Don’t underestimate emotional intelligence

September 9, 2010 By Maureen Moriarty

Emotional intelligence, or “EQ,” is a core competency for leadership and success in the workplace. EQ was popularized by author Daniel Goleman, who says EQ is “one’s capacity to deal effectively with your own and others’ emotions.”

There is a strong business case for emotional intelligence. Many Fortune 500 companies take a focused approach to assessing and developing EQ in their employees. Numerous studies indicate that EQ is the most important factor in job performance and promotion, particularly leadership.

One Gallup study of more than 2 million employees found the majority of workers rated having a caring boss higher than money or benefits. Productivity and workplace satisfaction have been linked to the amount of time people feel positive emotions at work. Good moods are good for business.

Why should you care about your EQ? The most frequently cited reason behind career derailment is a lack of emotional intelligence. Professionals and leaders who frequently vent anger, are insincere, untrustworthy or let their emotions run out of control can be toxic to workplaces.

The good news: Unlike IQ, EQ can be developed and improved. The bad news: EQ is hard-wired in our neural pathways in the brain; therefore, rerouting those circuits isn’t easy. It requires (like most areas of leadership development) self-awareness, understanding how co-workers interact with you, new skills, practice and focus.

Self-regulation (how we manage ourselves under stress), trust of self and others, empathy, listening, interpersonal communication, optimism, being able to inspire and influence others, team building and self-awareness are the most frequently cited skills and competencies associated with EQ development.

So, how do you increase your EQ? You can get started by focusing on these areas:

Self-awareness: It’s the foundation for EQ. You can’t change what you are unaware of in yourself. Being able to observe yourself in the heat of the moment is the first step to making a different choice versus your typical programmed emotional reaction. Understanding how you react under stress and pressure is imperative. Ask others; become a feedback-seeking missile. EQ assessments help you gain an understanding of how you uniquely respond under stress. This awareness is critical to stopping a downward slide on the corporate ladder — or to moving up.

Develop empathy: Having empathy means being able to understand what it is like to be in someone else’s shoes, to let someone know you have heard, understood and acknowledged their experience. This requires a shift from a focus on you to them. By the way, empathy isn’t about agreeing with someone else’s perspective; it’s about understanding where they are coming from.

Be informed — not ruled — by your emotions: Notice your feelings. It is unfortunate that many people were taught as children not to experience or “own” their feelings. There is valuable information in emotions — if you can tune into that internal channel. Feelings can clue us in about the importance and meaning of an event, situation or interaction. Start tracking your feelings when stressed or challenged. Is there a pattern? Are your feelings mostly positive or negative? What “triggers” your emotions? What action did you take after experiencing the emotion? What do you want to do differently next time?

How we play with (and lead) others is key to successful leadership. One way to improve your EQ is to work with a certified coach who specializes in emotional intelligence like me! I can help you identify areas of strength and challenge, teach you new EQ skills and provide the necessary feedback for improvement. Invest in yourself by hiring me as your coach! I can help you learn, develop and grow your leadership and emotional intelligence abilities. I coach leaders all over the world via Skype. Call me: 360 682 5807 or email: mmoriarty@pathtochange.com

Difficult Workplace Conversation Tips

September 9, 2010 By Maureen Moriarty

Difficult conversations are an integral part of many challenging, fast-paced and demanding workplaces. The complexity and discomfort associated with difficult conversations run the gamut — firing someone you like, delivering tough performance reviews, confronting disrespectful or unprofessional behavior, and confronting a colleague about their offensive body odor. The bottom line is there are many subjects that we find difficult to talk about in workplaces. How we handle them can make the difference between a great outcome or having a miserable (and unresolved) problem.

While handling difficult conversations can be challenging, there are strategies that can improve the outcome:

Be prepared. Preparing for a difficult conversation is always a good idea. Can you imagine a lawyer going into trial unprepared or a politician who hasn’t prepared talking points for a press conference? Take the time to prepare a written “cheat sheet” — talking points that will help you keep focused. This is particularly helpful if you anticipate a highly emotional response.
Identify your understanding of the problem. Clarify the issue for yourself and be prepared to address this in the conversation. Your idea of what the issue is and the person’s reality may be very different.

An objective of a first discussion, particularly about a complex or systemic problem, may be simply to come to an understanding of what the problem or issue really is. Using the “what the video camera would have captured” approach — versus emotional reactivity or hearsay comments — can be helpful.

Establish your intention. Define where you want to end up as a result of this conversation. What is at stake? What do you want for yourself, the person, your relationship and others the situation is affecting?
Anticipate discomfort. Have a plan for self-soothing as well as a de-escalation strategy if things get emotional.
For very difficult situations, get help. Find a colleague, mentor or outside resource to review, discuss and help you prepare for the discussion. An impartial third-party perspective may provide valuable insight and help you clarify and prepare. Role-play the anticipated conversation and get feedback — including about how your tone and body language are coming across.

Anticipating how the person may respond in this practice session (ask your partner to mimic how the person might act) may give you new approaches and coping ideas.

While in the difficult conversation:

Describe how the situation has affected you on an emotional level. Genuinely inquire about how the other person is feeling.
Demonstrate your concern for what you imagine it’s like to be in his or her shoes. Try to acknowledge and understand his or her position. This isn’t necessarily agreement; it’s understanding perceptions.
Use curiosity to help manage your anxiety and foster an open dialogue. Asking open-ended questions can help here: “What has this been like for you?” Authors Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen (Harvard Negotiation Project) write about the importance of shifting from a telling conversation to a learning conversation in their book “Difficult Conversations.” In other words, use inquiry versus blame.
Identify how you have contributed to the situation.
Get clarity and agreement about what changes must take place. While lessons of the past are important, what does the future solution look like?

Indicate what you can or are willing to change. Make clear what you want and need. Clarify agreements or commitments and define consequences for future behavior — both good and bad. These are key steps often missed by many managers.

Finally, document! It is important to provide a written record of issues and agreements, particularly for highly sensitive, personal or ongoing issues.

Managing in today’s dynamic workplace requires a broad base of leadership, communication and people skills. The ability to manage difficult conversations effectively is one of the many challenges required for successful leadership.

Done well, with planning and preparation, the end result can be very positive — on people, relationships and performance.

Invest in yourself by hiring me as your coach! I can help you learn, develop and grow your leadership and emotional intelligence abilities. I coach leaders all over the world via Skype. Call me: 360 682 5807 or email: mmoriarty@pathtochange.com

When Your Co-Worker Loses It

September 9, 2010 By Maureen Moriarty

One study indicates one out of six U.S. workers has experienced bullying or aggressive behavior in the workplace. This behavior can take many forms: angry outbursts, tantrums, curses or — in the worst extreme — threats or physical assault.

How do you de-escalate someone in the middle of a workplace emotional meltdown? Last week’s column defined this condition as the “amygdala hijack” — a result of the reptilian part of the brain (your inner lizard) taking over in a fight-or-flight response.

There are a number of things you can do when confronted with a boss or co-worker who is emotionally out of control (and the person you have come to know and respect is nowhere to be found). Handled poorly, these situations can be disastrous. In contrast, if handled well, workplace relationships often improve.

There are many tools, techniques and skill sets to help organizations deal with the stress and emotional difficulty in today’s workplace. Here are a few suggestions to consider when you find yourself face to face with someone else’s lizard.

Do

Establish and maintain boundaries. Get clear about your boundaries; understand when enough is enough. Be prepared to state “this is not acceptable” clearly and unemotionally. Assert your right to be treated with respect (regardless of your position). Seek out human resources or legal counsel if there is a continuing problem or you have been threatened. Physical or emotional threats or abuse should never be tolerated.

Employ active listening. Another way to defuse an emotionally charged interaction is to repeat or paraphrase what you heard the other party say. This demonstrates that you are listening and taking in their concerns. Example: “I heard you say you are upset about what happened during the meeting,” or, “Clearly, you are very annoyed by my lateness.” Active listening does not mean you agree with them; it’s simply demonstrating you heard their point of view.

Be self-aware. Be acutely aware of your own emotions during difficult or emotionally charged situations. Emotional clarity and understanding of your primary “reactive” tendencies (and modifying them as required) can help you make a different behavioral choice that will directly affect the final outcome of the interaction.

Acknowledge the out-of-control person’s feelings. Show genuine concern. If they believe they have been heard and acknowledged, they likely will de-escalate. You can often defuse their reactivity by empathizing with them.

Remain calm. Talk them down by softening your own tone.

Take a time-out. Reasonable discussions are not possible when you are emotionally distressed. The amygdala is your brain’s alarm system. When it hits the panic button, cortisol hormones surge through the body and often last for hours. Advocate a break to let things calm down: “Let’s talk about this later. We’re too emotional to talk about this right now.” When your lizard is running the show, your higher brain isn’t functioning. Lizards typically do not make profound or intellectually sound decisions.

Don’t

Engage the opposing lizard at the lizard level. Make the choice not to get reactive. Be aware of your own potential for your emotional lizard to get triggered. Two battling lizards aren’t pretty; it usually results in at least one of them losing its tail!

Threaten. Avoid the tendency to retaliate or strike back when emotionally charged. Avoid making judgments or name calling, no matter how tempting.

Use defensive or hostile body language (eye rolling, raised eyebrows, etc). This indicates disrespect and will only inflame and/or escalate a bad situation.

Take it personally. An out-of-control lizard isn’t about you. Feedback is information, not definition. How they are reacting says a lot more about them than it does about you. Don’t tie your self-worth into someone else’s lack of control and emotional intelligence.

Title, position and authority are not entitlement to aggressive, hostile or threatening behavior. Companies can’t afford to tolerate this kind of behavior. Inappropriate behaviors need to be documented and reported to human resources. You have rights. Do not allow them to be violated. If they are violated and things don’t change, leave the position and/or seek legal recourse.

Stop Workplace Conflicts

September 9, 2010 By Maureen Moriarty

Workplaces today are stressful — tight deadlines, heavy workloads, high expectations of excellence combined with common realities of limited resources, inconsistent direction, team environments and interpersonal challenges. Conflict is inevitable.

While disruptions, creative differences and missed expectations are part of everyday work lives, it’s how conflict is dealt with that makes the difference between a healthy and dysfunctional workplace.

The pinch-crunch conflict model, developed by Jack Sherwood and John Glidewell, helps us understand the importance of resolving conflict while the issues are minor before they escalate into a full-blown feuds and battles. The model identifies the importance of sharing information and renegotiating expectations when pinches occur.

Too often, the reality is when we are “pinched” in the workplace, we fail to voice our concerns and choose to keep our thoughts and feelings to ourselves. We worry about rocking the boat or hurting others’ feelings or simply hope the behavior won’t continue.

In the meantime, the offending individual typically goes on offending, many times oblivious that their behavior has caused a problem.

Because the missed expectation has not been dealt with or communicated, the disappointing behavior continues and “pinches” accumulate. Frustration and resentment build, creating even more problems. Eventually these accumulated and unresolved pinches turn into “crunches,” full-blown, highly charged and potentially explosive situations resulting in managers asking, “How in the world did we get into this mess?”

Workplace crunches can end in explosive situations. Tensions, stakes and emotions have escalated. Unresolved crunches can result in lowered morale and performance, people giving up (resigned that the situation will never improve), hostile work environments and employee turnover.

It’s important to handle pinches before they turn into crunches. Waiting just makes them harder to resolve. If you find yourself in a workplace pinch, here are a few tips to consider:

Voice your concerns early, even over small disagreements, rather than waiting or avoiding addressing them.
Attempt to identify and address the real issue. Dig and be curious — you may have only the partial picture.
Focus on the problem behavior versus making it personal. Describe the behavior that you observed without your personal interpretations, judgments or assumptions.
Communicate your intentions, including the desire to improve your working relationship.
Negotiate expectations. Clarify and agree to each other’s role responsibilities.
Generate realistic options to meet established expectations.
Seek agreement on next steps.

Handling pinches effectively often results in increased trust, confidence and improved relationships. Workplace relationships and teams are strengthened when differences are dealt with successfully. Wise managers recognize that problems and conflict are a part of the workplace. They don’t assume that they won’t have any problems; they recognize it’s their job as a leader to deal with problems before they become disasters.

The challenge for managers is to create and maintain an environment that not only allows but encourages healthy conflict.

For this to be successful, they need to foster and support open dialogue and a process to allow pinches to be identified and resolved before turning into full-blown crunches.

THE PINCH

These are common workplace “pinches”:

Unrealistic workplace expectations
Confusion over roles
Different standards for performance or behavior
Feeling unappreciated or taken for granted
Communication misunderstandings

Your Conflict Style -Learned At Early Age

September 9, 2010 By Maureen Moriarty

Our ideas about how to influence and respond to authority are largely a result of what we learned as children through our family upbringing. As adults in the workplace, we tend to recreate and respond in the fashion we were taught in early childhood.

Recall a recent workplace conflict and the part you played — what did you do or say? Did you avoid, blame, yell or threaten, acquiesce, compromise or work out a win-win solution? Now compare this with the family “rules” around conflict you learned as a child. Most people can recognize that their workplace conflict pattern stems from their family of origin.

We bring these lessons and patterns with us into the workplace. The first group we ever belonged to was our family. Our parents were our first “bosses.” How we relate and respond to a workplace “boss” is largely habituated from our own parental experiences. Common struggles with workplace power and authority (asking for a raise or challenging your boss) are likely connected to early childhood “interpretations” and experiences with authority. For example, some grew up with the message that it was not OK to challenge authority, with strong parental messages like, “Do what I say,” or, “You can sit there all night until those peas are gone!” or, “Don’t argue with me!” As adults, they may be reticent to tell the boss bad news, ask for what they want, disagree or give challenging feedback. As children, they learned it wasn’t OK to challenge authority.

Most bosses (and businesses) would benefit greatly by hearing what’s really going on from people in their workplaces. Yet few get this kind of honest feedback. Bosses need to ask for feedback (and not shoot the messenger!) and work to establish trust with their people.

In terms of how we manage conflict, the truth is most of us go through life reacting unconsciously. To change how you manage conflict, you must first be aware of your patterns and tendencies.

In moments of anxiety, stress or fear, a highly automatic emotional reaction (triggered by the reptilian part of our brain) often overpowers rational thinking. Our brains release a hormone to signal danger (fight or flight). This served our ancestors well for survival in saber-tooth territory, but can be a hindrance in today’s workplace.

Additionally, our brains are “hard-wired” for how we react emotionally — our early childhood experiences determine how neural pathways are established. As adults, we react emotionally when something happens that causes these childhood neural pathways to “fire.” For example, if as a baby you experienced a parent as loud and frightening, you likely react with a conditioned fear response to a boss yelling. Perhaps you got the message as a child you were never “good enough;” then you may have intense reactions of sadness or anger when you hear disapproval in the workplace.

Have you ever been surprised at the intensity of someone’s reaction to something you said — “Whoa, where did that reaction come from?” The stronger the emotional reaction, the more likely their interpretation of the situation is coming from their past.

Most want to blame others for their reactions, as in, “You made me mad,” or, “He pushes my buttons.” The truth is, we push our own buttons. Nobody makes us feel anything.

Most of us react to words or behaviors of others that get under our skin. For the sake of future workplace relationships and your career, identify and learn to recognize your hot buttons.

The primary reason for career derailment is a lack of emotional intelligence. The good news: It is possible to rewire your brain’s neural firing patterns. The bad news: It isn’t easy. It takes great attention, support and practice to learn to rewire new behaviors.

TIPS TO HELP

Be aware of your emotional patterns.
Understand that we co-create what’s working and not working with others.
Identify what you are feeling (feelings inform you about the importance and meaning of a situation) and then choose your behavior. Recent brain-scan research indicates that naming your feeling when upset (either to yourself or out loud) can get you out of “lizard” mode and back into prefrontal cortex thinking mode (where your odds of successful resolution are greatly enhanced).
Get help — hire a coach or get training in conflict resolution and interpersonal practices.

Notice when you slip into your childhood emotional state, then choose to behave as a grownup.