Emotional Intelligence

The logic of the emotional mind is associative; it takes elements that symbolize a reality, or trigger a memory of it, to be the same as that reality. That is why similes, metaphors, and images speak directly to the emotional mind, as do the arts - novels, film, poetry, song, theater, opera. Great spiritual teachers, like Buddha and Jesus, have touched their disciples’ hearts by speaking in the language of emotion, teaching in parables, fables, and stories. Indeed, religious symbol and ritual makes little sense from the rational point of view; it is couched in the vernacular of the heart.

Dreams are private myths; myths are shared dreams.

What something reminds us of can be far more important than what it “is”. Indeed, in emotional life, identities can be like a hologram in the sense that a single part evokes a whole. While the rational mind makes logical connections between causes and effects, the emotional mind is indiscriminate, connecting things that merely have similar striking features.

When we teach about anger, we help kids understand that it is almost always a secondary reaction and to look for what’s underneath - are you hurt? Jealous? Our kids learn that you always have choices about how you respond to emotion, and the more ways you know to respond to an emotion, the richer your life can be.

A child’s readiness for school depends on the most basic of all knowledge, how to learn. The report lists the seven key ingredients of this crucial capacity - all related to emotional intelligence:

Confidence. A sense of control and mastery of one’s body, behavior, and world; the child’s sense that he is more likely than not to succeed at what he undertakes, and that adults will be helpful.
Curiosity. The sense that finding out about things is positive and leads to pleasure.
Intentionality. The wish and capacity to have an impact, and to act upon that with persistence. This is related to a sense of competence, of being effective.
Self-control. The ability to modulate and control one’s own actions in age-appropriate ways; a sense of inner control.
Relatedness. The ability to engage with others based on the sense of being understood by and understand others.
Capacity to communicate. The wish and ability to verbally exchange ideas, feelings, and concepts with others. This is related to a sense of trust in others and of pleasure in engaging with others, including adults.
Cooperativeness. The ability to balance one’s own needs with those of others in group activity.

An artful critique can be one of the most helpful messages a manager can send. For example, what the contemptuous vice president could have told the software engineer - but did not - was something like: “The main difficulty at this stage is that your plan will take too long and so escalate costs. I’d like you to think more about your proposal, especially the design specifications for software development, to see if you can figure out a way to do the same job quickly.” Such a message has the opposite impact of destructive criticism: instead of creating helplessness, anger, and rebellion, it holds out the hope of doing better and suggests the beginning of a plan for doing so.

An artful critique focuses on what a person has done and can do rather than reading a mark of character into a job poorly done. As Larson observes, “A character attack - calling someone stupid or incompetent - misses the point. You immediately put him on the defensive, so that he’s no longer receptive to what you have to tell him about how to do things better.” That advice, of course, is precisely the same as for married couples airing their grievances.

And, in terms of motivation, when people believe that their failures are due to some unchangeable deficit in themselves, they lose hope and stop trying. The basic belief that leads to optimism, remember, is that setbacks or failures are due to circumstances that we can do something about to change them for the better.

Be specific. Offer a solution. Be present. Be sensitive.

Indeed, in a study of 108 managers and white-collar workers, inept criticism was ahead of mistrust, personality struggles, and disputes over power and pay as reason for conflict on the job. One critique was considerate and specific. But the other included threats and blamed the person’s innate deficiencies, with remarks like, “Didn’t even try; can’t seem to do anything right” and “Maybe it’s just lack of talent. I’d try to get someone else to do it.”

Understandably, those who were attacked became tense and angry and antagonistic, saying they would refuse to collaborate on future projects with the person who gave the criticism. Many indicated they would want to avoid contact altogether - in other words, they felt like stonewalling. The harsh criticism made those who received it so demoralized that they no longer tried as hard at their work and, perhaps more damaging, said they no longer felt capable of doing well. The personal attack was devastating to their morale.

Many managers are too willing to criticize, but frugal with praise, leaving the employees feeling that they only hear about how they’re doing when they make a mistake. This propensity to criticism is compounded by managers who delay giving any feedback at all for long periods. Most problems in an employee’s performance are not sudden; they develop slowly over time. When the boss fails to let his feeling be known promptly, it leads to his frustration building up slowly. Then, one day, he blows up about it. If the criticism had been given earlier on, the employee would have been able to correct the problem. Too often people criticize only when things boil over, when they get too angry to contain themselves. And that’s when they give the criticism in the worst way, in a tone of biting sarcasm, calling to mind a long list of grievances they had kept for themselves, or making threats. Such attacks backfire. They are received as an affront, so the recipient becomes angry in return. It’s the worst way to motivate someone.

Every strong emotion has at its root an impulse to action; managing those impulses is basic to emotional intelligence. This can be particularly difficult, though, in love relationships, where we have so much at stake. The reactions triggered here touch on some of our deepest needs - to be loved and feel respected, fears of abandonment or of being emotionally deprived. Small wonder we can act in a marital fight as though our very survival were at stake.

Even so, nothing gets resolved positively when husband or wife is in the midst of an emotional hijacking. One key marital competence is for partners to learn to soothe their own distressed feelings. Essentially, this means mastering the ability to recover quickly from the flooding caused by an emotional hijacking. Because the ability to hear, think, and speak with clarity dissolves during such an emotional peak, calming down is an immensely constructive step, without which there can be no further progress in settling what’s an issue.

Because flooding is triggered by negative thoughts about the partner, it helps if a husband or wife who is being upset by such harsh judgments tackles them head-on. Sentiments like “I’m not going to take this anymore” or “I don’t deserve this kind of treatment” are innocent-victim or righteous-indignation slogans. As cognitive therapist Aaron Beck points out, by catching these thoughts and challenging them - rather than simply being enraged or hurt by them - a husband or wife can begin to become free of their hold.

This requires monitoring such thoughts, realizing that one does not have to believe them, and making the intentional effort to bring to mind evidence or perspectives that put them in question. For example, a wife who feels in the heat of the moment that “he doesn’t care about my needs - he’s always so selfish” might challenge the thought by reminding herself of a number of things her husband has done that are, in fact, thoughtful. This allows her to reframe the thought as: “Well, he does show he cares about me sometimes, even though what he just did was thoughtless and upsetting to me.” The latter formulation opens the possibility of change and a positive resolution; the former only foments anger and hurt.

The two arms of the fight-or-flight response each represent ways a spouse can respond to an attack. The most obvious is to fight back, lashing out in anger. That route typically ends in a fruitless shouting match. But the alternative response, fleeing, can be more pernicious, particularly when the “flight” is a retreat into stony silence.

Stonewalling is the ultimate defense. The stone waller just goes blank, in effect withdrawing from the conversation by responding with a stony expression and silence. Stonewalling sends a powerful, unnerving message, something like a combination of icy distance, superiority, and distaste. Stonewalling showed up mainly in marriages that were heading for trouble; in 85 percent of these cases it was the husband who stonewalled in response to a wife who attacked with criticism and contempt. As a habitual response stonewalling is devastating to the health of a relationship: it cuts off all possibility of working out disagreements.

These parallel conversations - the spoken and the silent - are an example of the kinds of thinking that can poison a marriage. The real emotional exchange between Melanie and Martin is shaped by their thoughts, and those thoughts, in turn, are determined by another, deeper layer, which Beck calls “automatic thoughts” - fleeting, background assumptions about oneself and the people in one’s life that reflect our deepest emotional attitudes. For Melanie the background thought is something like, “He’s always bullying me with his anger.” For Martin, the key thought is, “She has no right to treat me like this.” Melanie feels like an innocent victim in their marriage, and Martin feels righteous indignation at what he feels is unjust treatment.

Thoughts of being an innocent victim or of righteous indignation are typical of partners in troubled marriages, continually fueling anger and hurt. Once distressing thoughts as righteous indignation become automatic, they are self-confirming: the partner who feels victimized is constantly scanning everything his partner does that might confirm the view that she is victimizing him, ignoring or discounting any acts of kindness on her part that would question or disconfirm that view.

An early warning signal that a marriage is in danger is harsh criticism. In a healthy marriage husband and wife feel free to voice a complaint. But too often in the heat of anger complaints are expressed in a destructive fashion, as an attack on the spouse’s character. For example, Pamela and her daughter went shoe shopping while her husband, Tom, went to a bookstore. They agreed to meet in front of the post office in an hour, then got to a matinee. Pamela was prompt, but there was no sign of Tom. “Where is he? The movie starts in ten minutes,” Pamela complained to her daughter. “If there’s a way for your husband to screw something up, he will.” When Tom showed up ten minutes later, happy about having run into a friend an apologizing for being late, Pamela lashed out with a sarcasm: “That’s okay - it gave us a chance to discuss your amazing ability to screw up every single plan we make. You’re so thoughtless and self-centered!”

The differences between complaints and personal criticisms are simple. In a complaint, a wife states specifically what is upsetting her, and criticizes her husband’s action, not her husband, saying how it made her feel: “When you forgot to pick up my clothes at the cleaner’s it made me feel like you don’t care about me.” It is an expression of basic emotional intelligence: assertive, not belligerent or passive. But in a personal criticism she uses the specific grievance to launch a global attack on her husband: “You’re always so selfish and uncaring. It just proves I can’t trust you to do anything right.” This kind of criticism leaves the person on the receiving end feeling ashamed, disliked, blamed, and defective - all of which are more likely to lead to a defensive response than to steps to improve things.

All the more so when the criticism comes laden with contempt, a particularly destructive emotion. Contempt comes easily with anger; it is usually expressed not just in the words used, but also in a tone of voice and an angry expression. Its most obvious form, of course, is mockery or insult - “jerk,” “bitch,” “wimp.” But just as hurtful is the body language that conveys contempt, particularly the sneer or curled lip that are the universal facial signals for disgust, or a rolling of the eyes, as if to say, “Oh, brother!”

Specific issues such as how often a couple has sex, how to discipline the children, or how much debt and savings a couple feels comfortable with are not what make or break a marriage. Rather, it is how a couple discusses such sore points that matters more for the fate of their marriage. Simply having reached an agreement about how to disagree is key to marital survival; men and women have to overcome the innate gender differences in approaching rocky emotions.

Did you pick up my dry cleaning?
Did you pick up my dry cleaning? Pick up your own damn dry cleaning. What am I, your maid?
Hardly. If you were a maid, at least you’d know how to clean.

If the test of social skill is the ability to calm distressing emotions in others, then handling someone at the peak of rage is perhaps the ultimate measure of mastery. One effective strategy might be to distract the angry person, empathize with his feelings and perspective, and then draw him into an alternative focus, one that attunes him with a more positive range of feeling - a kind of emotional judo.

Aikido is the art of reconciliation. Whoever has the mind to fight has broken his connection with the universe. If you try to dominate people you are already defeated. We study how to resolve conflict, not how to start it.

Aha! A foreigner! You need a lesson in Japanese manners!
Why the hell should I talk to you?
What’cha been drinking?
I been drinking sake, and it’s none of your business
Oh that’s wonderful, absolutely wonderful. You see, I love sake too. Every night, me an my wife warm up a little bottle of sake and take it out into the garden, and we sit on an old wooden bench… the persimmon tree… the fortunes fo my garden… enjoying sake in the evening.
Yeah… I love persimmons too…
Yes, and I’m sure hyou have a wonderful wife
No. My wife died…

Components of interpersonal intelligence:

Organizing groups: the essential skill of the leader, this involves initiating and coordinating the efforts of a network of people. This is the talent seen in theater directors or producers, in military officers, and in effective heads of organizations an units of all kinds. On the playground, this is the child who takes the lead in deciding what everyone will play, or becomes team captain.
Negotiating solutions: theo talent of the mediator, preventing conflicts or resolving those that flare up. People who have this ability excel in deal-making, in arbitrating or mediating disputes; they might have a career in diplomacy, in arbitration or law, or as middlemen or managers of takeovers.
Personal connection: this makes it easy to enter into an encounter or to recognize and respond fittingly to people’s feelings and concerns - the art of relationship. Such people make good “team players,” dependable spouses, good friends or business partners; in the business world they do well as salespeople or managers, or can be excellent teachers.
Social analysis: being able to detect and have insights about people’s feelings, motives and concerns. This knowledge of how others feel can lead to an easy intimacy or sense of rapport. At its best, this ability makes one a competent therapist or counselor - or, if combined with some literary talent, a gift novelist or dramatist.

Coordination of moods is the essence of rapport, the adult version of the attunement a mother has with her infant. One determinant of interpersonal effectiveness is how deftly people carry out this emotional synchrony. If they are adept at attuning to people’s moods, or can easily bring others under the sway of their own, then their interactions will go more smoothly at the emotional level. Setting the emotional tone of an interaction is, in a sense, a sign of dominance at a deep and intimate level: it means driving the emotional state of the other person.

Emotions are contagious. We transmit and catch moods from each other in what amounts to a subterranean economy of the psyche in which some encounters are toxic, some nourishing. This emotional exchange is typically at a very subtle, almost imperceptible level; the way a salesperson says thank you can leave us feeling ignored, resented, or genuinely welcomed and appreciated. We catch feelings from one another as though they were some kind of social virus.

Indeed, it is precisely the lack of these skills that can cause even the intellectually brightest to founder in their relationships, coming off as arrogant, obnoxious, or insensitive. These social abilities allow one to shape an encounter, to mobilize and inspire others, to thrive in intimate relationships, to persuade and influence, to put others at ease.

Just as the mode of the rational mind is words, the mode of the emotions is nonverbal. Indeed, when a person’s words disagree with what is conveyed via his tone of voice, gesture, or other non-verbal channel, the emotional truth is in how he says something rather than in what he says.

You learn at your best when you have something you care about and you can get pleasure from being engaged in.

Flow is a state of self-forgetfulness, the opposite of rumination and worry: instead of being lost in nervous preoccupation, people in flow are so absorbed in the task at hand that they lose all self-consciousness, dropping the small preoccupations - health, bills, even doing well - of daily life. In this sense moments of flow are egoless. Paradoxically, people in flow exhibit a masterly control of what they are doing, their responses perfectly attuned to the changing demands of the task. And although people perform at the peak while in flow, they are unconcerned with how they are doing, with thoughts of success or failure - the sheer pleasure of the act itself is what motivates them.

There are several ways to enter flow. One is to intentionally focus a sharp attention on the task at hand; a highly concentrated state is the essence of flow. There seems to be a feedback loop at the gateway to this zone: it can require considerable effort to get calm and focused enough to begin the task - this first step takes some discipline. But once focus starts to lock in, it takes on a force of its own, both offering relief from emotional turbulence and making the task effortless.

Entry to this zone can also occur when people find a task they are skilled at, and engage in it at a level that slightly taxes their ability. People seem to concentrate best when the demands on them ar a bit greater than usual, and they are able to give more than usual. If there is too little demand on them, people are bored. If there is too much for them to handle, they get anxious. Flow occurs in that delicate zone between boredom and anxiety.

People’s beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a fixed property; there is a huge variability in how you perform. People who have a sense of self-efficacy bounce back from failures; they approach things in terms of how to handle them rather than worrying about what can go wrong.

Being able to enter flow is emotional intelligence at its best; flow represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performance and learning. In flow the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow. Yet flow is an experience almost everyone enters from time to time, particularly when performing at their peak or stretching beyond their former limits. It is perhaps best captured by ecstatic lovemaking, the merging of two into a fluidly harmonious one.

That experience is a glorious one: the hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture. Because flow feels so good, it is intrinsically rewarding. It is a state in which people become utterly absorbed in what they are doing, paying undivided attention to the task, their awareness merged with their actions. Indeed, it interrupts flow to reflect too much on what is happening - the very thought “I’m doing this wonderfully” can break the feeling of flow. Attention becomes so focused that people are aware only of the narrow range of perception related to the immediate task, losing track of time and space.

Seligman defines optimism in terms of how people explain to themselves their successes and failures. People who are optimistic see a failure as due to something that can be changed so that they can succeed next time around, while pessimists take the blame for failure, ascribing it to some lasting characteristic they are helpless to change. These differing explanations have profound implications for how people respond to life. For example, in reaction to a disappointment such as being turned down for a job, optimists tend to respond actively and hopefully, by formulating a plan of action, say, or seeking out help and advice; they see the setback as something that can be remedied. Pessimists, by contrast, react to such setbacks by assuming there is nothing they can do to make things go better the next time, and so doing nothing about the problem; they see the setback as due to some personal deficit that will always plague them.

College entrance exams measure talent, while explanatory style tells you who gives up. It is the combination of reasonable talent and the ability to keep going in the face of defeat that leads to success. What’s missing in tests of ability is motivation. What you need to know about someone is whether they will keep going when things get frustrating.

Being able to take a rejection with grace is essential in sales of all kinds, especially with a product like insurance, where the ratio of noes to yeses can be so discouragingly high. New salesmen who were by nature optimists sold 37 percent more insurance in their first two years on the job than did pessimists. And during the first year the pessimists quit at twice the rate of the optimists.

Study of Olympic athletes, world-class musicians, and chess grand masters find their unifying trait is the ability to motivate themselves to pursue relentless training routines.

What seems to set apart those at the very top of competitive pursuits from others of roughly equal ability is the degree to which, beginning early in life, they can pursue and arduous practice routine for years and years. And that doggedness depends on emotional traits - enthusiasm and persistence in the face of setbacks - above all else.

Given the roots of anger in the fight wing of the fight-or-flight response, it is no surprise that a universal trigger for anger is the sense of being endangered. Endangerment can be signaled not just by an outright physical threat but also, as is more often the case, by a symbolic threat to self-esteem or dignity: being treated unjustly or rudely, being insulted or demeaned, being frustrated in pursuing an important goal.

If you could put words to what you felt, it was yours. Having no words for feelings means not making the feelings your own.

Emotional self-awareness:

Improvement in recognizing and naming own emotions.
Better able to understand the causes of feelings.
Recognizing the difference between feelings and actions.

Managing Emotions:

Better frustration tolerance and management.
Fewer verbal put-downs, fights, and classroom disruptions.
Better able to express anger appropriately, without fighting.
Fewer suspensions and expulsions.
Less aggressive or self-destructive behavior.
More positive feelings about self, school, and family.
Better at handling stress.
Less loneliness and social anxiety.

Harnessing emotions productively:

More responsible.
Better able to focus on the task at hand and pay attention.
Less impulsive; more self-control.
Improved scores on achievement tests.

Empathy: Reading emotions:

Better able to take another person’s perspective.
Improved empathy and sensitivity to others’s feelings.
Better at listening to others.

Handling relationships:

Increased ability to analyze and understand relationships.
Better at resolving conflicts and negotiating disagreements.
Better at solving problems in relationships.
More assertive and skilled at communicating.
More popular and outgoing; friendly and involved with peers.
More sought out by peers.
More concerned and considerate.
More “pro-social” and harmonious in groups.
More sharing, cooperation, and helpfulness.
More democratic in dealing with others.