Tag Archives: #EmotionalIntelligence

Regret Ruler

07 Tuesday Jul 2020

Posted by in Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Uncategorized

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I am having difficulty with some of my COVID-19-related decisions, and it’s unusual for me to have any trouble deciding. Decision making is one of my superpowers!

It’s important to consider our values and priorities when making decisions. I think of them as rulers. When I’m trying to make a choice, I hold up my values ruler and see which option is most in alignment with my values. Whatever is important to me right now also needs to be taken into consideration – that’s the priorities ruler.

We each have several rulers that we use when making decisions. Another significant ruler is the impression management ruler. We all want to be seen by others in a certain way. We do what we can to manage other people’s impressions of us to ensure we are seen as we want to be seen. For example, I want to be seen as professional and smart, so I do things that enhance that image. We always hold our impression management ruler up to any decision and consider whether or not it will enhance the image we want to project.

Lately, those rulers are not helping. I find myself faced with two choices, and neither one of them feels like a great choice. For example, one friend has invited me out to eat. I like her and really miss going to restaurants. I haven’t eaten out since early March. However, I don’t feel like going to a restaurant is a great idea for me right now. I am in one of the higher risk categories for COVID-19, and I just don’t want it. I don’t want to expose anyone to it, either.

Going or not going to a restaurant isn’t a huge decision; it’s just an example. However, it still gives me pause. I can hear that my friend is disappointed when I refuse. I want to be a good friend and see her, but I just feel uncomfortable about going. It’s not a value, priority, or impression management issue so I pull out the big guns – my regret ruler.

If the choices seem equally terrible or uncomfortable, I ask myself which one I will regret more now, in a few days, in a year, and in five years. The key is to determine which choice creates the most long-term regret and avoid it. Clearly, I will immediately regret not going out for a fun evening with someone I like. However, if one of us falls ill or if I carry COVID-19 to a family member, the regret would be greater – and long-lasting.

Of course, there is uncertainty involved. I could go to dinner and come back with nothing but a full stomach. I look at worst-case scenarios and the amount of risk. Once again, it’s a judgment call, but if I do a gut-check, I could not live with myself if I gave a potentially fatal disease to a family member in order to go out to dinner. I would also feel deep regret if I caught it and became a toxic burden to others. The amount of regret that I would feel is simply not worth the risk.

Like the values, priorities, and impression management rulers, the regret ruler is very personal – as is risk assessment. The variations in our regret rulers and risk assessment seem to be major contributors to the differences of opinion that are rampant in our society right now.

I am reminded of a video that I watched of several different people intentionally coughing on others to show the intensity of their disagreement on the issue of masks. For the record, that sort of behavior is unacceptable, and those people are definitely not great leaders. In my estimation, they aren’t great humans. They lack emotional intelligence, which starts with self-awareness and self-control.

As leaders, we examine our choices and our rulers, and then manage ourselves to ensure our behaviors are always respectful towards others, no matter how different their rulers are from ours.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Naming the Emotion

02 Tuesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Emotional Intelligence, Uncategorized

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In leadership workshops, we work on noticing and naming the emotions that we are feeling. Knowing what we are feeling and where we feel it in our bodies is a crucial part of self-awareness. Many of us are not aware of the emotions that influence our behavior.

In every conversation, there is a fact and a feeling part. Of course, we want to know what other people are feeling, but it’s also okay for us to share ours as long as we do it in an appropriate way. Telling people that we are frustrated, annoyed, elated, or excited invites them to share what they are feeling.

In life coach training we are taught to pay close attention to the emotions of our clients and to tell them what we notice. If someone talks loudly while scowling and making fists with their hands, I could say, “It seems like this situation makes you angry.” Usually, the client will check in with his or her emotions and then clarify them. The response might be, “I am not just angry; I am infuriated!”

Of course, the technique works just as well for what we consider to be positive emotions. I could say that a client sounds excited about a situation or opportunity. In addition to verifying excitement, the client often goes on to explain why he or she feels excited which deepens the conversation.

Naming the emotional field is a powerful tool during contentious conversations. Paying attention to someone’s negative emotion and naming it is a great way to keep ourselves from reacting without thinking.

Our neocortex is the advanced “adult” part of our brain. It covers the outside of our brain, and it’s where our self-control and creativity reside. When we get super angry, our neocortex disengages and the more primitive and emotional parts of our brain take over.

One way to get the neocortex to re-engage is to step back and become an observer of ourselves and the situation. We can ask ourselves things like:

  • Why might that person be provoking me?
  • What emotion is the other person feeling?
  • What emotion am I feeling?
  • What is triggering me about this situation?
  • Where am I feeling emotion in my body?
  • What is my ultimate [desired outcome]?

I saw the technique demonstrated in an HBO show that I was watching called Gentleman Jack. The series is based on the coded diaries of Anne Lister who lived in the 1800s. An article that I read said that they based a lot of the dialogue on her diaries. If that’s true, the woman had incredible emotional intelligence, and she was a master of naming the emotional field.

Someone she cared about asked her a baiting, sarcastic question in one episode. She paused, looked at the woman, and said something like, “I am trying to understand why you would make a hostile comment to me. What point are you trying to make?” I think I actually said out loud, “Way to go, Anne!” Fortunately, I was watching it by myself.

She didn’t take the bait. She didn’t get angry herself. She got curious! She named the emotion she observed and then asked a question. Brilliant! It’s a wonderful way to manage a person who is working to engage one in conflict.

Naming the emotional field requires being aware of our own emotions and the emotions of others. We can practice naming our own emotions by setting a timer that goes off throughout the day. Each time the alarm goes off, we pause to consider what we are feeling, where we are feeling it, and why we are experiencing that particular emotion.

In order to name other people’s emotions, we must pay attention to all the verbal and nonverbal cues presented. Then we make an educated guess. Our guess prompts people to check in and determine their true emotions. When they confirm or clarify what they are feeling, we’ve moved the conversation forward and begun to figure out what is really going on.

The feeling part of the conversation holds most of the clues that will lead to a solution or resolution. Exceptional leaders can mine for those clues while managing their own emotions. Instead of a brawl or a standoff, a great leader can create a dialogue that maintains the positivity of the relationship.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Perils of the Brain Dump

18 Tuesday Jun 2019

Posted by in #Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Mindfulness, Uncategorized

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When we visit homes with children, they often want to show us treasured belongings and tell us about things that are important to them. I’ve noticed that some adults behave in the same way. They have an urgent need to expel every thought in their brains through their mouths. I call it a Brain Dump.

The compulsion to say whatever we think is similar to the need we feel to finish things like puzzles. In leadership workshops, I use simple children’s puzzles in one exercise. I often halt the exercise when the puzzle is only partially done. I know from experience that I might as well let them finish the puzzle before they put it away. If I don’t, I hear complaints and there is a tangible feeling of being incomplete in the room. No one is ready to move on to our discussion until the puzzles are done.

I used to be like the children who share their thoughts and observations all the time. I thought it, then wanted to share it. After all, I’m a smart person with brilliant observations to share! Then I realized that no one was really interested in most of what I had to say outside of leadership workshops.

It hit me that my rambling and sharing was actually a colossal waste of time. I was saying things I already knew. The object of my Brain Dump wasn’t listening. Okay, maybe they were half-listening or pretending to listen, but they weren’t taking in the information for later use. Worse yet, I sometimes told stories that hinted at who I was, but they weren’t pertinent to my hapless listener.

I also realized that my Brain Dumps were harming the positivity of the relationship I had with my listener. If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you know that I’m a proponent of positive relationships. You will also know that you need a 5:1 ratio of positive interactions to negative ones in order to maintain a positive relationship. My listeners were not considering my Brain Dumps as a positive interaction.

About this same time, I came across a study, which I cannot find now. If you know of it, please drop me a line. Anyway, whether I’ve remembered it exactly or not, it had an enormous impact on my life.

They put CEOs in a room and had employees go in and talk with them. For the first round, the CEOs received no instructions and they talked quite a bit during the interactions. When interviewed afterward, the employees were not that impressed with the CEOs.

During the second round with a new group of employees, the CEOs were told not to talk. They were to keep silent as much as possible. In the interviews after the discussions, the employees reported that the CEOs were intelligent and good leaders. The CEOs made a better impression when they were quiet! Showing they were knowledgeable experts worked against them.

Unless in a leadership workshop where I was paid to talk, I worked to remain silent as much as possible. It was hard. It takes a lot of self-management to be quiet when you have a burning desire to show your smarts or solve someone’s problem or tell a funny story. It made me feel uncomfortable. It was like sitting and looking at an unsolved puzzle and not moving to put in the piece that I could see fit in one specific spot.

The ability to refrain from Brain Dumping is a sign of emotional intelligence. Quick refresher: emotional intelligence in its simplest form is self-awareness, self-management, relationship awareness, and relationship management. Self-management is one of the trickiest bits, and it relies on self-awareness.

In this particular case, I become aware of the negative effect that my Brain Dumping was having on other people (relationship awareness). I analyzed my need to share and realized that it was tied firmly to my own ego (self-awareness). Then I began to work to change my behavior (self-management), which improved my relationships with others (relationship management). Ta-da! A wonderful example of the power of emotional intelligence.

Exceptional leaders are emotionally intelligent. Like all other skills, we increase our proficiency with practice. I still indulge in bending someone’s ear now and again, but after much time I feel peaceful when I don’t.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

 

Building and Rebuilding Trust

22 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by in Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Psychological Safety, Uncategorized

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Think back to the leader that you consider to be a role model. Do you trust that person? Participants in workshops always answer yes. We trust the people who we are willing to follow. Great leaders need to be trustworthy in order to have the personal influence needed to get people to follow them. We build trust by being consistent. Great supervisors are consistent and reliable.

Honestly, none of us are going to be reliable and consistent all the time, but we need to manage it most of the time. Our employees need to know that we aren’t going to yell at them when they come to us with a problem. They need to feel confident that we are going to be calm and reliable. We’re going to ask questions and figure out how to fix the situation. We want our employees to feel that we are a stable, reliable force that is going to help them. Until employees feel confident that their leaders are reliable and consistent, they are going to be tentative and watchful—maybe even subversive or dishonest in order to avoid an unpleasant confrontation.

Fortunately for us, people tend to extend trust to people at the beginning of a relationship. Trust is a gift that we need to appreciate and work to keep. We want to avoid breaching trust because once it’s gone, trust is difficult to gain back. However, all is not lost if we lose someone’s trust. There are things that we can do to regain it as quickly as possible.

The first thing to do is to admit that we’ve done something disappointing. If we made a bad decision, forgot something, or lost our temper, we should admit it. The second thing to do is apologize. Some old-school thought states that leaders should never apologize. It’s based on the belief that leaders have to be perfect to be great leaders. The problem with that thinking is that none of us are perfect. We are human, and we make mistakes. We only make matters worse if we don’t admit them and apologize.

We also need to do whatever we can to fix the problem if that’s possible. An apology goes a long way, but we also want to do what we can to make things right. If we forgot to do something, how can we get it done and deal with the results of forgetting? If a plan doesn’t work, it’s time to regroup and try again. We help to rebuild trust when we do what we can to repair any damage that we’ve done.

After we have broken trust, we will have to continue to behave in a consistent, reliable manner until everyone feels comfortable again. It may take some time, so we need to be patient.

In summary, when we break trust, it’s important to acknowledge it, apologize, and do what we can to fix it. Then we continue to be trustworthy until whoever was affected decides that they can trust us again.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

 

Who Am I?

14 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Leadership, Uncategorized, Uncovering Your Authentic Self

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March Series: Uncovering Your Authentic Self

Who Am I?

Last week we talked about the foundation of who we are: values, priorities, experiences, and beliefs. (https://kathystoddardtorrey.wordpress.com/2017/03/07/define-your-frame-of-reference/) This week, let’s dig a little deeper.

Back when I was trying to figure out who I was and what I liked, I wasn’t getting much information from me. I just seemed to be a big empty vessel with no answers. So, I decided to look outwards.

I did the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) as part of my facilitation training. According to the MBTI, I am an INTJ. This means that I get my energy from being alone; I am a big-picture thinker; fairness and consistency are important to me; and I like to make lists and check things off the lists. There are a bunch of books about MBTI personality types with descriptions, and I read through a lot of them.

For the most part, I agreed with the descriptions about me and the books’ assessments of what I probably liked to do. I would photocopy pages and mark off the things that I didn’t agree with in the assessment. It was easier for me to say yes or no to things rather than make them up myself.

After the MBTI, I went on to the Enneagram. There are nine types, and if you really get into it, you’ll uncover extra wings. I am an 8. Here is brief description from the Enneagram Institute:

“Eights are self-confident, strong, and assertive. Protective, resourceful, straight-talking, and decisive, but can also be ego-centric and domineering. Eights feel they must control their environment, especially people, sometimes becoming confrontational and intimidating. Eights typically have problems with their tempers and with allowing themselves to be vulnerable. At their best: self- mastering, they use their strength to improve others’ lives, becoming heroic, magnanimous, and inspiring.”

Cool. I can get behind most of that. I especially like the goal of becoming heroic, magnanimous, and inspiring.

Then, I tried the DISC. I’m a D – Dominant. Hmmm. There seems to be a theme here. However, before I started correlating the information, I did one more – my astrological sign.

I’m an Aries (the Ram). Here’s a description:

“You love to be the one who thinks up the bright ideas and has other people carry them out. Not only the most competitive of the Zodiac, you are also the first sign and love to be first at whatever you do. You thrive when you’re on top of your game. Happy with a challenge and ambitious, you have the courage it takes to be a leader in your field. Tempering your fiery attitude with patience is the test of the can-do Aries. Knowing when to move on and when to follow through requires careful thought and planning for ultimate success. No doubt, you can be a winner all the way!”

By now, I’m beginning to understand why my mother described me as “bossy” in elementary school. She meant that I had leadership potential!

Leading is one of my superpowers. We all have superpowers! Think of things that you can do faster and more easily than other people. Those are your superpowers. It took me years to figure out that writing and publishing newsletters is one of my superpowers. I created newsletters for various groups through the years, but it wasn’t until I saw the time and effort that it took other people to do the same task that I realized that I’m good and fast at newsletters.

I have friends whose superpower is to nurture others through cooking and food. That is not one of my superpowers. Others can pull colors together in their home and wardrobe, which is also not one of my superpowers. Some people have a knack for details and numbers. I love those people! They fill a skill gap for me.

If you have trouble naming your superpowers, then think about the things that others ask you to do. Better yet, ask people who know you what they think your superpowers are. Through feedback, I learned that I’m good at taking complex ideas and making them easy to understand. I don’t think I would’ve figured out that one on my own.

There is an assessment on my website that you can begin this week. It’s the Wheel of Life. The first two pages help you to get a snapshot of who you are now and how satisfied you are with various categories of life. The third page is about goals regarding where you want to go and who you want to be. That’s the topic for next week!

Have fun finding out who you are! There are a lot of free personality assessments online. Don’t take any assessment results too seriously. Remember, you are the expert on you and you get to decide what applies and what does not. You can print the things that you like and put them in a folder or binder. I have a binder labeled “Kathy.” I look back through it now and then when I’m feeling a little lost or not in the flow of things. Having it all in one place makes it easier to find yourself in the future.

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

I’ve Got A Bad Feeling About This!

31 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Emotional Intelligence, Feelings, Leadership, Uncategorized

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Feelings

February is the month of Valentine’s Day and declaring our feelings. Therefore, it feels like a good time to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly emotions that we all experience – and what to do with them.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this!

We all have feelings. In my mind, that isn’t always a good thing. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with emotions for years! I am not a natural touchy-feely type; however, I have learned that there is value in all types of emotions.

If we think about emotions as light and dark, then we know one type by comparing it  to the other. For example, we experience joy in the context of sadness. We can’t experience one without the other. If we only feel one type o emotion, it’s like looking at something white on a white background.

One quote that I heard in high school has stayed with me for almost 40 years: “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” – Kahlil Gibran,  The Prophet (I will admit that I did not remember where the quote came from, and I had to look it up.)

There was a time when I was awful at dealing with my feelings. That is to say, I stuffed them most of the time. If a feeling made me the least little bit uncomfortable, it was banished. I was very good at not feeling my feelings.

I began my life coach training in 2005, and they wanted to talk about feelings a lot. I didn’t want to play in the beginning! The instructor would walk past some poor person trying to coach me around my feelings, and he would say, “Get her out of her head! She’s always in her head.” Hmmm. Let me think about that.

I do have a tendency to live in my head. I am very logical, but I saw the value in embracing feelings so I changed how I respond to emotions. I decided to view emotions as friends rather than enemies.

The first step to embracing your feelings is to know that dark feelings are not bad and light feelings are not good. Feelings just are, and all feelings are okay. We can react poorly to any emotion, but the emotion is just a natural part of being human.

The next step is to figure out exactly which emotion is visiting. When I feel an emotion, I accurately name it rather than stuffing it. For example, if I feel angry, I would say to myself, “Wow! I am feeling very angry, and disappointed, and frustrated!” Stepping outside ourselves to objectively define how we are feeling takes away some of the power of the emotions.

In the beginning, I wasn’t even good at labeling light emotions! I wasn’t sure about what I liked or what brought me joy. I’d spent many years as a stay-at-home mom who did what everyone else liked to do. I did enjoy those things, but I didn’t know what I enjoyed in a vacuum outside of other relationships. I spent a lot of time asking myself, “Do I like doing this? Does this bring me joy?” and “What emotion is this creating?” It was a little unsettling to realize that I didn’t know myself well at all.

It took me a while, but I did improve. It helped to go through a list of various emotions and then decide which one felt most accurate. I would think, “Is this happiness? No. Is this relief? No. Is this contentment? Yes, I think I am content.” A written list of emotions can help you explore your feelings. If you search online for “list of human emotions,” you will get a bunch of results.

Embracing emotions can be scary. I find comfort in the fact that they are just visiting, and not setting up a permanent residence. I guess that one could argue that depression is sadness staying too long. We definitely should get help if a dark emotion won’t go away. However, most of the time our emotions will come and go.

Lastly, it’s a useful exercise to take a few minutes and examine why we are feeling a particular emotion. A dark emotion can be the result of something challenging  a value that we hold or our ego reacting to something that makes us feel small. A light emotion can tell us what we like to do and who we like to be around.

Remember that you aren’t a turkey, and you shouldn’t be stuffing yourself with unwanted and unexamined emotions. It’s better to label the emotion, give it a hug, and then figure out the source of it. To feel is to be human and we are all human. There is no need to have a bad feeling about that!

For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.