Writing

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Behavior or Deeper?

fireworks_water.jpgOur society, especially in business, seems fixated on “behavior” as a magic solution.  For example, recently I was talking to a potential client about a leadership development program and he wanted to know what “EQ behaviors” the participants would learn.

Talking about the behavior is an easy short-hand.  We want leaders to be proactive, to engage, to give feedback, to listen, to hold people accountable, to execute.  All behaviors that sound great on the surface – but  the HOW is essential… and maybe even more essential than the behavior itself?

My belief is that we need to look more deeply at what DRIVES the behavior.  One can execute a certain behavior in so many different ways – and thereby create completely different results.  Just imagine all the ways one could say the words “thank you.”  If the underlying feeling is gratitude the same words have a totally different impact than if the underlying feeling is irritation.  Thus the emotion that’s “beneath the surface” drives the result.

Emotional intelligence lets leaders see beneath the surface of their own and others’ actions.  To focus on the HOW – on the alignment between the behavior and the underlying intention.

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Emotional Intelligence Helps NFL Players “Win at Life”

“We’re learning that emotional intelligence is an important ingredient in helping professional athletes live healthy and successful lives”
– National Football League Players Association Executive Director Gene Upshaw

A study of retired NFL players and EQ compares players’ emotional intelligence with life success — including good health, positive relationships, avoiding drug/alcohol use & violence, financial strength, and quality of life.  Among the 30 athletes we studied over 60% in the variation of these important factors are predicted by emotional intelligence scores.  So there is a massive correlation between high EQ skills and life success.

This is an important study because NFL players are extremely influential as role models – and despite their incredible success in making it to the top of the  game, there are so many struggles off the field. We can now pinpoint specific, learnable skills that will make a difference for these guys – for life.  While the NFL is a very big, economically driven business, the growing interest in emotional intelligence could be a sign of commitment to the larger impact of the sport in our society.

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6S Network Meeting in Italy

Last weekend we had our first Six Seconds EQ Network meeting in Italy. Max Ghini (Director of the 6S-Italia office) and I presented – here’s Max (and look at the lovely room in the basement of an old old building, just off the main square of Bologna):

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And me… I talked about using emotions and emotional intelligence to create change – with some personal stories of starting Six Seconds and our commitment to change starting with ourselves. I also shared stories of paradoxical feelings about my father, and finally the legacy of a Hawaiian woman committed to rebuilding a community space.

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Here’s more of the wonderful Italia team, from left: Lorenzo, Dani, Federica, Veru:

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Max introduced the Corporate Social Responsibility campaign and we all discussed the vision of partnering with business to create a context for thriving. It seemed simple and natural that we could help businesses meet their essential goals by bringing EQ to the communities where they operate:

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Then teams started working on how to bring EQ to all the children and adults of Italy and beyond:

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Thank you to the 50+ who joined the meeting! I look forward to the next one – which will be the Choose to Change conference in San Jose, CA, Oct 4-5 ’08.

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Freedom and Love

Dear ones,

a gate in Capri by JoshTomorrow the Jewish holiday of Passover begins, so I’ve been thinking about freedom and about love.

Passover commemorates the time when Jews were enslaved in Egypt and then Gd, through Moses, led them to forge a path toward freedom. Moses didn’t want the job — he felt unqualified, incapable… uncertain and hopeless, but he chose to say yes.

It was a terrible journey — both the journey of enslavement, the journey of release, and then the period of cleansing in the desert. At Passover we do not celebrate a defeat of Pharaoh and his people, instead we express our sorrow at the suffering and our gratitude that so many before us have accepted the struggle for freedom.

Freedom does not mean getting to do whatever you want. Patty and I were talking about what our kids would say — they seem to think freedom would be growing up so no one would tell you what to do. And we might imagine freedom as being eight and getting to come home from school and play ’till dinner. But neither is true or possible.

Freedom means taking responsibility to walk in the path of what is right. It a process of ongoing effort and care. It is a terrible burden, but also a joyful one. It is terrible because when you accept freedom, you can no longer take the easy path of blame. You can not ride along and then be mad when someone takes you to a destination that isn’t what you wanted!

There are so many ways to give up freedom. Being on “autopilot” and blindly following patterns. Being a victim. Being a dictator. Deluding yourself. Breaking your own integrity. Letting yourself be seduced by superficial wants — or maybe confusing “wants” and “needs.” Compromising your values, or devaluing yourself to seek approval, status, affirmation, or power from the outside.

But at the same time there are so many gifts. Not just gifts of freedom itself, but gifts from the struggle to be free. Perhaps without the struggle there is no real freedom — or at least none of the heady bliss of finding it. In the struggle we have the opportunity to confront ourselves and one another. To question what truly matters. To challenge assumptions and the status quo, not changing for change’s sake, but changing for the sake of liberating our highest and best selves.

stairs in Montreal by JoshIn the struggles there are an abundance of difficult feelings. My dad (stepfather) is struggling w cancer and it’s brutal. On one hand I am feeling so sad and afraid and hopeless — and on the other hand these terrible emotions feel good. They feel “right-but-hard” and are reminding me of our love and the gifts he’s given me and our whole family. So the pain is really love in disguise.

Recently Max was in struggle because he left his “best Pokemon cards” in his pocket then put his jeans in the laundry — they did not fare well. On the one hand he was helpless, a victim of bad fortune. On the other it was an opportunity to receive loving support from us, and to take action, to take ownership of the future. To be free.

While I was in the midst of struggle post-emergency-knee-surgery I was feeling pretty low. I felt helpless, powerless, dependent, stuck. But at the same time I was able to receive so much love and care. I thought a lot then about what it meant to be free. Did it mean being able to put socks on myself? (that felt like great liberation!) Or did it mean being able to choose to be grateful for the care? Even grateful for the pain? (because it was a sign of the process of recovery)

I’m struck that freedom is so much about feeling. About feeling despair versus hope. About feeling unworthy of and unable to love versus abundant in it. So many people are afraid to love and to be loved. They are so hurt that the hurt itself becomes a kind of shelter. They make walls of rage to barricade their fear, they keep their hurt close at hand in a desperate attempt to prevent it from overwhelming them. Maybe this is the ultimate slavery, the self-imposed slavery of denying that we are worthy and capable of love.

This is a prison whose wall grow thicker each day. The more we see ourselves as unworthy of and unable to love, the more depleted we become. We become more and more closed to love from all around, and less and less able to love others. Paradoxically the door opens by giving; it swings open outward from self acceptance.

The good news is that no matter how thick we make these walls, freedom can come in the blink of an eye. So impossible, then so simple. It can feel like betrayal of a promise, though, because we do not stay free.

Max in ItalyWe must choose again. Each time it feels impossibly hard, then suddenly, miraculously, easy. Then we find another challenge; this is the journey of freedom. Without the opposition we go back to autopilot, back to coasting. So the walk toward freedom is embedded in struggle — we find jewels among life’s travails. While there will be struggle, there is also choice — a balance that is a process.

Freedom, then, is decision made over an over; a string of choices. Not choices of circumstance and power, but choices of heart and will. Love and effort. Made over and over, strung together on a necklace, each bead buffed to luster by the challenge inherent in the decision to be free.

Does this perpetual struggle sound grim and dark? I don’t see life that way. I see it as beautiful, part of the abundance and wonder of our world. Each time we choose freedom we become stronger, deeper, and brighter — contributing, as have so many before us, to the vast pool of liberation.

With love,
– Josh

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Jasmine, Insecurity, and Being Stuck

jasmineIt feels like summertime here – glorious, peaceful, and relaxed. The scent of jasmine is pouring in through my office windows along with the gently cooling evening air.

Yesterday I was talking with a client/friend about where he needs to put energy in his business. Hands down: “relationships.” Reaching out and connecting, mostly externally and also internally. He admitted he wasn’t doing it the way he wanted, and part of me wanted to say, “but that’s so easy!”

Then I realized that his reason for not doing this is much the same as my reason for not exercising (something he’s great at, by the way): In two completely different challenges, we each feel inadequate – incompetent – and without real hope that our efforts will work.

And we each find it incredibly difficult to persevere… and all too easy to slide that task to the bottom of the pile. I am sure there is value and insight in this feeling, some clarity to be found, but even in this quite jasmine gentleness of evening, the wisdom is beyond me.

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“Keeping Emotions in Check” on NBC’s Today Show

Well I had an absolute blast appearing on the Today Show. It was literally a circus there (the circus was on the show before me…) and the energy was amazing.

The five minute discussion went by so fast. When I got off set, I actually had no idea what I’d said, it was such a blur! Fortunately I could watch online, here’s the clip from MSNBC.

So after watching and finding out what I said… I’m pretty thrilled with it. This was my first live TV appearance, and first time on National TV, so I was pretty anxious… especially right before, standing on the set watching the process.

These folks do FOUR hours of live TV every morning! I was amazed at the level of focus the team showed – for example, before our segment on emotions, Natalie Morales was reading latest news, while crew was rapidly moving to set up our piece… and she was just in the zone reading as the text flowed by (I was watching the teleprompter and imagining trying to read it!)

I now have about eight more key ideas I’d really like to add… such as using appreciation as a transformational tool for shifting out of those AHHHH moments.  I used it there – as I was starting to get anxious I thought about what a great gift it is to get to do this work – and to talk about something so valuable to so many people. 🙂

Next time I’d like to post a web article with some of the practical strategies we teach plus links to additional articles and resources. So here’s a mini-story on 6seconds.org about the piece, with some additional thoughts: All About Emotional Intelligence from Six Seconds – EQ on NBC’s Today Show

All in all – I’m looking forward to the next time!!

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Rational Thinking = Better Decisions? Not.

A new study released in Applied Psychology found that people with a highly rational thinking style actually became more biased as the stakes went up.  The authors suggest that in an escalating situation, the highly analytical thinkers were less able to tune into the dissonance that would cause them to challenge their own assumptions.

In other words:  They ignored the feeling that they were on the wrong track.

The common view is that we need to be rational to make optimal decisions, but it’s just not true.  The last century has been driven by this paradigm and the results are clear – while we have incredible technical excellence, we are failing as a species.  My contention: “Analytical = Better” is one of the most pervasive and destructive myths of our era.

If wisdom is to be found, it is not within the paralyzing prison of logic alone.

Source: Kin Fai Ellick Wong, Jessica Yuk Yee Kwong, Carmen K. Ng (2008) “When Thinking Rationally Increases Biases: The Role of Rational Thinking Style in Escalation of Commitment,” Applied Psychology 57 (2) , 246–271  (Article Abstract)
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Experimenting on Students

Recently I read a critique of the “SEAL” initiative in the UK, a government mandate to ensure all students systematically and consistently learn about emotions. The critique is poorly grounded, sensational, and self-promotional — but there was one point that’s been hovering. It said, in essence: This approach has never been fully tested so it is unreasonable to experiment on a generation.

On the one hand, this is eminently reasonable. We ought to look before we leap. So we do a great deal of research (both empirical and observational) and use that to define best practice. There is now a substantial body of research on SEL (see the case), but of course not enough for certainty.

On the other, we are already experimenting, so the question isn’t “experiment or not,” it is, “do our best to rationalize this experiment or bury our heads in the sand.”

The experiment underway is a tsunami of social change. As a society we’re in the midst of a chaotic, uncontrolled experiment — introducing variables from GMO foods to youth who average 60 hour of TV time to instant messaging to billions spent on marketing to children (versus 1/50th only two decades before).

In the face of these unprecedented, chaotic, and stress-inducing forces, we must find ways to balance — like surfing on tidal waves. HopeAs educators, we do not have the luxury of certainly. We need both the immediate intervention — our best efforts crafted from a blend of reason and compassion — and the carefully considered and well-evaluated response.

But we can’t wait too long. Each year we spend contemplating and debating, millions of children miss another year of opportunity… and then the experiment changes again.

Further, it occurs to me that education has always been an experimental journey.

At one point, the field of education had never tested the teaching of anyone but nobility. At another point, the use of pencils had never been tested. Or teaching of girls – and girls and boys together – and teaching of people of multiple races together… more recently, education had never tested the effect of raising a generation who used electronic typewriters. I remember the joy when my parents bought an IBM Selectric which would re-type a report from memory! And the consternation of some of my teachers when I was bringing reports without white-out-corrections (was I cheating??)

To teach at all requires a certain arrogance — based in a belief that we know what will help the next generation solve the problems they will inherit from us (that’s right – those very problems we have patently failed to solve).  Ideally we balance that arrogance with incredible compassion, not just for humanity but more for these individual people, these delightful, confusing, challenging, and unique humans. In the abstract we can research and debate — but when it comes down to the mat, there are children who need us, and they are the promise, the one chance for tomorrow, and they can not wait for us to figure it out.  So in the end, teaching is an act of hope.

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Intelligent About Emotions

After finishing the “Emotoscope” ap for Facebook I was shaking dust from my brain to come up w/ another fun way for people to learn about feelings. Said to Patty (my wife), “How about a cool online EQ jeopardy game?”

istock_000002420436xsmall.jpg“Boring” – she said it more delicately. “I mean, what would you ask?” **

Emma (8) is listening in (as usual – big ears!!) and pipes up, “jealousy?”

Right on! “What is jealousy?” I continue to Patty, “Or how about ‘ a little anger + sadness’?” Blank look from Patty, Emma again:

“disappointment?”

Whoa! Emotional literacy in action.

And not enough. Maybe being intelligent about emotions is the foundation. Then the graduate course: to be intelligent with emotions.

** in defense of Patty: her point was that this game has only “right/wrong” answers and our learning philosophy commits us to deeper forms of reflection