Category: Emotional Intelligence

I took the city bus to and from school starting in kindergarten or first grade.  I remember riding my bike across the city to school one day (remember it because I found a $10 bill!)  I was probably left a bit too much to my own devices, could be described as a “latchkey kid,” or maybe just “normal life for a kid with a working single mom.”  Not a lot of supervision… but I also started my first business when I was 12 and had my own checking account, and was paying my own taxes by 16, and from then have had an (overly?) strong sense of responsibility and self-efficacy.  I learned it early: I am responsible for my life.

But I am not treating my kids this way.  When she was 8 or 9, Emma went into a shop by herself (mom in the car outside) and it was a big deal to let her be so independent.  We live in different times!  Or do we?  I’ve wondered for years if there really is more danger to kids today, or we’re just hyper afraid?

So I enjoyed a “Here and Now” show today interviewing Lenore Skenazy (listen to the story).  Skenzay wrote an article about letting her nine-year-old son ride the train home and unleashed a torrent of criticism that she’s “the world’s worst mom.”  Recently she wrote Free Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had, Without Going Nuts With Worry — showing some important data — she writes a blog on the topic.

The book presents extensive statistical evidence that there is LESS child predation today than 20 or 30 years ago, and, in fact it is FAR more likely that your child will be killed in your own car driving to school than be abducted.  Yet the thought of letting my 10-year-old take a bus downtown to get ice cream fills me with angst… and we put the kids in the car every day.

Just in case it’s not obvious:  People are NOT rational!

In the face of this irrational but completely real and horrible fear, the facts become nearly irrelevant — and then we start making decisions carelessly.  Applying emotional intelligence, we need to understand the source of the fear, recognize the pattern of reaction, and then evalute the consequences.  In the face of this horrifying fear of child predation, I stop the evaluation.  The trick isn’t to ignore the feeling, but rather to go further.  I’m clear how I feel about the immediate risks, but how do I feel about the long term?  How do I feel if I shelter them so much they lack self-efficacy?   If I teach them to be afraid of the world?

To be clear, I believe in sheltering kids.  There is much in the “real world” that I abhor, and I see little value in exposing them to it “so they’ll be able to cope.”  The kids at 8 and 10 don’t watch commercial TV, we preview movies that aren’t rated G, and we have chosen to leave the city and live in a pastoral community surrounded by oak-covered hills and farms.  Nor I do I believe in passing on a legacy of fear and helplessness.  So somehow we need to find a balance of risk and safety — and perhaps Skenazy’s factual data can help us do so.

Recent conversation w a client – major deja vu.  How often have I had this same discussion:  what they say they do isn’t what’s happening day to day.  A beautiful, compelling mission is worthless unless it lives in the the daily interactions of the organization.

It’s incredibly difficult to craft that powerful mission statement, that brief phrase that evokes the substantive and significant meaning of the organization.  After years of fiddling around and finally getting the words “just right,” it’s probably pretty annoying to hear that isn’t that important.  Don’t get me wrong, the “right” mission statement is incredibly important — it’s just unimportant in comparison with the real challenge:  putting the mission in action.

To make a mission live requires “drilling down,” carefully focusing to align intention and action. Think about the basic activities that take place in your organization each day:  What does it look, feel, and sound like to do those in accord with your mission?

For example, Six Seconds’ mission is: “Supporting people to make a positive difference, everywhere, all the time.”  So how should we answer the phone?  How should we respond to our colleagues when we disagree?  To live that mission, how should we be defining our organizational roles, setting budgets, or even choosing what paper to buy?  How about the culture we need to create — and the feelings that are essential to drive that?

Nan Summers, a friend and member of our network, once told me that when she was at Disney they had a phrase, “Everything Speaks,” meaning each little “tidbit” of the environment and the people there transmits some message… either the one intended or something else.  When you drill down, you recognize what & who is speaking, and adjust that to line up with the deeper shared purpose.  This requires giving up some level of autonomy — but not so much that you lose authenticity… big challenge!  Emotional intelligence is invaluable here because you need to see beyond the tactical.

“Everything speaks” emotionally even more than logically — millions of subtle messages come to prevade an organization and shape a culture and climate that’s infectious.  New people come in and adapt — and every interaction, every look, every nuance, ultimately transmits to the customer’s or client’s feelings of trust & loyalty.

Yet most organizations — businesses, government agencies, schools — that I encounter can barely articulate their purpose, and have little bandwidth to spare to consider how that purpose is being undermined or supported.  Just imagine how, if leaders made it an absolutely priority to ensure that the mission was alive at every level, these enterprises would rocket forward.  Have you ever been part of such a place?

Recent conversation w a client – major deja vu.  How often have I had this same discussion:  what they say they do isn’t what’s happening day to day.  A beautiful, compelling mission is worthless unless it lives in the the daily interactions of the organization.

It’s incredibly difficult to craft that powerful mission statement, that brief phrase that evokes the substantive and significant meaning of the organization.  After years of fiddling around and finally getting the words “just right,” it’s probably pretty annoying to hear that isn’t that important.  Don’t get me wrong, the “right” mission statement is incredibly important — it’s just unimportant in comparison with the real challenge:  putting the mission in action.

To make a mission live requires “drilling down,” carefully focusing to align intention and action. Think about the basic activities that take place in your organization each day:  What does it look, feel, and sound like to do those in accord with your mission?

For example, Six Seconds’ mission is: “Supporting people to make a positive difference, everywhere, all the time.”  So how should we answer the phone?  How should we respond to our colleagues when we disagree?  To live that mission, how should we be defining our organizational roles, setting budgets, or even choosing what paper to buy?  How about the culture we need to create — and the feelings that are essential to drive that?

Nan Summers, a friend and member of our network, once told me that when she was at Disney they had a phrase, “Everything Speaks,” meaning each little “tidbit” of the environment and the people there transmits some message… either the one intended or something else.  When you drill down, you recognize what & who is speaking, and adjust that to line up with the deeper shared purpose.  This requires giving up some level of autonomy — but not so much that you lose authenticity… big challenge!  Emotional intelligence is invaluable here because you need to see beyond the tactical.

“Everything speaks” emotionally even more than logically — millions of subtle messages come to prevade an organization and shape a culture and climate that’s infectious.  New people come in and adapt — and every interaction, every look, every nuance, ultimately transmits to the customer’s or client’s feelings of trust & loyalty.

Yet most organizations — businesses, government agencies, schools — that I encounter can barely articulate their purpose, and have little bandwidth to spare to consider how that purpose is being undermined or supported.  Just imagine how, if leaders made it an absolutely priority to ensure that the mission was alive at every level, these enterprises would rocket forward.  Have you ever been part of such a place?

Great post about the emotional component of sales –

Imagine if it were true, for example, that almost nobody buys a product or service anymore simply because they need it, or because its price is the right price? That, even in an economic downturn, they have to want it as much as need it before they buy? It’s a difficult concept to grasp because, at the end of the day, it’s not about rational thought.

Talks about How Customers Think (Gerald Zaltman, Harvard) says only 5% of consumer purchasing behavior is based on rational thought processes.  So for great sales, marketing, and customer service, more emotional intelligence needed!

Especially in these tough times, people want simplicity and authenticity.

The Myth of the Rational Buyer: How Too Much Thinking Can Hurt Your Brand | Design Finds You | Fast Company.

Google is crunching employee data to understand who might leave and why — so far, a key finding is that employees who feel underused are at risk.  This is a BFO (blinding flash of the the obvious) — a little emotional intelligence among managers would go a long way here!

Google Searches for Staffing Answers – WSJ.com.

How do we change out of a destructive pattern?

Emma (my daughter, now 9) frequently makes a big fuss when it’s time to do work that’s not appealing, especially “dumb writing homework” (despite usually liking writing and being an outstanding student).  This has gone on for years, but a couple of weeks ago I noticed myself becoming very reactive.  I was getting more and more irritated with her — and the irritation about homework seemed to be bleeding into our relationship-in-general.

I’d say hello in the morning and she’d grouch at me… say hello in the afternoon and she’d ignore me.  Then the homework fuss would come up, and I found myself thinking in such a judgmental way, labeling her as “drama queen,” “irrational,” and a few I won’t put in print.  As my frustration grew, I found myself thinking things like, “she can bloody well sit in her room ’till the work is done” (and thinking it with a kind of violent savagery ala “that will show her!”).

There are two aspects of this reaction that I’d like to explore with you:

First, when I felt disrespected and excluded, my patience for the “homework drama” plummeted.  My hurt feelings translated to wanting to hurt back.

Second, as I was feeling impatient, I fell into a pattern of force (power and control) and dealing with superficial “facts” — despite my certain knowledge that this DOES NOT WORK.

In Six Seconds’ work on change, we teach that people behave the way they do for emotionally valid reasons, and that unless you change the underlying emotional dynamic, you don’t create change.  This concept is explained well in Alan Deutschman’s book, Change or Die, which I constantly talk about (here’s an interview I did with him about this).  Deutschman says the dominant, but failing, paradigm when trying to drive change is to use facts, force and fear.

As I get more and more frustrated, I begin to rely on power and control.  I start using facts to back up how right I am, and force to reinforce my sense of power, and fear to accentuate my own power over her.  In that FFF paradigm, we try to make people change.  This doesn’t work, because people don’t want to be forced.  When people feel pushed, they resist.  The resistance causes them to protect, and they become less open to risk.  Meanwhile as we push, we become more irritated and less open to understand what they’re feeling and what’s really blocking the change.

Nice mess — and I KNOW this, but knowledge is not enough.  So here I am, getting frustrated with my daughter, and the more frustrated I get, the more I find myself shooting down this track, a track that I intellectually know leads only to more frustration.  But nonetheless, I’m sucked in.  It’s like I’m in a terrible daytime TV show where these messages are beamed into my brain.  And the more irritated I get, the more I’m in this reactive, superficial, destructive mindset.

Once I started to reflect I could see this pattern — this track I was on.  Which was great to recognize, but then what?  Getting off requires a shift in thinking+feelings — a way to step out of the dynamic.

Fortunately, it came a day later at bedtime.

I was just kissing my daughter goodnight and she had a rare evening of not having a book in hand… so welcomed a sleepy snuggle.  She’s so big now, and so fierce in her opinions.  But laying next to her I had this vivid memory of 9 years ago when we were on our first long plane ride and told her about it.

So long as one of us was walking around holding her, Emma was content.  But as soon as we sat down she fussed.  I remember walking up and down the long 747 aisles in the dark, with glimpses of night as we walked past the rows of windows, pacing endlessly at 500 miles per hour with this sleepy warm angel.

I remember quietly singing the same little song over and over and over (”la mar estaba serena, serena estaba la mar…”).  Probably as much for me as her; I can still feel the soothing rhythm of it.

I remember looking out the small galley window, watching the endless stretches of Nordic ice in the moonlight, and wondering at the infinite variety of that unknown alien landscape, so cold and distant.

At the time, I had no sense that this would become a precious memory… but now it’s so vivid… and tinged with the sepia tones of nostalgia.  Amazing what become printed in our hearts.

And from that place of appreciation, the whole “homework drama frustration” simply evaporated.  I remembered the precious (and willful) innocence inside this person.  I “made her good” in my mind and heart and this let me step off the reactive track.  This emotional connection is empathy, and it’s a doorway to a whole new way of seeing — and the antidote to the FFF paradigm.

In the week since that evening, we’ve had no conversation about changing the “homework drama,” but it just hasn’t come up.  It’s like the circuit is (at least for the moment) diffused.  While it’s likely to resurface, I’m now more keenly aware of the trap — and at least one way out.

Dear Josh,
I’m a little confused with this issue, someone at my workshop asked me this question so need more explanation on this!  She said that: usually we use a hearts as an icon to express love and feelings and now you said feelings come from brain (amygdala) not heart?
So please help me to understand this, I have another workshop in Riyadh this week.
Look forward hearing from you, Regards,
– Manal

Hi Manal!
It is true that our emotions seem to be primarily produced and regulated in the brain – the limbic region.  Emotion chemicals are assembled in the hypothalamus and then released through the pituitary gland, they then flow through the blood and then into EVERY cell in the body.  The picture (to the right) illustrates an important point — when we’re talking about chemicals that are released from the brain in the blood, notice how important the heart is!  The Amygdala responds to certain “distress” or “danger” feeling chemicals and amplifies the flight/fright/freeze reaction – it is the regulator of our defensive patterns — again leading to a cascade of chemicals (one leading to another leading to another) that floods through brain & into body… and back and forth.

Neurotransmitters (brain cells) function through chemicals + electricity – so there are also electrical currents flowing around the brain tied to emotion.

However, the SAME kinds of brain cells and chemicals which exist in the limbic brain surround our hearts – and around our stomachs and in our spines — so people often talk about our “four brains”: head, heart, gut, and spine.

Important to note:  The neuropeptides that we experience as emotion (“the molecules of emotion” as Candace Pert says) are also produced throughout our bodies!  So sometimes a feeling could start in our toes!  These chemicals form a feedback loop between brain and body — constantly cycling around and regulating the function of our systems.  One major function is to direct attention — our emotions tell us what’s important in our environment (and in our internal landscape).

And finally:  There is emerging research on the link between the heart and emotions.  The heart beat becomes more regular when we’re in a calm, focused state.  The heart itself produces electromagnetic energy which seems also to become more even and smooth when we’re in an optimal state of emotional-mental-physical function.

Thanks for asking – I’ll post this on the blog as well!
=:-)
– Josh

Check out the revised website for Synapse Institute — Six Seconds’ lab school for gifted & special-needs students: www.6seconds.org/synapse

There are now several photos and a movie so you can get a feel for the place.  Amazing to see what happens when children have the mix of accelerated+deep academics and a fully integrated social-emotional learning program.

This is an absolutely lovely video showing a fabulous surprise – an “ordinary” extraordinary woman turning cynicism to appreciation. Reminds me how powerful we can be:

We’ve been hearing so much about “Swine Flu” — is this a medical issue or an emotional one?

Was talking to a doctor friend today who mentioned how much press we’re giving Swine Flu when “regular” influenza is so much more destructive every single year.  I was totally surprised, assuming that all this media coverage must signify a serious threat. So I looked that up — turns out that about 200,000 people are hospitalized every year in the US per year for influenza — less than .1% of that number have been diagnosed with Swine Flu in the US (see this story on WebMD: Putting Swine Flu in Perspective).

So what’s the fear?  Is it the uncertainty of a new type of influenza? (Apparently there are new influenza strains every year).  Is it just media hype?   Is it a “lighting rod” of a tangible threat that’s just happening to surface while millions of people are seeing their quality of life eroding in the face of global recession?