Harvard Emotional Intelligence Class

Chapter 34 Improving the ability to judge feelings (2)
Some studies suggest that, in a given context, roughly more than 90 percent of a message is in nonverbal communication—changes in tone and body language—rather than changes in words.Other studies have shown that our facial responses to emotional stimuli occur in mere milliseconds.Sigmund Frood said: There is no need for us to keep secrets, because even if our voices are calm, the slight vibration of our fingertips will unconsciously reveal our hearts.

By interpreting the non-verbal communication we receive, we can better understand what the other person really means.Here are some of the most important forms of non-verbal communication:
Table 9-5: Non-verbal forms of communication

Non-speaking categories

Manifestations
posture
Leaning backward or forward; relaxed or tense; stiff or stretched; restful or restless; back straight or arched; legs crossed or flat; head up or down; shoulders high or loose.

action
Hasty or smooth; definite or hesitant; trembling or steady feet or hands.

Breathe
Deep or shallow; smooth or rapid.

facial expression
tense or slack; pale or flushed; eyebrows raised or lowered; mouth parted or pursed; eye corners wrinkled or stretched.

eye
Look up or turn; look down or up; eye contact or avoid; focus or defocus; bright or dim.

sound
Loud or quiet; fast or slow; high-pitched or low-pitched; rhythmic or arrhythmic; varied or monotonous.

What kind of changes occur in a person's heart will reveal what kind of clues, if we can observe these clues carefully, we can capture the changes in his heart.However, drawing conclusions based solely on non-verbal communication is highly unreliable.You have to draw tentative conclusions about non-verbal communication that allow you to keep an open mind.Then ask questions in order to discover the real reason behind a particular non-verbal response.

As for how to ask, the following examples can give you some inspiration.

Suppose you are talking to a co-worker who suddenly begins to tilt slightly back and forth.Which of the following questions is most useful for discovering the reasons for this move?

Question ①: Do you have any questions?

Question ②: Do you disagree with what I said?
Question ③: How do you feel about what I just said?

Analysis and evaluation
Question [-] makes a dangerous assumption about what the problem is.It may seem like a preconceived assumption about your colleague's responsive behavior, which can easily provoke a defensive response.

Question ② is also an attempt at psychic reading, which means that your colleagues disagree with what you have said.It is also a closed question, so apart from getting a "yes" or "no" answer from the other party, you may not get any other useful information.

Question ③ is an open-ended question that does not rely on the assumption that you interpret the psychology of your colleagues.Of the three questions, it is the most effective because it is most likely to generate helpful answers.

Distinguishing between real and fake feelings is also a constant challenge.Because some facial expressions show different emotions than real emotions, for example, a smile does not always indicate happiness.More often than not, the smile is intentional or forced to mask negative feelings.A genuine smile engages the muscles near the corners of the mouth and the muscles near the eyes, causing wrinkles around the eyes.A smile without wrinkles at the corners of the eyes is not a real smile.A fake smile tends to come on quickly, and the lips are more drawn out to the sides than up.

Sometimes those fake smiles are the clues to a lie.How do you find out who's lying?It depends on the nature of the lie and the context in which it is being told.Strategies for dealing with lies vary depending on whether the lie is benign and does not involve much emotion, or if the lie involves strong emotions.Let's look at examples of lies and liars that don't involve strong feelings.

Here is a conversation between a ten-year-old boy and his father:
★Father: Did you brush your teeth before going to bed?

Son: Dad, I brushed my teeth.Good night. ★
Jonathan was a reliable child, so his father never doubted his words.Until one day, during a dental checkup, the doctor discovered that he had several cavities and needed root canal treatment.Now, instead of being routine, the nightly questioning has become important.

When the lie does not arouse strong emotion, you use this weaker expression of emotion as a cue.In the example above, we are most likely to pay attention to language.Did Jonathan pause while answering the question?Did it take a long time to answer?Made a mistake while speaking?Does it speak consistently?

When the lie is large, the polygraph strategy changes.Serious lies may be accompanied by more overt hints of affection.For now, we're going to ignore small cues like language and start with different aspects of the liar, including nonverbal and verbal cues, and most importantly subtle facial expressions.The basic approach is to look for negative displays of affection.The more important the matter, the more likely the liar is to have strong negative feelings, and thus to express them.Sometimes a liar tries to cover up negative feelings with a smile, but as mentioned earlier, the smile can appear artificial.

(The third section strengthens the social "radar"

To relate effectively, we need to develop the art of reading others well.This requires us to put ourselves in the other person's shoes, to read the cues that emerge from the interaction, and to adapt to the culture with which we must come into contact.By enhancing our social "radar" in this way, we can make ourselves more attuned to the needs and arrangements of others, and can use this information to predict how we will most effectively respond.

Great communicators are able to steer the direction of other people's intended actions by thinking about their thoughts and imagining how they feel.We call this condition empathy, and it's very important in relationships and face-to-face interactions.We might also call this phenomenon "informed guesswork," because we can never know exactly what another person is really thinking.In this sense, reading other people well is like doing a jigsaw puzzle: the more connected we are to each other, the easier it is for us to fill in the gaps we don't understand.We can see a series of subtle cues of emotional changes in people's behavior and speech, such as drooping shoulders, avoiding eye contact, changes in voice, and heavy and slow steps.When we put all these little pieces of the puzzle together and compare them to other things, we can understand why the person is emotional.Although this is just "informed guesswork," once we start asking him questions, we quickly learn from his answers that our predictions are correct.

Relying on empathy, guidance counselors can detect the core problems of customers' most headaches; leaders can rely on empathy to detect the cause of low morale and take corrective actions to solve it before it affects performance; customer representatives can correctly interpret Thoughts and feelings of customers making service complaints.Of all the skills we've discussed, empathy is perhaps the most central to emotional intelligence.

Evidence shows that all humans are born with the capacity for empathy.This is something we humans have in common with other primates such as gorillas and chimpanzees: spending a lot of time studying our fellow humans, learning how to read what they are thinking and feeling.Babies who are just a few months old seem to be able to recognize the emotional states around them and make an effort to observe behavior and imitate it.In a context of love and friendship, children experience new behaviors and learn new communication skills with confidence.The roots of empathy lie within all of us, in:
1.our imagination;

2.our ability to interpret non-verbal signals;
3.our ability to conduct games;

4.Our ability to infer someone's emotional state from our own experience in similar situations.

Jeri had little success in persuading her upline managers to consider her opinion.Her upline manager is the head of the training business.This time, she felt that things were a little different.She saw parallels in her manager's point of view with her own.This at least gave her a public opportunity to foresee and preemptively incorporate the manager's goals into her latest proposal - the introduction of online distance training services in the company's management skills.In her mind, she began to imagine herself as the upline manager, rehearsing the possible controversies of proposing this new initiative.Then, she began to imagine the possible responses from her manager.She kept imagining herself as that manager as she went through this walkthrough.She adopted the posture her manager often adopts when she hears a new proposal, modeling as closely as possible how her manager might behave in response to her proposal.During the walkthrough she found that, as her manager, he was concerned that people might lack the motivation to finish the work after they had started it.He feels that people may just need to acquire knowledge, without understanding the need to put their acquired skills into practice.Thinking of this, she worried about how to sell this new idea. Her upline manager would think this was a journey full of unknowns, while the upline manager, who was skeptical of everything, was more concerned about learning from the company's tradition. Receive credit for the success of the training program.She decides to continue imagining and observing from the standpoint of her manager, who, she sees, may be concerned about the department losing control of the training sessions.In the end, she realized that the manager's concerns stemmed from the fact that he had little knowledge of the technical aspects of the project he wished to introduce.She then felt that she had discovered the benefit of this new proposal, the potential profit that would result from the introduction of a new training method.It is also very attractive that the new proposal can reduce training costs.These realizations convinced her that she had to change her usual way of expressing new ideas.Instead of praising the virtues of the new approach, she decided to start with the pros and cons it could bring, emphasizing each forecasted profit when making new recommendations.

Jerry performed an imaginative exercise, and her foresight may be erratic.But her preparation is an empathetic activity.This gave her a better understanding of the thinking of her upline managers, which in turn gave her a better chance of selling her new perspective to managers.

The flow of this imaginary activity is:

Bring into awareness the person you want to influence (or the influential, skeptical person you need to convince them of) Imagine the conversation you are going to have with the person involved Put yourself in the other person's shoes, imagine How the other person will respond—how he feels, what he will consider, what he will accept, and what he will reject. Incorporate the resulting insights into your communication plan. Use other people's ideas. Or the observation of a neutral person, reflecting and improving the way you act in communication.

(Section [-] Inclusive of Diversity, Increasing Influence

Embracing diversity allows you to breathe fresh air into the conservative corporate landscape.When a new team member comes among us, in order to integrate with us, he has to obey the established rules of practice, and gradually also has the "group mind" developed by the team.On the one hand, group thinking has its advantages. As a collective, because of the "unity of will", the team can perform its functions well and complete tasks more effectively.But on the other hand, it has the consequent introspective, dull effect.In order to challenge this decadent trend, inclusiveness is a necessary condition - tolerant to changes, tolerant to the market, and tolerant to new ways of working. Only in this way can we survive in the practice full of challenges and improvements.

Tolerance is a two-way street.If organizations are to thrive, they need to provide space for different cultures to thrive.Likewise, employees need to be open to the organizational culture in which they live.We don't say this to mean that you have to give up your own personal identity, but to emphasize that if you want to be successful in an organization, you need to match your organizational culture.When we match a culture that everyone else is likely to follow, we succeed in building thriving relationships.

In the realm of emotional intelligence, tolerance for diversity and empathy stand side by side, and it's hard to take one without the other.But there are areas where inclusivity can lead to curiosity, and here empathy functions as an effective skill through which curiosity can flow.

Many of us share a common weakness of being deeply trapped in small circles of people.We too enjoy being around people who share our backgrounds, our experiences, our opinions, our aesthetics, our quirks, our principles, and our interests.This is understandable, but this approach has great limitations.For if we do this, the result is that our Dujiao circle will soon only reflect what we think we know, and anything that does not agree with the views of this narrow social circle will be ostracized.We quickly become narrow minded, we stagnate with silt.Taken to extremes, this tendency leads to racial bias, gender bias, and mercenary snobbery.

It's those on the fringes—the mavericks and the nonconformists—who have a lot to teach us.Sharing their assumptions and perspectives broadens our own perspectives, and at the same time, we are more likely to develop rapport with those who understand our perspectives.

Most of us have a tendency to reject non-conformists.Recognizing this tendency, when you encounter someone who is a maverick, you should question your own judgment: do we come to this judgment because this person is really a splitter, or because he is just Is it a person whose ideas are different from ours?Through questioning, we can confirm that old thinking behaviors and patterns have not become stereotypes that restrict our development.

Native Americans often say: If you want to know a person's troubles, you have to walk a mile in his boots.This proverb means: We should act, think, and feel in the same way as the other person.Effective communicators place a high value on the ability to read the intentions of others when they make contact.By adopting the other person's point of view, you can benefit from finding common ground.

Therefore, in communication, very useful points of view often arise from the position of the listener.When you're preparing for a meeting, imagine that you are the person you're meeting and find out how they might think and feel about an issue.If you meet their needs, as well as your own, then your opinions and suggestions are more likely to be accepted.In meetings, taking occasional moments to imagine how the other person is thinking and feeling can help you develop a sense of empathy, better fit and improved communication.

(End of this chapter)