Harvard Emotional Intelligence Class

Chapter 38 Learning to understand and express feelings (2)
Emotions are complicated, and so are feelings.Some emotions combine many simpler emotions, for example, the emotion of "contempt" contains elements of disgust, anger, and even pleasure.Situations can also lead to complex, multiple feelings that may seem contradictory but are factual.Can you feel love and anger at the same time?Of course you can, but if you don’t believe me, you can ask young people in love if they have ever been angry with the person they love.Can you feel surprised and sad at the same time?Just think about your reaction to unexpected bad news.That is to say there is a mixture of emotions and similarities between different emotions. "Mixed" emotions include two or more feelings that are considered to be contradictory, at least in part, in which two emotions are opposites, such as happiness and sadness.

The ability to understand the complexities of emotions allows us to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and others.

Relationships by their nature change, develop and progress.Under normal circumstances, emotion is not static, it will change as the feeling decreases or deepens, and this change will follow a specific process.Awareness of affective variation and its laws demonstrates a mature understanding of the affective system.

We can perform some kind of emotional simulation (or what-if analysis) to predict the state of emotional development.Just as there is a definite cause for an affection, we can foresee how the feeling will change as this cause develops or deepens.For example, if you feel "full" you will feel "happy" as that feeling grows.

(Section [-] Understanding and Expressing Feelings

The ability to understand feelings is the most cognitive and thoughtful of the four EQ skills.The ability to understand emotions involves a lot of knowledge about emotions, and also includes the ability to understand the generation of emotions, the ability to understand the relationship between different emotions, the ability to understand the transition of emotions, and the ability to translate all these into words.

Table 11-1: Ability to Understand Emotions
Column A: Skilled
Column B: unskilled

judge others fairly

misunderstand others
know what to say

make others feel uncomfortable

Can predict how others will feel

being surprised by how others feel
rich emotional vocabulary
find it difficult to describe feelings
Understand that people can have conflicting feelings
Believe that people's feelings are either one or the other
have mature emotional knowledge
Have only a basic understanding of feelings
Let's take a look at these two types of people and see which type of column description is preferable.

★Managers unable to resolve conflicts

Suzanne manages a 12-person computer support team for a large retail company.Suzanne's department encountered a series of small problems at first, but after a while, these problems became serious, and even became a headache for Suzanne and the entire company.A girl in the department named Marley has threatened legal action for discrimination; another employee named George has filed a lawsuit in court to seek compensation for work-related injuries.

These problems came as no surprise to Suzanne, as Mary and George had also been noticed before.Still, Susannah was upset when Human Resources called to discuss Mary's grievances; she was stunned to hear that George had filed a lawsuit.Asked why she felt she was being discriminated against, Mary said she didn't feel like she was being respected by Suzanne and her colleagues in the department.In the conversation with George, he repeatedly complained that he was not treated fairly, that his efforts were never recognized, and so on.Susannah didn't know where these questions came from.In fact, although these two things have nothing to do with Suzanne's values, they come from the same incentive.

If Suzanne could connect the subtle emotional cues, she wouldn't be surprised that these questions arose.This highlights the importance of what-if analysis.As the beginning of the analysis, Suzanne could ask the question of what caused the two people to feel angry.The answer to the question is that you feel that you are being treated unfairly.Although Suzanne knew that both Mary and George were feeling angry, she didn't understand what caused those emotions. ★
The next step in the hypothetical analysis of emotions is to understand how anger arises, changes, and accumulates over time.It may begin with vague disappointment, which develops into resentment, anger.If left unchecked, it can turn into an uncontrollable rage.Mary was a sensitive person, and she was doing work that wasn't something Suzanne valued, and even the slightest bit of disrespect disappointed Mary.As time goes on, the consequences of the disrespect gradually become more serious.For George, his desire to be recognized was very strong, and because he was not recognized, he gradually felt that he was not appreciated, and even felt that his personal value was weakened by his superiors and the entire department.However, it wasn't Suzanne's failure to judge the emotions of her subordinates. The problem was mainly due to Suzanne's misunderstanding of the emotions of her subordinates and the development of emotions.

Therefore, we believe that Suzanne's understanding of feelings is extremely limited.

★Excellent team leader

Len graduated from Harvard University with not only a bachelor's degree but also a master's degree in business administration.He was in investment banking and had a small success.Leon was outspoken, talkative, and insightful.Leon's emotional vocabulary is very rich, and he can analyze complex emotions into small components.When his team has an important problem to solve, he always imagines and evaluates the possible emotional situations that may arise.

In the last fiscal year, he led the team to receive the largest number of bonuses ever.After the tech bubble burst, this year's dividend total is less than 10% of what it was during the boom.However, the team he leads is still working as hard as last year.While they are getting less business, in most cases they are spending more time at work.This can lead to a demoralizing event: work harder, get paid less, and potentially lose your job.

Leon knew that if he told his team members that they could only get a small bonus at the end of this year, the entire team would definitely react strongly.At the same time, if he tells the whole team that no matter how hard they try, they will end up with less, which will have a negative impact on the team's productivity.

Leon had to come up with a perfect plan to resolve this contradiction.He also understands that everyone wants to be treated honestly and fairly.Therefore, the first thing he did was to let everyone know about this year's dividends.He told everyone about the situation, and then carefully observed everyone's reaction.He controls everyone's expectations, while noting that as the economy improves, they'll get more business, which will increase the bonus total.He then sets aside a small bonus to reward members with high accomplishments and high expectations.He has made it very clear to the members of the entire department about the criteria for receiving awards.Although Leon had to tighten his belt to use the budget, he managed to find some money to treat each employee to lunch as a token of appreciation for their work.He brought his own evaluation of the performance of the employees and the employees' own reports to the lunch meeting to thank them for their long and persistent work.

As the economy improved and the team hired new employees again, it was found that Lehn's team members had the fewest voluntary departures in the entire bank, and became one of the most effective teams in the second year thereafter.There are many reasons for this achievement, but among the many reasons, Leon's understanding of feelings is an indispensable one. ★
Emotional vocabulary is a tool for us to exchange information with others, and it can also provide us with emotional language and emotional facts.

Any field of knowledge has its own terms.People in IT may speak a language that is difficult for someone in marketing to understand, and a salesperson may have a very different vocabulary than a finance person.Without the language used in sales, marketing, finance, or programming, it is difficult to understand the subtleties of these fields.The same is true for emotions: to do complex emotional reasoning, you need to have an emotional vocabulary.

How many emotion words do you need?Are the types of human emotions a finite number?Is not everyone is different, will have different feelings?The experience of individual human emotions is very different, but there are indeed some basic emotions that human beings generally have.In fact, Darwin has convincingly proved in his book "The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals" that there are indeed some universal basic emotions, not only in humans, but also in other species.

A century later, psychologist Paul Ekman developed his theory of emotions, which encompasses a set of basic human emotions such as anger, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, and disgust.Other researchers have models of their own, the more comprehensive of which is the emotion model proposed by Robert Plachek.

Table 11-2 gives several different lists of basic emotions.

Table 11-2: List of emotions

Placek
Aikman

Tomkins
Izard

happy
happy
happy
happy
accept
fear
fear
fear
fear
Surprised
Surprised
Surprised
Surprised
sad
sad
Grief
Grief
disgust
disgust
disgust
angry
angry
angry
angry
Expectation
interest
interest
shame

shame

Guilt
contempt
contempt
contempt
After you understand the basic emotions that humans have, you can learn the language of emotions and expand your emotional vocabulary.To be an emotionally intelligent person, you need to have a rich emotional vocabulary.If you lack a rich emotional vocabulary, you will not be able to communicate deeply with others because you cannot express your own opinions.

Emotional vocabulary has degree nuances, and only fairly accurate vocabulary can express accurate emotional meanings.Think about the difference between the words "envy" and "jealousy"; what's the difference between annoyed, angry, and angry?These words are different, so each word expressing emotion implies a different meaning.

The premise of using these emotion words is to first understand the emotion you want to describe accurately, then you have to judge the intensity of the emotion you are experiencing, and finally, choose the appropriate emotion vocabulary to describe and express your emotion as accurately as possible.

Emotions are regulated, and their development follows a particular pattern.One of the skills of emotional intelligence is the ability to analyze emotional hypotheses and determine how our feelings and those of others will develop.By understanding how feelings change and shift, and why they arise, you can to some extent see into the future—at least you can tell how your own or others' feelings will change if something happens.

One way to improve your skills in analyzing emotional development is to create a story using the emotional outline provided.For example, here's a story that uses the emotions "surprise" and "shock":

I sat at my desk thinking, this quarter's sales have been abysmal, and the impact on the company must be huge.I was surprised to hear my boss say that our sales performance was affected by poor financial results.However, I was shocked when I heard that I had been replaced, meaning I had lost my job.

The second method is to arrange the emotional order.For example, try rearranging the feelings below to make sense.The end of the list should be happy.

Formation of joyful emotion (in reverse order):

happy, happy, happy, calm, confident, satisfied
There are several ways to rearrange the above feelings, the following is an example that begins with neutral ease and ends with active joy.

Formation of pleasure emotions (correct order):

Calmly satisfied, secretly happy, confident, happy and happy
As far as the causes of sensations are concerned, there are great differences between people.Take, for example, the feeling of happiness.You feel happy when you get something of value, but different people define value differently.At the same time, relationships follow certain rules, and if you understand these rules, you can understand people better.

Suppose, your boss rushed into the office early this morning, arriving a few minutes later than usual.He is usually not late, but this time he seemed a little absent-minded.A co-worker nuds you and says softly, "I dare say the boss is in a bad mood today." However, you conclude the exact opposite. You know that your baseball-loving boss is late because he was late last night. Take a client to a baseball game.You guess he must be in a good mood this morning because he saw his favorite game.You also know that the game was good, that the two sides were evenly matched, and that the side the owner favored won the game.Therefore, your conclusion is that the boss is tired, but feeling satisfied and happy.

(End of this chapter)