dishes on the tables or on the zinc any longer.
Sure. At what cost though? Someone completely ‘lost it’… her dignity, even though just for a moment, was completely lost and one can wonder about this person’s emotional intelligence.
Maybe she was just having a bad day.
Mmmm… people with good EQ have the resources to not have bad days. I know that is a wild statement, but think about this: if I am in control of what I feel I would not continue feeling miserable for a whole day.
It’s our attitude that determines our altitude.
Yes. Now, the colleague that sent the second e-mail… It seems to be a reasonable, rational, logical thing to do, doesn’t it?
Well, yes.
And this person could not have anticipated that the third colleague, normally so easygoing, would react badly… could she?
No, but she should have foreseen that anyone could react badly.
Perhaps. So what would have been better?
I think she could have just come to all of us and requested all, if our dishes had been standing in the kitchen, to take them to the dishwasher immediately and to remember to make it a habit. That way she wouldn’t have thrown the innocent under the bus with the guilty.
That’s a good way of putting it – throwing people under the bus of oncoming trouble. What could she have done instead?
Perhaps if she went to everyone they would have ignored her and there would still be a problem with dirty dishes in the kitchen… On the other hand, if she had been persuasive – getting people to understand the extra effort they cause, or how the team’s image is affected if visitors were to see the dishes left around - the message would hit home and stick. It is so much better to do something for someone you like, or who asked nicely, than for someone whose emotional state you might be threatening and who may explode unexpectedly.
Something so small… So, what do you think everyone in that story learnt? Take a guess, we don’t prescribe to mindreading, but guesses can also be educational…
That leaving dishes on the tables and on the kitchen zinc is unacceptable and that they must be taken to the dishwasher.
Good. And what did they learn about the person who lost her cool on e-mail?
Ah, that she is unpredictable, or that she can throw tantrums too, or that she is not as cool as they think she is.
And what do you think she learnt?
That is OK to lose it from time to time, you could get things done that way… that she has authority… that other people will jump if she stomps her foot.
And what did the one that sent the second e-mail learn?
That e-mails are a little dangerous when you don’t know the recipient’s mood… that it is OK to send out an e-mail to remind everyone – you get things done that way… that it is a good strategy to deflect attention from herself… that it was the right thing to do.
What did you learn about learning?
Well, let me see… I learnt that everything we experience contains learnings and that we are not always aware of what we are learning when we are learning. I learnt that if we have good EQ and modulate our own emotions as the resources they are to navigate experiences and exchanges we tend to learn faster and we learn better ways of doing things than being stuck in intense emotions. If our emotions are out of control, we are out of control of our behavior and may lose out on valuable learnings or learn things that come back to haunt us later.
Good summary, but a little on the abstract side... Imagine yourself as a video camera, or a speck in the air that could observe everything that happened as it happened. You can see all the people and their actions, you know, like a helicopter view above a cross section of the office space, if you can imagine what that looks like – you can see and hear everything from this still position… You are no longer Francois, but impartial and wise. What can you learn from the situation from this position?
*long pause*
Aaaah! Perhaps there are some people in the team that had been there for a long time and some newcomers. The newcomers are perhaps the ones not knowing and not understanding the practical arrangements and how the old team mates carry a specific load. Hey! This is also something like what happens in normal house-holds. You know, the arguments about the cap of the toothpaste being left off, the toilet seat being left up, clothes and towels on the floor… a small thing that can result in friction, sparks and eventually fire fights! So, I see that there are habits and comfort zones in this situation and that the new team mates had been forced into accepting the ‘way that has always worked’. Perhaps there is another, better way of dealing with this. What I also see is the drama triangle and how the rescuer created perpetrators and victims. I also see that no one did anything resourceful to resolve the matter creatively. Everyone can do something differently – handle the situation in a better way. Since this situation is not ‘mission-critical’ it may not be taken serious.
Nice! So, if you take another step back, float out of the helicopter view so that you can observe the spot you were observing from and the whole scene and our conversation up to now, what do you learn?
We were looking at the situation from different angles, logically and rationally reflecting on it… but I cannot produce any learnings if my emotions are switched off or on hyperdrive, or if I am being emotionally unintelligent. I see that some people’s interaction with the rest of the team may be a little strained because of this and it may lead to confirmations of beliefs: “I knew it was a mistake to join this team…” Or it may just be the incident that triggers disillusionment: “Whoa! It’s not as nice here as I thought it was…”
Absolutely. It was a moment of truth! There are many such moments every day and we mostly navigate them well. Then comes along something small (the stakes seems to be low) that ignites high emotions, and bam! There’s a little rough patch in our unconscious map of our environment. When enough of these rough patches are gathered on our unconscious map of this specific context, we may say that the environment is toxic. And then when everyone participating in the environment thinks about its toxicity they don’t see how they contributed to it.
Phew, Frank. It is not possible for everyone in a team to always handle every situation perfectly – not creating unconscious rough patches, to be perfectly emotionally intelligent all the time…
No, it’s not. And to compound things – some people would log a rough patch for something another person does not experience as negative… and for others it may be very bad. In other words some people would experience the environment as toxic while others don’t. Some people are more sensitive than others. Some are more forgiving than others. Some are offended easily and others not. Some are more self-aware, and some are more aware of their impact on others, other people’s states and reactions. So no, it is nearly impossible to always act correctly. Anyone that tries will lose themselves. What do you think would work better?
Well, I think that boundaries (house rules if you want) need to be set up front and in such a way that people want to adhere to them. Secondly, when something like this happens (we accept that it could) perhaps simply stating the fact and the expectation is enough to remind people of the boundaries and why they want to adhere to them – no need to activate the drama triangle. Thirdly, if there is a storm in a teacup and the behavioural boundaries of “don’t throw people under the bus” and “avoid the drama triangle” have not been set, I don’t think it is fair to expect that they could prevent it – they are not aware of its impacts and implications.
Alright. How do you think your friend should go about setting the boundaries?
I don’t think she should go tell everyone that so and so happened and this is what it means and what the results were – that would only rub everyone the wrong way. I think she must just lead by example, being the change she wants to see happen. That is not enough, of course, for an instant change… and still, after a while of having set a good example and dealing well with moments of truth she will become an icon, someone whose behaviours are emulated because they get things done and people feel good being part of the process.
Ever the optimist! Let’s see if it works.
It’s worth a try. We’ll chat again soon.
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