Several years ago I reluctantly agreed to participate in a couple of training sessions that changed my life. Quite often when you are working 9 to10 hours per day, the last thing you want to consider is pumping the brakes to take a useless class and feeling the pressure to work even more hours to catch up on all the work or tasks assigned to you. Sometimes it helps to have a great boss that you highly respect to place the sole of her shoe in your back and say, "End of discussion, you are going to take the class and enjoy it." I can be a very good pouter that often helps to get me out of doing stuff I don't want to do, but ever so often you get that one person who seems to know what may be a great experience for you. That was the case of reporting for combat or duty at the Emotional Intelligence class.
Of course, I had no idea what this emotional intelligence class would entail. Like a true soldier I showed up with lots of enthusiasm and ready to learn something new. There were 20 of us in the class and I didn't know anyone at all. I watched very carefully as the facilitator glided through her introductions and explanations about emotional intelligence and how it could help us to become better leaders in every profession. She added that it could also make us better at understanding how to maneuver through uncomfortable or disagreeable situations. That pricked my attention.
Prior to coming to class each of us had to go online to complete an Emotional Intelligence Appraisal test. The results of the appraisal test would be shared and discussed with each participant at the end of the workshop. To help us to better understand, the facilitator explained that the value of learning our emotional intelligence or EQ was akin to learning the waltz with an actual partner. It was explained that if we were told about the dance steps and that we may learn something and possibly try the dance steps on our own. Before continuing, she gave us time to consider her words before adding that if she showed each of us how to do the waltz, we would practice the steps with a partner, making the chances of remembering them later on the dance floor go up exponentially. Each of our emotional intelligence appraisal was our dance partner in developing these skills. At this point I was sold and my attention was fully captivated by this amazing instructor.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage ones own emotions and those of the people around you. People with a high degree of emotional intelligence know what they're feeling, what their emotions mean, and how these emotions can impact other people.
There are five components of emotional intelligence that include:
Self-awareness
Self-regulation
Motivation
Empathy
Social skills
Emotionally intelligent people are skilled in four areas: identifying emotions, using emotions, understanding emotions, and regulating emotions. Once those skills have been developed they will be a huge contributor to success in life, as a result of the ability to self-manage and motivate.
Initially it may be difficult to accept, but self-awareness plays a key role. Self-awareness doesn't let you only see yourself in a different image, but it allows us to interpret other people and their emotions. Self-awareness is a facilitator that can enable us to practice emotional intelligence in a difficult or quite often heated situation.
Self-management is what happens when you act or do not act. It's our ability to use awareness of our emotions to stay flexible and direct our behaviour in a positive manner.
Social awareness is the ability to interpret emotions in others and understand what is really happening with them. The most important elements include listening and observing. In order to do so we must listen very carefully and observe everything that's going on around us. Empathy helps us to understand how others are feeling so that we can try responding appropriately to them.
An activity that I assigned to my students when teaching Marketing at San Francisco State University was to really watch people while interacting with them in order to get a sense of what they may be feeling or thinking. One of my classes involved going to a coffee shop and sitting for 30 to 45 minutes and just watching one person the entire time. Some people would smile, others would come over to see if we knew each other, check to see if I was flirting or interested in them, or several would get annoyed and just walk out of the coffee shop.
A key part of being emotionally intelligent is being confident enough to communicate with others using open-ended questions to be able to learn more about the person you are talking with and also more about the topic and how the other person is feeling. Close-ended questions seldom work because it allows the person to answer yes or no. This only helps if you already know the answer but the response provides no further insight. As a communications project manager, I have also learned the significance of listening to my clients and what they are saying to me and hearing what they want to accomplish. At an early age I learned that we have 2 ears for a reason and they play different roles. It should also be noted that we only have one mouth that should remain closed most of the time when someone else is sharing key information. In workshops I have often taught the process of WAIT which stands for Why Am I Talking. Sometimes it's good to ask yourself the question and hopefully get others who won't stop talking to pick up the technique.
There is a potential for everyone to explode when pushed to the edge, but using my emotional intelligence has saved me several times from serving time in prison for murder. Most people with emotional intelligence skills avoid using the silent treatment and never say everything is fine when it's usually not. They are always aware of the impact of their words, body language and their own defense triggers. Being honest about ones feelings can take some vulnerability, as well as some self-awareness. One of the best skills for me has been learning how to match my behaviour to my emotion and being able to identify what the impact may be on myself and on others. This indicates that you are using your emotional intelligence well.
There are several things that I look for when I am out and about that helps to feed my emotional intelligence. Even when just running daily or weekly errands, I look for genuine smiles in the neighbourhood or in local businesses. There is not a day that I don't notice the body language of every single individual. It's like being on surveillance. The negativity that flows from some people doesn't affect me because my shield is up and it goes no where. When I encounter a positive body language, the positivity is returned three-fold. One of my most fun activities is recognising calmness and open mindedness with strangers, neighbours or many of the shop keepers who truly make you feel welcomed in their establishments. It goes without saying that the two-year old in me can ask lots of open ended questions. For example, a simple trip to the local pharmacy to choose a vitamin C usually takes me 45 to 60 minutes of chatting, laughing, learning about vitamins, exchanging recipes, talking about the latest styles and just harassing the people that I simply adore because they feel like an extended family.
Possessing good social skills can be a positive sign of emotional intelligence. If you shy away from social skills you may notice that you isolate yourself from others. A major part of emotional intelligence is connecting with and reading others. Being social is one of my best attributes to getting to the heart of any and everything. I am like a sponge when it comes to absorbing and learning new information about everything. Many of my friends nicknamed me Ms. Kravitz, the nosey neighbour in the television series, Bewitched.
Have you ever been involved in a tense meeting or encounter, knowing that you have another meeting on a completely different topic with someone else? How would you normally handle the next meeting? Many people may be unable to proceed to the next meeting without allowing the anger, annoyance or a negative tone to travel with them. Usually what I do in those situations is take a moment to breathe, clear my head and acknowledge the situation, as well as my emotional state of mind. It's great to remind myself that I am heading into a new moment or situation and it's important to leave any negative feelings or thoughts at the door before entering my next meeting. The key word of the moment is to move forward and enter fresh.
During my emotional intelligence training, the facilitator asked each participate to share a difficult situation that we may have encountered in our lives. At least 10 of the 20 participants expressed their dislike of the course and felt that it was a waste of time for them and completely shut down. I was quite surprised by their negative attitudes. The facilitator gave them the opportunity to leave the training, a few left and the others were too embarrassed to do so. So we started to share various situations.
For over 15 years I worked as a trainer, facilitating a variety of workshops all over the United States. One of the organisations that I freelanced and volunteered with was AARP, the American Association of Retired People. I was requested to conduct a workshop with a colleague on the topic of Cultural Sensitivity and Diversity. My colleague and I walked into the training center to greet 35 participants between the ages of 60 and 75 years old. All of the participants were white men and women but it didn't matter much to us. My colleague was originally from the Basque country in Northern Spain and then there was me, a little black man with reddish skin and sandy coloured hair. We were excited to be doing the training. Upon starting, all of the hands went up in the air. My colleague and I looked at each other and smiled with excitement. Feeling like a lovely peacock, my feathers were showing. As we started to acknowledge one of the participants, our smiles quickly froze as the man made it known that he didn't want to hear from any Mexican and stressed his dislike of her accent and suggested that she return to Mexico. We were both a bit startled because her accent is Spanish, being from Spain but we remained frozen as he plowed through with the support of the others. The man continued that they also hated anyone that looked like me or had black or brown skin because it was inferior and why would AARP select two people of colour to lead a training for them.
Their faces were full of anger and their body language screamed, 'we hate everything about you.' Today, I am still unsure how we were able to survive the 3-hour training session. After allowing all of them to voice their hate of us, a thought popped into my head. I thanked them for their opinions and announced that I had a few questions for them. To my surprise they listened. I began the discussion by repeating all the things they announced that they hated about us just to make sure I had the details correct. Then I said, "Now that you have told me what you believe about me, please take a closer look and share with me all the things you don't know about me, simply by looking at me?" It was clear that they were totally caught off guard. We became silent on purpose, to allow them time to think and remove the shocked looks off of their faces. They participated and started listing things that they didn't know, primarily about me. My colleague listed them on the easel as we proceeded with our training. Here is an abbreviated list of things that they said could not be clear from looking at me:
If I was religious or not
If I was married, divorced or single
What was my business or professional background
If I was African American, Indigenous American, African, West Indian, French or something unknown like a mutt
If I had a father or if I was a bastard child
If my father was black or white
If I was educated and if so, did I have a college degree
If I had children
If I was gay, straight or transgender
If I spoke another language besides English
If I had ever traveled outside of California
If I had brothers and sisters or was an only child or adopted
If I had ever committed murder or been in prison
If my teeth were real or fake
I allowed them to list all of their concerns and addressed each one with them. I also wanted more details about why they hated black people so much. They shared that Black people:
Cut them off in traffic on the freeway
Never stop at STOP signs
Rob them and steal things from their homes
Steal their cars
Break into their cars to steal their loose change or anything left on the seat
Rape their white women, girls and boys
Prevent their boys from getting selected for sports in schools
Always lie
Use a lot of drugs, especially crack
Are just an inferior race of people
Afterwards, I led them into an activity where they partnered up with someone in the group they didn't know. Each person took 10 to 15 minutes to tell their partner what they thought they knew about them simply by looking at them as well as what they didn't know about each other simply by doing a visual assessment. After about 5 minutes we started to hear nervous giggles and then lots of laughter. From that point forward we were able to conduct the cultural sensitivity session. As we reached the last 15 minutes of the training session, we had everyone complete an evaluation and also requested verbal feedback. Once again, all the hands were raised to give their comments. We never lost our composure as we prepared for the worse but hoped for the best. To my surprise they raved about the training and apologised for their racial biases. The group expressed that because of our ability to not run away helped them to look at themselves. They shared that they no longer disliked anyone who looked like me or my colleague based on the colour of our skins or our accents. They admitted that this was a life lessons to remind them to not be judgmental against others because everything that they had accused us of were also actions that every person, regardless of their colour, gender or religion do every single day, often without doing it intentionally. They even hugged each of us on their way out and the workshop reviews were top notch. According to my emotional intelligence instructor years later, she noted that, "I was probably an emotional intelligent little boy because there was no other explanation how the training session was positively turned around. I only remembered trying to survive and resisting the urge to grab my colleague's hand and run to car and drive away as fast as possible to grab a nice cup of tea to calm our nerves.
I arrived in Australia seven months ago now and some days it feels like I have been here for 10 years and other times it feels like I have been here a week. It has been a ride of a life time filled with bumps, fun jumps and smooth sailing. One of the local places that I love in Williamstown is called Pelican's Landing. I loved everything about his place, the food, the cocktails, the staff, and the amazing service. One day we decided to stop by for a drink and great snacks. The great staff was there but my favourite bartender was not there yet. The man on duty was the rudest bartender I have met in a very long time. His rudeness didn't bother me but gave me an opportunity to try all of my emotional intelligence skills on him. However, his utter nastiness pushed me to the edge and I wanted to depart my favourite hang out or stab him through the eye. As I walked back to my table with no drink my partner looked at me and asked what was the problem. I explained that I wanted to leave and was instantly in the worse mood ever. As partners, especially mine will often do, he reminded me to regroup and not to let any 'asshole' ruin a perfectly lovely day and I could make a decision on how to proceed. My choices were very clear. I could leave Pelican's Landing and go to another place in the area or I could relax and wait for my favourite bartender to arrive. As I walked up to the bar to return the menu and to give the jerk a cold look, I simply said, I will wait until the other bartender arrives to place my order, thank you. Before I could turn around my favourite bartender arrived and gave me a hug and quickly moved to shaking my Cosmo. Amazing how in just a few seconds, I was so happy and the love was flowing again from the great bartender and all of the staff too. Mister Nasty bartender just looked on in shock but he no longer existed in my world. Yet another great lesson in life to remind me that some people are just miserable individuals and there is nothing you can do to change them, but you can change the way you manage the situation and not be available for negativity.
I would like to share some key lessons learned to retain control that you may find useful.
Giving thanks. Incorporate practices to control negative emotions and situations. At the end of each day think and write down three things that you were grateful for. Remember to express thanks to your helpful partner, family members, friends or co-workers. Gratitude releases dopamine and serotonin the happiness hormone in your brain, reducing negative emotions, increasing empathy and energising relationships.
Identify Emotion. Tag your emotion to quickly decrease any overwhelming feelings. Categorising your emotion as anger, anxiety, or resentfulness can help your brain to shift control from the place of emotion.
Decide. Are you unable to control your stress because of excessive worry and anxiety? Make quick decisions. Decisions trigger the achievement chemical of dopamine which increases feelings of control, pleasure and motivation, thus regulating unwanted stress.
Adios, Au Revoir, Bye Felicia. Do you regret your behaviour after a confrontation? Unpleasant situations release cortisol in your brain as part of your survival response where you cannot think or speak straight. Instead, learn the art of walking out of the situation. By taking time out, you can bring down your cortisol level, regain control and then continue the discussion.
Focus. What if you cannot walk out of a confrontation? Something what works well for me is taking a step back and removing all emotion from discussions that may become heated. The best plan is to stick to the facts only. Often people will choose to attack from a personal place to hijack your emotional state. It's important to tell yourself that you are simply not available to that type of discussion, but are willing to respond to the rational part of the discussion in order to maintain self-control. If the other person is unable to do so, terminate the conversation until another time if at all.
Here are some of the signs of low emotional intelligence. Many of these characteristics may sound familiar when reviewing cases of white privilege incidents gone wild while making unrealistic demands or attacks on others. Often, it's just not worth spending the time trying to deal with people that lack adequate intelligence.
Being argumentative.
Refusing to listen.
Always blaming others instead of looking at themselves.
Emotional outburst or erratic screaming and pretending to be the victim.
In closing, I would like to share a few self-awareness strategies to help yourself to become stronger that include:
Stop treating your feelings as good or bad.
Don't be fooled by a bad mood.
Keep a journal about your emotions.
Don't be fooled by a good mood, either.
Watch yourself like a hawk.
Observe the effects of your emotions.
Ask yourself why you do the things you do.
Get to know yourself under stress.
I hope this information will be useful to you. It truly made a major difference in how I interact with people and how I interact with myself. You know how to reach me if you have any questions.
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