Leadership, Sushi & Email

A colleague of mine Bill Bergquist thought that “leadership, sushi and email would make a good book title so I’m trying it out. It actually has nothing to do directly with what I’m about to write about…and perhaps some of you may find that perturbing. Since I’ve learned that I’m the kind of person who has to ask forgiveness because I don’t ask for permission, I’ll say “I’m sorry about that” now to get it over with.

AND, that brings me to my topic…emotional intelligence, or in deference to myself, the lack of it.

...or why emotional intelligence takes two!

The story I’m about to tell you is real, some of the names have been changed to protect the guilty, I mean the innocent, because I’m guilty!

Ok, here’s the deal.

For the past 7 years, I’ve realized that emotional intelligence is a misnomer. Most people who are using it are really failing to see that emotional intelligence is not the right standard to measure superior performance and I’ll try to use my own example.

Since early qualifying back in the late 90s for emotional intelligence assessment work with my clients, I first began to use the material on myself. I knew, even at that time, that I was a perfect candidate. If it could work with me, it could work with anyone.

Now, 7 years later, I’ll say it hasn’t worked.

Of course you could say that it’s just me and I’m sure you could find a majority to agree. Yet here’s why this is important beyond the disclosure of my own results.

Have you ever heard, “it takes two to tango?”

In emotional intelligence, one of the things I’ve found out the hard way is that it is “followers that make leaders emotionally intelligent.” Here’s what I mean. For some people and I “are” one, our systems are wired with a little thing called fight, usually associated with competitive people and not uncommon to a number of leaders. In other words, we’re limited in terms of our ability to draw on other skills because of an underlying motivation for a lot of things…most of which anyone who has had some psychological training would consider “bad.” That’s why I warn most leaders to stay away from people who are constantly labeling people with one of those diagnoses found in any medical billing manual. Yikes, in my career, I’ve been labeled by many of these people in some pathological way or another.

Quite simply, the best of us---warriors—and the worst in us---dictatorial steamrollers are not pathologies, they are ways of coping. Now, many people claim that we are not emotionally intelligent. Yet, I’ll take a warrior any day in the world we live in. No, it’s not going to be pretty and in some cases, it’s downright alarming and really hard on people, but there is still a place for people wired up as warriors.

And if we warriors can keep from being “convinced” that there is something wrong with us, we can live pretty collaborative lives.

Yet, it won’t be by working on our selves. For the most part, it just doesn’t work. I will say in one short sentence that it’s damned hard to make any progress on being anything but a warrior. And here’s the key. If you get into a design that is NOT “emotionally intelligent” you’ll be hung out to dry, or banished from the crowd, believe me on this one.

Ok, word to the warriors, stop trying to change yourselves and get yourself into a design that is emotionally intelligent.

Second, to all you people who need warriors (and more and more of you will SOON)---people who have ideas, are willing to persist, be stubborn, passionate and full of energy, and are NOT emotionally intelligent in the “touchy-feely” form emotional intelligence is involving into…then learn how to motivate and work with these people—make them emotionally intelligent.

Here’s a real story from the heart.

This morning I was having a conversation with colleagues about one of my latest ideas. Now, when I get one of these and take responsibility for it, it’s an investment for me and an attachment. Yes, yes, of course this is “the” problem for all you analyzers, I shouldn’t get attached. But sometimes, you just do, let’s not psychoanalyze me, let’s just assume I’m not emotionally intelligent and let it go at that…I agree with you.

While I was trying to relate, which might look like fighting to some…I found myself becoming more and more passionate about some really simple things, that in all retrospect, are not really that big of a deal…yet, here’s what happens to us warriors in the “battle.”  And again, yes, yes, I know it’s not supposed to be a battle, but live inside my skin for a moment.

During the “battle” if you perceive that other people are “battling” you, your amygdale response and threshold heightens…leaving less and less room for conscious choice as the reptile in us (the things that make us win battles, i.e. warriors analogy to compete) gains a greater hold becoming more sensitive to triggering.

Now, the EI experts will tell you this is the beginning of an amygdale attack as your neurophysiology puts you into the “low road” (thalamic system) and you lose the ability to be diplomatic, tactful, relationship-oriented, etc. etc. by remaining conscious in the high road (neo cortex) The warriors who have been through emotional intelligence training know all of this. And it’s not that we don’t want to change. Quite frankly after the conversation this morning, I felt deeply frustrated with my own lack of emotional intelligence. This is not about knowing what to do and what’s causing all this stuff, this is about being in the grasp of your strengths…and here’s the important part.

When people try to “neuter” us warriors through everything from sensitivity training to anything else you want to put in the blank, you’re merely creating a wash over effect that works while these people are not attached, or if they are hellaciously lucky, surrounded by people who have the “strengths” to understand how to work with these people.

I know this is way too long, but if you’ve read this far, let me say a couple more things:

1. Emotional Intelligence shouldn’t be about change, it should be about design.

Because it takes two to tango, if one person is not emotionally intelligent, then I can find another “collaborator” who pushes this person’s buttons, or fails to note this person’s strengths. They don’t call us warriors because we lose! I often tell people based on the story of the frog and scorpion. You know where the scorpion talks the frog into giving him a ride across the pond and then stings him part way and they both drown? As they’re going down, the frog says why are you killing us both and the scorpion says, “it’s just my nature.”

2. Don’t poke the shark.

To me, and I know this is probably not coming through as clear as I wish it would, emotional intelligence is always about “all” the people in a fight! Not just the one everyone labels as lacking emotional intelligence. In other words, I can show you how to take a person who at “resting motivation” demonstrates fairly high levels of emotional intelligence and turn them into something that could only happen through the collaboration with others. Therefore, this is not about pulling someone aside and coaching them, this is about coaching the entire team.

3. Blank Slate is Dead

Forget about how much or whether or not people can learn. If you keep thinking that people can learn, if they want to bad enough, you’ll keep making the same mistakes with warriors and many other types of leaders. You can’t convince me I don’t want to learn. You can’t convince me that I am not motivated to develop emotional intelligence. Yet, why isn’t it working for me? Am I dumb, block-headed, or oppositional? No, I am not willing to compromise who I am to be something which is unnatural to me even when it means ”we” drown. For ME, the only way I can manage this is to work with other people who don’t trigger this in me.

Let me give you an example…the real reason I’m writing all of this is to recognize someone who for me holds the key to my own effectiveness because they give me the slack I need to “rein” myself in, they don’t just keep escalating me until I’m “sting the frog” and drown.

This morning, we’re having what I call a passionate conversation and it’s with people who are themselves passionate. For the most part, I just kept feeling like I had to fight for my baby…my idea. However, something happened during the conversation that REALLY made a difference. One of the people who I would consider one of the most emotionally intelligent people I’ve ever met, knew how to get from me what was needed, without triggering me further into the stinging mode.

When it “happened” it just completely deescalated my state. I’ve only known one other person in my life who had this ability…and the way they did it---just in case anyone wants to know—was to say, “I’m with you Mike.” Then they proceeded to make their point. They could, like the others have continued to trade ideas, or cut me off, but even though no competition is meant by these people, they don’t see that they are triggering the amygdale response…as a cascading effect.

From that point on, “I’m with you Mike,” I began to find ways to deescalate my own tension and gradually I came back to consciousness. I had not known how “involved” I was or attached I was to my idea and I was beginning to fight for it, even though no fight was needed. I never said the unconscious state made any sense, and it doesn’t but it’s there, it’s triggered and it’s escalating.

This person, who I’ll call Wendy, knew what she was doing in my view. She knew that to first side with me, would not only cause me to stop escalating, but then I would trigger my natural motivation to do better, to come to my senses and to begin to self-manage. That was all it took, just a simple “interruption” in the process, an acknowledgement from someone I believe in and know has mine as well as others best interests at hand. This is inspiring leadership, both a noun and a verb.

THIS is emotional intelligence.

Not me, but her knowing how to manage the emotions in herself and the emotions in others…a definition of emotional intelligence. Yet, by doing this, she allows me the opportunity for my own emotional intelligence training and desire to be more emotionally intelligent to surface.

You see, little things make a real difference when it comes to emotional intelligence.

Sure, I continue to be frustrated about my own inability to self-manage and to be more self-aware and socially responsible for myself and the emotions and feelings of others, but emotional intelligence takes two! Just like, if people want warriors and need warriors, they need not emasculate them, but allow them to use those strengths and whatever else they can muster to contribute.

In my view, the true nature of collaboration has to be in design, not re-making everyone in their own image. This requires the application of emotional intelligence, but not from where you think…but around these high-value people who are rare and able to contribute in ways that in a lot of cases will be less than emotionally intelligent.

I hate to see what is happening in board rooms around the country as we whittle the legs off of stars through this seemingly required emasculation prompted by the holy grail—emotional intelligence.

What I think works is to create the kinds of people who can inspire leadership and through that process support higher intelligence, emotional or otherwise and learn that it takes two to tango.

Thanks Wendy, you’re special, and I hope every warrior can find a Wendy to help you become more emotionally able to offer your gifts.

For those of you who want to read more about design and get help, my book CPR for the SOUL comes out in Jan, I hope you’ll purchase a copy.

The countdown has begun: http://www.cprforthesoul.com/countdown

Mike Jay, Founder

http://www.leadu.com

Comments

[Tom King]

Mike,
Just a quick response to say I get the concept of motivation and how that drives us. I also get why warriors like to compete and others hate to compete and become very skilled at avoiding conflict. I like the idea of trying to design our lifestyle to fit our strengths. However, I think there are some underlying assumptions regarding how much you can actually control what you surround yourself with that may not always hold up.
The issue for me is whether or not a person's stratigies are working. One of my assumptions is I need to begin where the client is at, and as a therapist, that often requires working in the gaps, at least for a while. From a coaching paradigm, I'll take your lead and work on getting better at working with strengths and design. I'm sure you are aware of the work Seligman et al are doing with positive psychology, which seems to be pointing in the same direction. I still believe there is need for both design and development.

[Mike Jay]

HI Tom,

I like a lot of what you say here, except there is one thing I have to help therapy change and it's not my idea but of Steven Reiss at Ohio State who has done the work and that's on motivation.

While it may be true that how I learned to cope was early in my childhood, there are two reasons for that...one is that more likely than not, my parents to some extent share my motivational desire and what that looks like in a warrior is probably going to be high vengeance along with some power, some independence, and low acceptance...also aggravated in my case by curiosity, low order, low honor (expedience) and low tranquility.

While I'm not sure my parents were being had by these things, I suggest that is what I was able to hear and learn...in other words, we learn because it's within our inductive bias to learn in these ways.

We are likely in most cases to be MORE influenced when we are young because of a subject/object relationship (Kegan, et al) that is largely either instrumented or other-directed, disposing us to this "learning."

So, I'm not in disagreement per se.

However, where I disagree and where you missed my point is you pointed me right back into my gaps...the inability to pick up social awareness--of how people are feeling (low acceptance remember)...what provides me with a hardy, resilience natural personality, also provides me with the bain of social awareness...duh.

You are trying to teach me stuff I will have a hard time learning. Remember, I'm motivated, I want to do this, but you're asking me to learn in my gaps...it's NOT going to happen with most, only a very few, who are perhaps much more malleable, i.e. other-directed, which are not going to make your self-authored warriors I'm referring to, they will just be fighters...at least I'd like to think I've grown beyond fighting, but still use the same coping, conflict mode: competing.

TOM! I like competing.

My point is that I'm NOT willing to trade my coping system for another, therefore I have to create a design, which either prohibits the pathological effects, i.e. don't hang around people who get their jollies pushing my buttons (those I've been able to distinguish in my more conscious moments, as the questioning "F") and those who themselves who have no real need to compete per se, but try to assimilate excellence in other ways.

Does this mean warriors can't play nice together...that's what I'm saying. In most cases, the warriors will lead their tribes, at least those that might follow and compete and sometimes cooperate with other tribes.

Does this mean "can't we all just get along?"

Well, to me, as a warrior, I'm learning to choose my battles more carefully. That is a MUCH more effective strategy than trying to learn not to compete.

Are you getting the idea I was writing about, or are you still falling back into to trying to train the animal?

We all can't learn everything and some of us, I've used myself as an example here...I don't want to learn to give up the "girl who brung me" as Darrell Royal would say.

Even when she leaves me in dissaray, I'm not going to leave her...and that's the idea here, I don't have too!

With CPR for the SOUL: Creating Personal Resilience by Design, I've created a way around all this learning and psychotherapy stuff for us non-pathological people...and it's through self-knowledge, and that doesn't include developing our weakenesses, which is largely flawed as a strategy and like teaching a pig to sing: not only annoys but doesn't work.

So, while you argument is logical and makes sense, the assumptions underlying it are flawed, making the conclusions flawed.

Sure, it would be great if we could learn these things, but let me point you to EI research. I wrote about this in a paper I produced for the OD Journal in the summer of 2003 and it was that lacking self-awareness, it is almost impossible to promote either self-management or social awarness, which are both precursors to relationship management.

Self-awareness is not possible when you are in the throws of your strengths, UNLESS your strength is self-awareness, and while I'm certain someone like that exists...I haven't met her.

Therefore, you're asking me to function and learn about how to descalate something that I must be aware of, yet if I could do that, I wouldn't be a warrior...it's a catch 22.

There are of course other affilictions other than a warrior that you could also point out that give people trouble, say like not being able to "influence or sell people" because you're afraid of what they might think of you?

Ok, so I'm hitting below the belt, but essential NO ONE escapes. My warrior metaphor is one I could illustrate, EVERY motivational profile has strengths and limitations and the same thing goes.

You're not going to teach them this stuff, unless they can learn it, and even then, it's best to let them learn it on their own, so it's actionable--don't start me on that one.

Ok, that's enough brow-beating for now, but Tom, I have found that all this stuff the humanists believe about how people learn, because they can, just doesn't apply broadly.

If you're basing your conclusions on the extent people can "learn" emotional intelligence, opposed to whether or not they are predisposed to it, then you're going to be at it a long time.

What's funny about this is that in large part change efforts fail (read Dance of Change) and the ones that succeed we don't know why. So, I realize the change business is running at full blast and the reason it is because it doesn't work, or in best cases is suboptimal.

Now, I've figured this out working with 1000s of clients and therefore realized that if rather than change people, we design systems which people are matched to and can contribute...we really have something...so you might say it's change indirectly--or what some refer to as obliquity.

In other words, the change we seek emerges, it's just not through a direct change of ourselves, but in reaching out to others who can contribute the missing pieces.

Whew!

It took me 18 years to learn this Tom, hopefully I've expressed it in a way that you can use the ideas, without having to resort to teaching pigs to sing.

mike

[Tom King]

Thanks Mike for your willingness to candidly share your struggles and ideas regarding emotional intelligence. I agree that it takes two to tango and how we respond to one another effects the direction of any interaction. I also agree that what you described as a warrior response is a way of coping. I’m going to share a therapist-coach perspective as grist for the mill. I think the coping response is a compensation strategy we learn early in life within our family systems. The particular strategy or strategies we adopt depends on our particular personality and experiences. Our compensation strategy is a way to achieve some success and get more of what we want and need, be that love, recognition, validation, or simply emotional survival. Our compensation strategies are internalized and become part of our self-image or identity. As we age, we carry our strategy forward and they often get reinforced through self-fulfilling prophecies. The problem is, what worked in one context at an earlier age usually doesn’t work so well in other contexts.
Can people change? Who they are…no. How they respond… yes. Some techniques I have found successful with clients who struggle with Amygdale attacks are:
1.Work on recognizing your signals of an impending attack.
2.Begin to describe out loud what you are feeling and why, rather than just reacting…”I’m beginning to feel defensive because it seems like you don’t buy into my ideas and I don’t really want to get defensive”
3.Pause long enough to step back from the emotions and connect with your rational side, in order to think about how you want to respond.

I believe this does a couple of helpful things. One it acts as a pattern interrupt and helps short circuit the amygdale attack. Two,it give the other parties information about what’s going on, which enables them to avoid feeling attacked and defensive also and then they can respond differently as well.

To me, an emotionally intelligent warrior is not one who has been “neutered” or “spayed”, depending on gender, but one who can channel the intensity or competitive energy in more productive and constructive ways.

Tom King