What we do is not typically based on our intellectual or physical capacity, talents or strengths. Instead, what we do day in and day out is usually based on how we feel.

Because or emotions ebb and flow like the tide, our “internal weather” can be like a calm sea one moment and a raging storm the next; and the change between these two states can occur very, very quickly.

Although none of our emotions are are inherently “bad”, some emotions are more pleasant than others; some can be down right painful.  Because the majority of people live reactively to life, there seems to be two common patterns when it comes to managing unpleasant emotions:

• Thinking and responding based on how we feel or want to feel.  In this case, “feeling better” is what it’s all about. For these people, the emotional tail wags the dog.
• Leveraging will power and purpose to press forward and “get stuff done” regardless of how we feel. In this case, unpleasant feelings are ignored or tolerated.  For these people, emotions are like uncontrollable and changing weather weather patterns.

I’ve taken the latter approach for most of my life and it probably characterizes the one taken by most leaders and high achievers. The problem with both approaches above is that neither helps build true emotional fitness.

Building emotional fitness requires a framework that views emotions, unpleasant ones in particular, as information signals calling for action; emotional “Smoke Signals” if you would.  From this perspective, emotions are something to interpret as well as something to experience. With this perspective, we understand our emotions are not a place to which we’re consigned, but rather valuable information signals on which to act. And informed, intentional action serves not only serve our best interests, it also allows us to shift our immediate unpleasant emotional state.

Tony Robbins, in one of  his “emotional fitness” segments gives ten common unpleasant emotions or “smoke signals” we experience that can give us useful information if we learn how to read them. I modified these a bit but for the most part think he is right on.

The feeling or “Smoke Signal”  and corresponding message and response:

1. Uncomfortable- Uncertain of wants; clarify what you want and take informed action toward it.
2. Fearful- Real OR perceived danger; get clear and/or prepared and act accordingly.
3. Hurt-  Your expectations have been disappointed or loss has occurred. Communicate your needs, change your behavior or both.
4. Angry- An important rule of yours has been violated or you’ve been disrespected. Communicate the issue with the appropriate party (others or yourself) to facilitate understanding and what needs to be different.
5. Frustrated- What you’re doing isn’t working; change your approach.
6. Disappointed- Unrealized expectations; align your expectations with your current reality
7. Guilty or Regretful- You violated a standard important to you. Determine how you’ll avoid doing so again.
8. Inadequate- Not measuring up as you want; improve your performance, ensure your clear on criteria, or change your criteria.
9. Overwhelmed, Hopeless or Depressed- Dim view or perspective of your situation; reflect on the big-picture, connect with your values (or determine them) and break-down/prioritize your actions or to-do’s accordingly.
10. Lonely- Disconnected; you need to reconnect with people and your relationships.

The reality is that all of our feelings, unpleasant or otherwise, arise from the complex interaction of the beliefs and standards we hold, what we think, and the meaning or interpretation we attach to thoughts and events in our lives. That leads to the central truth about emotions: we can’t always control what we feel but we are responsible for we do with our feelings.

The good news is that we can build emotional fitness by recognizing our emotions as information signals calling for action, not a place we’re consigned to.  And just like smoke signals, seeing the signal is the easy part.  Interpreting and getting clarity on what the signal means is another matter. Once we do get clear, we can take informed, meaningful action that will not only get us where we want to go, but shift our emotional state to a more positive one at the same time.

How does seeing emotions as informational “smoke signals” differ from your current view?

Please leave a comment on what it looks like for you.

Have you ever been so overwhelmed by something that you really weren’t quite sure what you were feeling? Most of us have.  The reality is that we also experience this same phenomenon with much more common everyday things and just aren’t aware of it  because it’s less intense.  If we are honest, our emotions control us more often than we like instead of the other way around.

Emotions are a form of energy that needs to be expressed, and you can’t express or change what you don’t notice. Denying or avoiding feelings doesn’t make them go away, nor does it lessen their impact on you and others, even if it’s unconscious. It’s been said there are over 3000 words in the English language related to emotions. However, most people use less than 12 words to describe their emotions, and some far fewer.

Personally, I used to get angry with certain people more than I liked (family, friends and colleagues) . As I began to use the “emotional mastery” process described below, what I realized is that I wasn’t actually angry with these people at all. Instead, I was feeling frustrated. That meant I needed to change my own expectations and way I was approaching things, not address them about their supposed violation. Since then I’ve learned to put a specific name on my emotions and the results have been remarkable. And putting a name on what we’re feeling in the moment is the first step to gaining control in what we experience and ultimately do.

The reality is that  with a limited emotional vocabulary and understanding, you’re largely confined to perceiving sensations instead of fully experiencing your emotions. Being specific in naming your emotions tends to diffuse their charge and lessen the burden they create. Psychologist Dan Siegel refers to this practice as “name it to tame it.”  To do this you have to expand your emotional vocabulary as well as be able to apply it in “the moment”.  But how?

While there are other emotional heuristics and frameworks, I like the TalentSmart adapted from Julia West because it is very practical, nimble and functional. I don’t have to know each of the 100 different emotions listed on the table below, just the 5 basic ones. I then think about the intensity level in order to then be more specific about the emotion I’m really experiencing. With a little practice it’s amazing how your emotional vocabulary and agility grow.

Here is how.  First review the table, memorize the 5 basic emotions, then practice:

NAME it-

1. Recognize- For the next few days, be self-aware. When you feel a strong emotion (could be positive as well, but the negative ones are where we usually have an issue).

• Put a label on it (which of the 5 basic categories does it fall under?)
• Gauge the intensity level (ie. “I don’t like this”…..category is Anger, actual emotion is Frustration (or Agitation, etc.)
• Look for your patterns so you know where your getting stuck.

2. Identify- The activating event or person that stimulated that emotion (ie. “that guy/gal showed up late for the 3rd time this week!!!”),  acknowledge the emotion, and then own it. Emotions aren’t good or bad, they all have their place and some are more pleasant than others.

3. Clarify- The belief, reason or thinking on your part that generated the emotion (ie. “they’re disrespectful of my time, they aren’t thoughtful, they are prioritizing other things, they’re making excuses”  OR….now I’m behind and won’t get my notes done before lunch, I now have to cut my time short I carved out for something else, etc.”) and what it really means to you.

TAME it-

4. Accept- Pay attention and fully experience what your feeling. What signal are you getting? Again, emotions may be pleasant or unpleasant as well as not fully understood, but none of them are bad. Emotions are signals that we need to take action on something. The tough part is getting clarity on just what that something is.

5. Challenge- Your belief, reason or thinking by questioning yourself (what could be another reason for this? Am I missing something that might shed light on how I should think about this? What is important that this emotion is alerting me to?) and reframing (under what circumstances would I think differently about what triggered my emotion? How would I feel then?).

6. Act- Decide what you need to do based on the clarity you now have. We can’t just conjure up how we want to feel, but we CAN take action in our thoughts and deeds that will generate the feelings and emotions we desire. How?

• Determine how you want an need to feel instead.
• Get confident by recalling a time you successfully handled this emotion before.
• Use your personal core values to expand your choices and still stay on course.  Our thoughts flow constantly and our emotional weather changes all the time, but our core values are constant like the north star.

It may seem slo-mo at first but trust me, once you practice this it gets more and more automatic and you’ll soon find your self in a much better place over time with a lot of things that used to set you off.   Noticing and naming emotions gives you the chance to take a step back, more accurately identify what you’re experiencing and then make a choices of what to do about it. It also serves as a safety brake of sorts when the occasional issues arise that before this practice, would have ended up with you in a melt-down.

How are you doing with you emotions? Is what you’re doing with them serving your best interests as well as others? A growth mindset always seeks to improve, so think about about what you need to do with this. And if you already have a specific tool or process that you’ve found works well for you, please leave a comment and share the wealth.

Do you find that some things just come to you naturally while you struggle with other things?  Been there?

Social and emotional intelligence (S+EI) abilities are like that too. Some come to us naturally and others we have to work at.  We’ve all seen or heard of people who can get along with just about everyone but have trouble self-managing. On the other hand, some people self-manage well and get along great with animals, but struggle mightily when it comes to interacting with other human beings. Social and emotional intelligence isn’t just one single ability that we are good at or not – we can have strong competencies in one S+EI ability domain– like excellent self-management, achieving goals, and “grit” – and at the same time have weak competencies in others, like empathy, reading others or managing interactions. It’s no secret that some people are outstanding individual performers but have difficulty fitting in and functioning well on a team. In fact, that pattern is fairly common in the workplace and the impact can be seen and felt at home as well.  The good news is that unlike our strengths, everyone can improve their S+EI abilities in every domain.

The first thing is to know the S+EI ability domains you’re strong in and which ones need work. It pays to not only work on your weak areas that are likely holding you back, but to make better your good ones.  While several S+EI instruments available, I think Bradberry and Greaves EQ 2.0 assessment is among the best. Not only will it score you in each of the four S+EI ability domains, but it will provide you with tailored strategies to improve your scores and allow you to re-test later (give it at least 6 months).
Knowing which abilities you need to work on is a start. The other ingredients for success are:

• A desire to “light the pyre” (internal motivation)
• Getting 20/20 (uncovering your blind spots)
• Limbic brain training program (build the right neural neural pathways the right way)
• Practice, practice, practice (Strengthen neural pathways)
• A self-directed learning agenda (Boyatzis 5 Discoveries)

Bradberry and Greaves list over 67 distinct improvement strategies, 15 for self-awareness and 17 each for self-management, social awareness and social (relationship) management. Ouch! No need to be overwhelmed though, just identify one S+EI domain ability most important to work on and choose three strategies to help you move your needle.

Here is what happened with me. After taking the EQ 2.o assessment, I was surprised to see that although my Social Competency and overall score for Self Competency was high, my self-awareness score was much lower than I expected (Ok, 75th percentile….painful to admit).  Along with my scores I also received the top three strategies recommended to improve my self-awareness score. These were:

• Visit my values (I was actually creating some of my own issues)
• Observe the ripple effect from my emotions (I wasn’t fully appreciating the impact my behavior was having on others)
• Watch myself like a hawk (I didn’t understand my emotions well in part because I wasn’t paying attention to them)

Once I started the process I began to notice things immediately. Like anything new, it was awkward at first, took more time than I expected and I felt like I was in slow motion at times.  And after a while, prioritizing decisions based on my values, noticing the reactions of others and being mindful about and interpreting what I was experiencing internally became second nature.  Although I waited longer than recommend before I reassessed myself, I was able to improve my self-awareness score to the 88th percentile a year or so later. Those improvements were serendipitously substantiated with independent, 360 degree feedback I happened obtain close to the same time. Bottom-line- the strategies and process works….but only if you do it!

I think I’ve said enough about S+EI for a while on this blog (just click the Emotional/Social Intelligence category on the right to get a listing of posts on the topic).  If you’ve been following this series, you know everything you need to take action.  As Tony Robbins says “knowledge isn’t power, execution is”. Another way of saying it is when it comes to a topic like this is  “to know and not do is to not know”.

What’s your next best step at this point?

Best,

Rob

Loose cannon. Ever hear that term used? It typically refers to someone characterized by a lack of control or consideration for others.  Those a class above them are described as “touchy”, “fragile”, “on edge” or a host of other adjectives that indicate you have to be careful what you say or how you act around these people. To do otherwise is to risk an emotional explosion.  In both cases they produce walking wounded through direct as well as collateral damage.  If a physical fitness analogy was used, the former would be a couch potato and the latter an out-of-shape wimp unable to walk a block with out stopping to catch his breath.  Any faces coming to mind?

Nearly everything we experience involves an associated emotional component and the brain is hard-wired to give our emotions the upper hand.  That’s precisely the reason why emotionally fit people win just about every area of success in both life and business.  It’s also why it’s vitally important you know your level of emotional fitness and know how to “keep in shape”.

Here is the issue: Although our emotional and rational centers (i.e. neocortex) are connected, the limbic system is the “gatekeeper” of our initial emotional experience, in particular the amygdala.  With routine and low-intensity emotional events, the limbic system and neocortex usually play nice with each other and get along. When things escalate and a medium-to-high intensity emotional jolt reaches our neocortex, the watch out!  The amygdala goes primal, hijacks the neocortex, and floods our system with a serious helping of neurochemical soup to ensure we not only survive, but dominate. Established habits and autonomic responses kick-in, especially the really ugly ones, and all the neocortex can do now is react to the chaos vs performing it’s preferred role of decider and initiator.

So how can you gain control over the amygdalic hi-jacker that lives in our head and presides over the gateway to our heart?  There are four basic steps:

• Grow your self-awareness
• Learn to put a name on the emotions you feel (there can be over 100 distinct ones)
• Grow your ability to manage and control your thoughts before and after the hi-jacking occurs.
• Grow your ability to control and manage your behaviors once you know what you’re feeling and thinking.

Note that final bullet above. Specifically, it refers to having an S+EI action plan. No need to re-invent the wheel here. In their book EQ 2.0, Bradberry and Greaves give the following 6 step action plan for improving your social and emotional intelligence (S+EI) abilities:

1. Assess yourself and know how you are doing in each of the 4 S+EI skill domains (while other instruments are available, I think their’s is one of the best).
2. Pick one S+EI skill domain to work on- set your self up for success out of the gate. More than one and usually none will get done.
3. Pick three strategies to improve the one skill you chose to work on and implement it immediately.
4. Choose an S+EI mentor- it’s best to choose someone who’s an excellent role model in this area. He or she needs to be willing and able to observe you and give you regular feedback.
5. Observe the following guidelines throughout the process:
   • Expectations- Keep them realistic. it’s progress not perfection you are after; 2 steps forward 1 step back means your probably pushing with the right intensity.
   • Practice intentionally and regularly. More IS better here
   • Patience- the goal is lasting change, which typically requires 3 – 6 months
6. Reassess yourself in the 4 S+EI domains and then rinse, lather and repeat.

The emotional fitness training process is relatively simple, but hard to do.  Knowing about it isn’t enough, you actually have to execute and to be successful requires feedback and extended practice. Yes, you will fail repeatedly in the process. Those who are successful view failure as learning, embrace it, and set their expectations accordingly. Viewing failure as an opportunity to learn and grow will fuel your internal motivation to improve.

Where do you want your emotional fitness to be and what do you need to do to get there? Start small and think of your next best step here….and then take it.

Next, a case study and some emotional fitness strategies.

Best,

Rob

Some people wonder if they can actually do anything about their social and emotional intelligence (S+EI). Are you one?  This is especially true for those of us who have been repeatedly sabotaged by deeply ingrained emotional reactions.  Negative emotions and linked behavior patterns can surface in a flash and seem to take on a life of their own, so much so that their owner feels like a victim without control.  In addition, it seems as if people who are congenial, authentic and high in S+EI are just “naturals” who are born that way.

Well, the good news is “yes you can” grow your S+EI abilities or skills.  The other news is that it takes some work. For inquiring minds who want to see the evidence, Goleman’s article “What Makes a Leader” and Boyatzis book “Becoming A Resonant Leader” are good resources.

It’s true that all 4 domains of a person’s S+EI abilities, in particular empathy, are part nature and part nurture. And while people vary in their natural abilities, everyone can improve. For those in leadership positions, getting better is not an option if you want to take your leadership to the next level.  In fact the higher the leadership position the more likely the leader is to have lower S+EI ability scores, which is not surprising when you think about it.  Who wants to be the one to tell the boss they are acting like a jerk?  This is one reason why CEO disease is rampant but that’s another story for another time.

So where do you start? First, understand conventional training  just won’t work for improving your S+EI abilities because it is oriented toward concepts and technical details, both of which target the neocortex. Further more, when a typical training approach has been used to improve S+EI, not only has it been shown to fail, but it can have a negative impact as well….you can get worse!!

Because the heart and soul of S+EI reside in the limbic system, that’s where you have to begin and where you have to focus in order to improve.  Training the limbic brain requires an individualized approach and takes lot more time than conventional training.  This means feedback, motivation, and extended practice are also required.  In addition, old behavioral habits not only have to be broken but simultaneously replaced with new ones.

Why the difference in training approaches?  Because our brains are hard-wired to give emotions the upper hand, as the diagram below shows.

The fact that our brain can adapt, modify and grow new neural connections makes it possible to improve our S+EI abilities, even for those with the most ingrained negative patterns and behaviors. It’s akin to taking the connection between the limbic brain and neocortex from an simple 2-lane country road to a reinforced, 5-lane super highway. Even better news is that with the right approach, these changes are sustainable over the long term .

Building your S+EI increases the quantity and quality of neural connections which gives your rational centers the resilience to keep from being overwhelmed and hi-jacked when emotions run high. A robust S+EI gives you the capability to put a “space” between stimulus and response.  It empowers you to move from reactive to being reflective and responsive so that over time new habits can be built that serve our best interest and replace the old ones that sabotage us.

Nice cartoon and concepts, but is there evidence that improving our  S+EI ability actually makes us better in the workplace? Yes there is:

• Senior managers in one company with a critical mass of S+EI abilities real divisions that exceeded yearly earning goals by 20%
• Direct correlations with earnings: every point increase in overall S+EI adds $1,300 to an annual salary
• 83% of people high in self-awareness are top performers while only 2 percent of bottom performers are high in self-awareness.
• S+EI accounts for 58% of performance across a variety of jobs and is the strongest driver of leadership and personal excellence.

Furthermore, positive effects are transferable to home and other social settings, particularly when it comes to empathy.

If we know that we have the capability to improve our S+EI abilities and that they’re the largest contributors to our success, why don’t more people work on it? One reason is that most people don’t think they can change. They settle for “that’s just the way I am”.  I think another is that we all have blindspots and need the help of others to find out what those are so we can do something about them.

Are you motivated to build and improve your S+EI abilities? You know it’s possible, you definitely have the capacity, but you have to take action to make it happen. You’re also  going to need to follow the right training principles and strategies. That’s where we are going next so stay tuned.

Best,

Rob