Emotions … The Smart, the Bad, and the Ugly

I was going through my stuff and found a piece I had written on Emotional Intelligence @work. Since most of us are either getting back to work or have started the work return process already, I thought, why not give it a shot; we really need this now more than ever!

Here we go…

Emotions … The Smart, the Bad, and the Ugly

I was at the ATD Saudi Arabia conference in Riyadh and I found this remarkably interesting seminar called EMOTIONS…A STRANGER AT WORK by my favorite coach @ReemAlJizawi

Of course, you’re probably skeptical at this point; emotions and work, are you kidding me? What’s the use? And to top it off, a seminar on emotions at an Association of Talents conference?

Really?

Humor me, and let’s see what Reem shared on this day. Her message has impactful information that every person can use in their work relationships.

The following is an abridged, edited version of Reem’s talk.

Like it or not, we are emotional beings. Right now, when you’re reading this, you’re experiencing it through your emotions. First, it’s being received by your emotional brain before it goes to your cognitive one. How so? Humans cannot make cognitive decisions without also accessing emotional information. If we take a deeper look, we can understand how that works.

When something happens, let’s say it’s a stimulus, or a trigger, anything that happens to us: first of all, it goes right to our emotional brain, to our emotions.

And then it goes to our thoughts; it triggers a thought. It stimulates a specific one. And then it goes and stimulates an emotion, then there is a behavior and an action. The thought drives our behaviors and action.

And from that behavior and action, what results? An impact. Whether this behavior or action was positive or negative, it will result in an outcome or impact.

So, when there are multiple challenges at work and we start ignoring our emotions, when we’re not recognizing the importance of our emotions, some of these challenges can result in a demotivated team: no performance, silence, and gossip. No teamwork or collaboration and feedback.

So, emotions can get in the way or can get you on the way.

They’re powerful. Extremely powerful.

Why?

Because they actually interfere with everything and in everything.

It’s in our self-expression, our self-awareness, our emotional expression, our assertiveness, our flexibility, and our decision-making. Emotions strongly impact our decision-making. It’s the source of impact on our decision-making, independence, optimism, and many others. So, if it impacts all of that, we need to make these emotions smart.

How do we make them smart?

Emotional intelligence (EI) is a set of emotional skills that has four areas of focus. One influences the way we perceive and express ourselves. Another develops and maintains social relationships. Others cope with challenges and use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way.

Makes sense, right? But not a lot of us understand this.

EI is especially important to challenging and complicated jobs. EI can increase productivity by up to 127% among employees with such jobs, according to the research. Daniel Goleman also says that emotional intelligence is responsible for 66% of the success of our job.

HR people, I hope you’re going to love this because they have done research on over 2,675 people. The survey results indicate that:

–        71% of the HR managers have expressed a preference for hiring an emotionally intelligent employee over an employee with a high IQ.

–        Another group, 75% of the managers said that they were more likely to promote an employee with higher emotional intelligence.

–        Half of these two groups have agreed that they would not hire someone with low emotional intelligence skills.

Big numbers, right?

If it’s that important, it should have a measurement. So how do we measure EQ? There are a lot of measurements and assessments out there, but not all of them are based on scientific and validated reliable results.

The EQ-I 2.0 model is the first scientifically developed assessment in the world to measure EQ-I on a reliable and valid measurement. The model is complete as it measures fifteen skills and gives us two scores through five main composites, or competencies, let’s say. It gives us the total score of our EI and the total score of our wellbeing as a result. So, it’s dynamic, it’s interconnected, relatable, and complete.

Everything starts with the self. If we want to see any changes happening on the outside, we’d need to start looking inward. These are the major categories being examined, with brief descriptions of each:

·        Self-regard: It measures how much of these people are really inspecting themselves, having the confidence to do the job, and having the courage within themselves.

·        Self-actualization: which is developing themselves continuously, looking for a purpose, and looking for what is more meaningful to them to be more of who they are today.

·       Self-awareness: which is being aware of what’s happening. What are my faults, what are my thoughts, what are my feelings? How much of my thoughts and feelings are impacting others, and am I aware of that impacting others as well?

·       Self-expression: if you can understand who you are and yourself, at whatever level it is, then that understanding will be automatically expressed through your verbal and non-verbal expressions. Self-expression includes measures of assertiveness and independence.

·        Social intelligence: Interpersonal relationship, empathy, and social responsibility, following more technical skills, decision-making. This includes the ability to solve problems effectively, the ability to see reality and not to amplify it or underestimate it in any way – just to see the idea and test it the way it is, without having emotions going or blurring things. It also includes impulse control.

·        Stress management: this measures our flexibility. It measures our stress tolerance and optimism, including our mindset toward our challenges.

·        Wellbeing: How content are we? And how much of that contentment is reflected in our life? Well-being is measured by four main skills, including optimism, interpersonal relationships, self-actualization, self-regard.

So, how can great leaders use this EQ-I model?

@MarshallGoldsmith once said: “Great leaders encourage leadership development by openly developing leadership themselves.”

Here’s a real example of one of the clients that I’ve worked with. He’s a CEO in a big company, and we started the work together by giving him the EQ-I assessment. That was back in 2015. His total EI was 94. That’s the total of measuring the entire fifteen skills. His lower was self-regard and independence, which was the lowest score for his skills. The highest was problem-solving and stress tolerance. He’s good at expression, he’s very good. But he’s very low in independence, and he’s very low in stress tolerance and very low in self- regard. I wonder what it is that this combination can make. What kind of challenges was this leader facing? Many, right? He might want to always please his employees, not be able to give clear directions, clear decisions. He is hesitant, his impulse control is high, so the hesitation is there. Before he makes a decision, he will be asking many people, “What do you think about this? Shall I? Shall I not?” And he is flexible, he is very flexible.

So, we started our work, we went on the journey. Throughout the journey, we repeated the report again, in 2017. The total EI, the first EI was what? 94, exactly. His total EI became 129. The same four skills that were low, they became: self-regard 123, 109, and these numbers mean…over 100 means they are in 25% of the general population on the high average of EQ-I or EQ. And this is his total EI – major changes.

Major, major changes, and that all have reflected on his workplace because his employees were seeing the changes that he was going through and have impacted the entire company.

So, a high EQ in the workplace, what does that mean?

It means that they are making better decisions, they are keeping cool under pressure, they are resolving conflicts, having greater empathy. And they are listening and reflecting. They’re helping each other, and they’re working as a team – there is a dynamic there.

EQ skills that contribute to a healthy workplace include self-regard, self-actualization, empathy, emotional self-awareness, impulse control, social responsibility, flexibility, independence, and reality testing. Major, significant skills.

What about the impact of EQ in the culture and the workplace culture?

I can’t really emphasize enough that our major work is working with companies to enhance their organizational culture through the work of EI and through the work of psychological safety. And once we implement the emotional intelligence and coach them, assess them, having all these methods, and as a group coaching them as a team as well, we do see numbers shift from high turnover to very low turnover because we’re emotional beings. If we work on the core, everything else, as a result, starts to improve.

Achieving wellbeing at the workplace really helps in us coming to work as a whole. It makes us feel that it’s okay to be wrong as we are accepted, and because of that acceptance, we `are learning continuously how to learn from these mistakes and develop from there. And we become authentic. Authority is still there, but it’s not in the way that it’s a scary one; that we are used to. It’s more of balanced power. People will forget what you say, people will forget what you do, but people will not forget what you make them feel.

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What an incredible message, Reem! I loved every word and believe it’s really important to be emotionally intelligent in your workplace. Being smart pays off, and feeling smart does the trick.

If you’re looking for ways to engage in emotional intelligence in your own life, as an EQ practitioner, I would love to help! Reach out today so we can discuss the incredible growth opportunities.

The Atd Conference was held at Burj Rafal Hotel, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from 3-4 December 2019.