Harvard Emotional Intelligence Class

Chapter 5 Emotional Intelligence - We used to ignore it (5)
Monet 10 years ago was one of thousands of ordinary people.At that time, Monet was just a car mechanic, and his situation was far from his ideal.Once, he saw a job advertisement in the newspaper, and an aircraft manufacturing company in Houston was recruiting talents from all over the country.He decided to give it a try, hoping that luck would come to him.It was evening when he arrived in Houston, and the interview took place the next day.After dinner, Monet sat alone in his hotel room and fell into deep thought.He thought a lot, and his many years of experience were vivid in his mind, and an inexplicable melancholy came to his mind: I am not a person with low IQ, why am I always so worthless?He took out a pen and paper and jotted down the names of several friends he had known for many years, two of whom were former neighbors who had moved to a high-end residential area.The other two were his former classmates. He asked himself, compared with these four people, he seemed to have nothing inferior to them except that his work was worse than them.In terms of ingenuity, they are not better than themselves.In the end, he found that compared with these people, he clearly lacked a special success condition, that is, his personality and emotions often have a bad influence on him.The city clock had struck three times, and it was three o'clock in the morning.However, Monet's thoughts were surprisingly clear.For the first time, he saw his shortcomings clearly and discovered emotions that he could not control many times in the past, such as being impulsive, never calm when encountering problems, even a little inferior, unable to communicate with more people, and so on.He sat there throughout the night and reviewed, and he found many problems, and they were very serious problems: since he was sensible, he was a person who lacked self-confidence, belittled himself, did not think about making progress, and muddled along.He always thinks that he cannot succeed, but he never tries to change his weakness in character.At the same time, he found that he had been depreciating himself. From everything he did in the past, he could see that he had almost become a synonym for loss, worry and helplessness.So, Monet learned from the painful experience and made a decision that surprised him: From now on, he will never allow himself to have the idea of ​​being inferior to others, but must control his emotions, improve his character in an all-round way, and create a brand new one. self.

The next morning, Monet relaxed and went to the interview with new confidence as if he was a different person. Soon, he was successfully hired.Monet knew very well in his heart that the reason why he got this job was because of his awakening and a firm confidence in himself.

Two years later, Monet has built a reputation within his organization and industry as a man who is optimistic, witty, proactive and caring.In the company, he has been continuously promoted and has become a figure that the company relies on.He is one of the few people in the industry who can do business even in a bad economy.A few years later, the company was restructured, giving Monet a substantial stake. ★
This is the power of transformation. The factors for success are complex, including IQ and EQ.

(Section [-] Material Channel of EQ
The physical pathway of emotional intelligence begins at the spinal cord in the brain, passes through the place where emotions are generated - the limbic system, and effectively communicates between the rational center and the emotional center of the brain.

The aforementioned changes in Phineas' behavior tell us more about the brain and are more helpful in studying the brain than those high-tech technologies.Modern facilities can map the brain and show which areas are most important for different types of thinking, but there are no instruments that can show how a person controls his behavior without his forebrain.

Effectively controlling emotions in everyday life is an important part of the human state of mind, because even those with intact brains can be swayed by irrational behavior.Unlike Phineas, we can choose how we respond to our emotions.Each of us gets information about the world around us through our five senses, and everything we see, smell, hear, taste, and touch is biological in some form or another. Electrical signals travel through the body.These signals pass from cell to cell until they reach their final destination, the brain.For example, a mosquito bites your leg, and that sensation generates bioelectrical signals that are transmitted to your brain before you realize there is a mosquito.All of our senses go to the back of the brain near the spinal cord, and complex, rational thinking happens on the other side of the brain, the front part, which Phineas lost in the accident.When bioelectrical signals enter your brain, they must go through all these pathways before you can think logically about the event for the first time.This gap in the brain between the entrance of our emotional part and the entrance of our rational part is a problem because it is the limbic system that sits between the two parts.This part of the brain is where emotions are experienced.See Figure 1-1.

Billions of tiny neurons assemble into pathways that connect the rational and emotional centers of the brain.Information passes between them like a car on every street.When you apply emotional intelligence, traffic flows smoothly both ways.Increased communication strengthens the connection between the rational and emotional centers of the brain.A person's emotional intelligence is largely influenced by his ability to keep this pathway flowing, and the more he thinks about his emotions, the more developed this pathway becomes.Some have worked hard to build a two-lane country lane, while others have created five-lane grand highways.A lot of communication flow is the foundation of high emotional intelligence. When there is too little communication flow in any one direction, the result can only be very ineffective behavior.

Figure 1-1: The Material Channel of EQ
When experiencing continuous emotional communication, we are able to obtain information about external events visually and auditorily, and the information is recorded and prompted to the frontal cortex of the brain, as well as the limbic system and the amygdala in the frontal part of the brain, the amygdala The nuclear response was very quick.The reason why we can't live without it is because it can prompt us in an instant whether to respond to attack or escape. They are crucial to our survival. When we are awakened by a sudden burst of noise in the dead of night, we The first response produced, the response prompted by the amygdala in the prefrontal lobe of the brain, increases our sensory awareness.

The response from the limbic system is much faster than the amygdala in the frontal lobe of the brain. It continuously transmits information through changes in the internal organs, blood circulation, muscles, heart and lungs, and then through the neuron system.Emotional raw material enables us to connect ourselves to our experiences and assign value to them: good, bad, irrelevant, frightening, pleasing, or sympathetic, and so on.We act on these value judgments we make (or, in some cases, ignore or reject them) when stimulated under certain circumstances.If emotion is too poor, we will lose staying power and the ability to evaluate the pros and cons of things; on the contrary, if emotion is too rich, we will easily lose the sense of accurate judgment and self-control.

(Section [-] The Blueprint of Emotions

Emotional intelligence encompasses four abilities: judging one's own and other people's feelings; using feelings to drive thinking; understanding why feelings arise; and integrating feelings into decisions to make the best choices in life.

The emotional blueprint first appeared in 1990 in The Scientific Literature of Emotional Intelligence Research, by Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer.At that time, there was a huge gap between the importance of emotions and what ordinary people knew about emotions, and it was this gap that inspired Peter and John's research.In fact, the more important reason is that there is a very important message behind emotional intelligence, that is, feelings will make us smarter.Instead of hindering rational thinking, emotion is conducive to the formation of rational thinking.Since then, these ideas have been further explored and developed into a complex but easily mastered series of techniques.We call these skills the competency model of emotional intelligence, which provides the framework for learning and effectively mastering emotions.

Table 1-1: Emotional Intelligence Competency Model Table
Steps
aims
action
judge feelings
Get complete and accurate information

Listen carefully, ask questions, and make sure you get an accurate picture of how the entire team is feeling
use emotion
Let your emotions guide your thinking
Determine how these feelings affect your thinking and that of the entire team

understand feelings
Evaluate possible emotional scenarios

Consider the reasons for these feelings and what might happen next

control emotions
Identify underlying root causes and take action to resolve issues
Integrate rational and emotional information to make the best decisions

In this model, emotional intelligence is viewed as four interrelated competencies, namely:

1.Reading Self and Others - Judging Feelings: The ability to judge the feelings of oneself and those around you and the ability to express those feelings.

2.Entering the Context—Using Emotions: A special ability to help you determine what emotions are good for you and how to bring them into harmony with your thinking.The ability to use your emotions can change your perspective, allowing you to see the world in a variety of different ways and to feel what others are feeling.

3.Predict the development of feelings - understand feelings: feelings have their own language and logic.Mastering the ability to understand feelings means that you can determine why you have a certain feeling and what is going to happen.

4.Follow your heart - control your emotions: Feelings can convey important information, so it is crucial to be open to your feelings and use the information they convey to make the right decisions.

Each of these four competencies can be defined, studied, measured, developed, and applied independently of the other competencies.However, these four abilities can also work together.This four-step model provides a blueprint for organizing our lives more effectively.As we discover and master these emotional skills to understand ourselves and others, we will discover that this pattern applies to almost every area of ​​our lives.

One of the most difficult tasks for a manager is keeping his team together and working towards a common goal.This task is especially complex and tricky when the team is going through some kind of change.An emotional blueprint can help us better understand how to manage teams that are changing.

(End of this chapter)