action, intention, purpose

Yesterday Max was having one of his usual tiffs with his sister — she wasn’t paying attention to him and so he went an took one of her crayons or something. It escalated and he came crying into my office. As I was asking him about the incident, I noticed I was using our EQ model as a coaching process:

Know Yourself — identify emotions and behaviors: What happened? What did you do?

Choose Yourself — identify intentions and the (mis)match between action and intention: How did you want Emma to respond? What did you want from Emma? What actually happened?

Give Yourself — clarify the need to change by assessing the intention against your larger purpose: Is that the kind of friend you really want to be? Were you making the world a kinder place?

🙂
-J

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