A heartfelt thank you to Debbi Gardiner McCullough for interviewing me on attitudes towards authority and decision-making across business cultures. Cultural fluency means acknowledging, understanding and managing cultural differences. https://lnkd.in/eWc_zZV
What’s the biggest impact of the victim saboteur on your business or career?
Do you tend to think that no one fully understands you?
Do you think there is something uniquely problematic about your situation and life?
Do you consider yourself as uniquely disadvantaged or flawed?
Do you tend to think that terrible things always happen to you and will keep happening?
Do you often feel powerless and unable to deal with problems, so there is no point in trying?
Do you often blame others for why you cannot achieve your goals or for your misfortunes?
If your answers to most of these questions is yes, you may have what Shirzad Chamine refers to as a victim saboteur in his Positive Intelligence book (2012). People with a victim saboteur are generally capable of deep introspection, they can feel their own emotions deeply and clearly, they are able to understand how the human mind functions; these strengths can be put to good use to connect, teach, inspire, or heal.
However, people with a victim saboteur identify themselves with something particularly bad that is going to happen to them. That victim mindset becomes their identity, this is how they define who they are.
Their victimhood self-identity can be quite tranquilising and addictive, allowing them to feel no responsibility for their mistakes; other people or circumstances are to blame. This lack of accountability might mean that they may have little interest in trying to make changes, they feel powerless and helpless and think that any effort to create change is destined to fail. They believe that the world has treated them unfairly, it is not their fault, and there is nothing that they can do to make a difference or improve their life.
They tend to be solely focused on themselves and may feel little empathy or concern for the suffering of others; they may become selfish, because they think that their suffering is greater than other people’s. They often wish for others to recognise that they have been through so much and may refuse to consider other perspectives and help from others; they may therefore push people away as a result. They seem to enjoy feeling sorry for themselves.
They tend to brood over negative feelings for a long time, which reinforces their perception as a perpetual victim. Wallowing in negativity and negative self-talk may keep them from trying to develop new skills and abilities which could help them achieve their goals. Instead, they may develop frustration as they think they are uniquely disadvantaged, resentment towards happy and successful people, and anger because they think no one understands them or cares about them. Over time, this pessimism might lead to depression, isolation, and loneliness.
A victim mindset might arise from early life experiences of feeling not seen or accepted, or from observing and adopting the victim mentality of a family member. Playing the victim allows the individual to gain some attention and affection while avoiding self-responsibility and blame, it generates immediate gratification but long-term inability to solve the problem.
How strong is the victim in you?
How is your victim saboteur holding you back in your business or career?
Luca Dondi is a certified professional coach, helping people enhance and realise their unexpressed potential, by leveraging business experience and accredited training. Get in touch for a free coaching session.
What’s the biggest impact of the avoider saboteur on your business or career?
Do you tend to make slow decisions and move cautiously?
Do you tend to procrastinate on unpleasant or difficult tasks?
Do you prefer to maintain the status quo in terms of routines or habits?
Do you believe that conflict is generally bad?
Are you afraid of the fear and stress inherent in conflict?
Do you have difficulty saying no?
If your answers to most of these questions is yes, you may have what Shirzad Chamine refers to as an avoider saboteur in his Positive Intelligence book (2012). People with an avoider saboteur are generally well-balanced and value peace and harmony. They tend to be flexible and adaptable, and their ability to go with the flow makes them relatively non-judgemental of others, they can see lots of shades of grey.
Their psychological preference for flexibility means that they prefer to keep their options open when making plans or decisions, their Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is likely to characterise them as perceivers. They yearn for a life full of pleasure and enjoyment in which they want to preserve peace and harmony with others and avoid unpleasant tasks or conflict.
In some cases, avoiding conflict may be appropriate. For example, when there are more important or urgent issues to address, or when the time or place may not be right to confront someone, or when more time is needed to make a well prepared rather than a rushed decision, or when it might be appropriate for others to deal with conflict. In these cases, it may make sense not to engage in conflict until pros and cons are considered.
However, taken too far, people with an avoider saboteur may prefer to withdraw from certain issues or interactions, ignore conflict, avoid disagreement, or delay confrontation rather than deal with it. They are often introverts who may be inclined to observe a situation and hold back their thoughts and feelings, they may be perceived as passive or weak, i.e. having low assertiveness and lacking the confidence needed to deal with conflict.
People with the avoider saboteur may be inclined to procrastinate on unpleasant tasks, which will become more unpleasant as their deadline approaches. By avoiding conflict, they may agree to things that they do not actually desire and may develop a pattern of passive aggressiveness behaviour.
Avoider tendencies could be intensified by early life experiences. Harsh punishments by an overpowering family member may have created a sense that disagreements should be avoided, impacting on the individual’s assertiveness. In corporate life, people in subordinate positions may avoid arguing against the views of people in positions of power, particularly in high power-distance countries with autocratic leadership styles where it may not be safe to challenge a person in authority for fear of retribution. In patriarchal societies, women may be less willing to go against anything their male superior says or does.
Unresolved relationship conflict will fester, generating anxiety, suppressed anger and resentment. Even when they realise that acting would be better than avoiding conflict, they may be emotionally paralysed by fear, and lack the energy required to proactively resolve it. By choosing not to address feelings, views or goals, relationships are kept superficial. Ultimately, the avoider saboteur promises a peaceful and enjoyable life and delivers the exact opposite.
How strong is the avoider in you?
How is your avoider saboteur holding you back in your business or career?
Luca Dondi is a certified professional coach, helping people enhance and realise their unexpressed potential, by leveraging business experience and accredited training. Get in touch for a free coaching session.
What’s the biggest impact of the pleaser saboteur on your business or career?
Do you have a strong desire to be liked and be helpful?
Do you find it hard to turn down someone’s request for a favour?
Do you tend to agree with other people because you want to be liked?
Is your schedule filled with activities you think other people want you to do, and you struggle to have time for yourself?
Are you afraid of conflict or bothering other people?
Do you crave for compliments?
If your answers to most of these questions is yes, you may have what Shirzad Chamine refers to as a pleaser saboteur in his Positive Intelligence book (2012). People with a pleaser saboteur tend to be emotionally self-aware, empathic, easy-going, helpful, they will be the first to volunteer when something needs to be done. They are loving and giving and do not want to hurt anybody’s feelings, so they will usually go with the flow and be perceived as likeable and agreeable. Even when they disagree, they will show good social skills by listening politely to other people’s opinions. They have the potential for high emotional intelligence. Whilst it is good to help others, the pleaser saboteur overuses and abuses a great strength that these people have, i.e. empathy, and turns it into a weakness.
They think more about the needs of others and not enough about their own needs, they are consummate givers because they think that by giving, they are going to be liked and accepted. They often have deep insecurity and think they are not worthy of love for whom they are, they need to earn love. They try hard to please others and they may even become too forceful or intrusive in trying to help others. Their desire to make others happy makes it hard for them to establish healthy boundaries with others.
They may develop feelings of resentment because they give away too much and do not think of themselves enough, or feelings of guilt if they think they are letting someone down. They don’t want to be selfish, they want to be a good person, but in doing so, they may find themselves to say yes to things they do not actually want to do, or do not have time for. They may allow others to take advantage of them or treat them poorly; by failing to speak up and pretending to agree with others because they want to be liked, they may engage in behaviour that goes against their values.
Some people seem to be pre-wired to develop a pleaser saboteur, which could be intensified by a particular childhood, for example, an unhappy home with high conflict or with parents offering little affection or attention. Most people have had a pleaser saboteur at some point in their lives; especially when we were young, we tended to please our parents or teachers; we obeyed our parents and wanted to receive love from them because our survival depended on them. Later in life, this pattern of behaviour can become unhealthy.
At work, people with a pleaser saboteur may be afraid to voice their opinions, be inclined to follow suggestions from others and avoid conflict rather than stand up for what they really believe in. By trying to be all things to all people to avoid disappointing others, they may struggle to reach their full potential. Without boundaries, they may become subservient to their boss. By putting other people first and over giving, they disregard themselves and burn out.
How strong is the pleaser in you?
How is your pleaser saboteur holding you back in your business or career?
Luca Dondi is a certified professional coach, helping people enhance and realise their unexpressed potential, by leveraging business experience and accredited training. Get in touch for a free coaching session.
What’s the biggest impact of the stickler saboteur on your business or career?
Do you see ‘almost perfect’ as a failure rather than a job very well done?
Do you tend to set excessively high standards for yourself and others?
Are you overly critical of yourself when failure does occur?
Do you take constructive criticism personally in case of a less-than-perfect performance?
Do you tend to excessively brood over past mistakes?
Does fear of failure make you put things off until the last minute?
If your answers to most of these questions is yes, you may have what Shirzad Chamine refers to as a stickler saboteur in his Positive Intelligence book (2012). People with a stickler saboteur generally have great organisational skills, do their best to meet or exceed expectations, they are meticulous and methodical at their jobs, they set high standards for themselves. It is natural to strive for your best in the things that matter the most: if you are a surgeon, perfectionism is a desirable trait; if you ought to follow a strict diet, a perfectionist will excel at self-management and self-restraint, achieving their objectives faster than the average person. At work, they tend to have high levels of motivation, conscientiousness, and engagement.
However, saboteurs overuse and abuse a great strength that these people have, i.e. a need for order and organisation, and turn it into a weakness.
They tend to be very self-critical and never satisfied with their performance, causing high levels of stress, pressure, anxiety, and burnout. They have unrealistic expectations, and they constantly worry that their work will not reach the excessively high standards that they have set. Their stickler saboteur often defines their identity, they wear it with pride as a badge of honour, the word ‘perfect’ has positive connotations for them.
By trying to make everything perfect and feeling anxious when things fall out of perfection, they tend to achieve less and stress more than other people who focus on the few things which need to be perfect and do not waste energy on things for which good enough would do. And even when things temporarily get into perfect order, the stickler saboteur generates anxiety because that perfect order may not last. They tend to beat themselves up and wallow in negativity when their high expectations are not met. Because they become so disappointed with anything less than perfection, they may procrastinate on key decisions, worried about doing something imperfectly. Their self-criticism may lead them to low self-esteem, insecurity in their abilities and pessimism.
At work, people leaders with a stickler saboteur get frustrated and irritated with others for not being perfect enough, this tends to be very discouraging to their subordinates, because even if they get 99% of something right, their boss will still only focus on the 1% which was perfectible and will beat them up over it. Their subordinates will feel exhausted as their hard work will never satisfy their boss.
People with a stickler saboteur tend to be overly sensitive to criticism because a less-than-perfect performance will be painful to them. They may have trouble completing projects because they think there is always something more that they can do to improve it, leading them to work longer hours. They may be tempted to execute tasks themselves rather than delegate or asking for help, adding to their burden. As parents, they may have unrealistic expectations on their children, causing them to have low self-esteem.
How strong is the stickler in you?
How is your stickler saboteur holding you back in your business or career?
Luca Dondi is a certified professional coach, helping people enhance and realise their unexpressed potential, by leveraging business experience and accredited training. Get in touch for a free coaching session.
What is the biggest impact of the restless saboteur on your business or career?
Are you rarely satisfied with the status quo even if the status quo is great?
Are you a hyper-active who gets easily bored?
Do you suffer in routine or mundane work environments because your mind naturally wanders?
Do you need to be constantly involved in challenges or with projects which excite and drive you?
Do you easily experience impatience and frustration with other people because they are not fast enough or energetic enough to keep up with you?
Are you easily distracted?
If your answers to most of these questions is yes, you may have what Shirzad Chamine refers to as a restless saboteur in his Positive Intelligence book (2012). People with a restless personality tend to have high energy and vitality, they are full of curiosity and remain open to new experiences, which increases their probability of doing something innovative. They take great pleasure in learning new things and are often early adopters. When they find themselves getting too comfortable, they question the status quo and their routines; they seek variety and excitement rather than comfort or safety, and they dislike conformity.
Whilst these personality traits make them particularly productive, creative, and capable of great breadth of activity and pursuits, their constant search for greater stimulation may limit their ability to find fulfilment in their current activities. Their fear of missing out may cause a lot of stress, because their minds may be restlessly wanting to be somewhere else, hoping that the next thing will be more interesting than what is in front of them.
When something unpleasant happens, people with a restless saboteur may be reluctant to explore what happened deep enough to learn from their mistakes, their minds may prompt them to quickly move on to try to avoid the pain, depriving them of awareness and a growth opportunity. The restless saboteur may damage their effectiveness by making them easily distracted and having them constantly jump from one thing to another in multitasking.
Because their minds are constantly in overdrive, they may get frustrated, impatient, or judgemental with others, who simply cannot keep up with them, or have their levels of energy, speed, and capability of managing multiple plans and tasks. Their low levels of agreeableness may be perceived by others as craziness or weirdness.
In their private lives, they may find it hard to build deep and lasting relationships, their potential partners may give up as they sense their unwillingness to engage in anything sustainable. People with a restless saboteur may have what the Buddhists call a ‘monkey mind’, moving from one adventure to the next like monkeys jumping from one branch to the next, losing touch with the here and now rather than being grounded and centred in the present.
How strong is the restless in you?
What is the biggest impact of the restless saboteur on your business or career?
Luca Dondi is a certified professional coach, helping people enhance and realise their unexpressed potential, by leveraging business experience and accredited training. Get in touch for a free coaching session.
What’s the biggest impact of the controller saboteur on your business or career?
Do you have a strong need to control and take charge of situations?
Do you have a strong desire to make others behave as you want them to?
As a manager, are you demanding and push people out of their comfort zone to achieve results?
Are you outspoken and forceful in your relationship with your subordinates?
Are you practical, realistic, non-sentimental in your communication style?
Do you tend to connect with your subordinates through competition and conflict rather than through soft emotions?
People who answer yes to most of these questions may have a controller saboteur (Shirzad Chamine, Positive Intelligence, 2012). These people generally have a strong need to exercise control over themselves, others and any situation. They have no problem in decision making, which tends to be focused on process and information. They are very task-oriented, like to take the initiative and value efficiency to get things done fast and on time. They are great at controlling projects and can be counted on to see projects through without missing any detail. Their communication style is direct, factual and to the point. They like to project themselves as victorious, strong-willed, confident, capable and efficient. Because of this, they are often recognised for their leadership and authority.
However, when feeling negative emotions, the controller saboteur overuses and abuses the strength that these people have, i.e. their willingness to take ownership, and turns it into a weakness.
These individuals tend to consider vulnerability as a weakness and often do not pay attention to their own emotions and to what others feel or think; they may therefore be weak on empathy, compassion and forgiveness, and may therefore struggle to build rapport.
They like to make decisions for others and are often incapable of taking ‘no’ for an answer, stubbornly insisting that they are right. If others disagree with them, they may have to face verbal aggressiveness as the individual with a controller saboteur thinks that they are questioning their authority, and their violent reaction may be designed to lower the other person’s confidence. When asked questions they do not have answers to, they may get irritated: they want to be the ones with the questions so they can control a conversation as opposed to having to give answers.
In their private life, they may be jealous of their partner and may go through their messages and contacts as they try to control them. Jealousy may manifest itself in their inability to accept their partner or friend’s success stories as they strive to be the centre of attention.
The controller saboteur is one of the most common for executives in senior leadership positions. People with a controller saboteur are very dominant and will respect others who also come across as dominant and confident. They often push their subordinates to achieve results with impatience and may come across as overly critical of their subordinates’ work to see how much they believe in their ideas. Their confrontational style can have a devastating impact on the confidence of others, who will not develop trust in themselves, will not feel encouraged to take any initiative, make mistakes and learn from them. Bosses with a controller saboteur will not help their subordinates grow, and these subordinates will refrain from stepping in, feeling controlled and resentful. The boss will gain short-term control but lose long-term influence.
What’s the biggest impact of the controller saboteur on your business or career?
Who is the archetype of someone with the controller saboteur?
Luca Dondi is a certified professional coach, helping people enhance and realise their unexpressed potential, by leveraging business experience and accredited training. Get in touch for a free coaching session.
What’s the biggest impact of the hyper-vigilant saboteur on your business or career?
Are you constantly afraid of threats in your immediate environment?
Do you tend to monitor your environment for potential dangers?
Are you often anxious of everything that happens around you?
Do you have the feeling that you have to be continuously on your guard and on high alert?
Do you tend to spend considerable time overanalysing every comment made by a colleague to try and find a hidden meaning?
Do you tend to have sleep disorders?
People who answer yes to most of these questions may have a hyper-vigilant saboteur (Shirzad Chamine, Positive Intelligence, 2012). These people are generally sensitive and aware of risks, value security and stability and therefore tend to be serious and reliable. However, saboteurs overuse and abuse a great strength that these people have, i.e. vigilance to risk, and turn it into a weakness.
These individuals may frequently be in a state of alertness to any hidden threats, which often are not real, and so become anxious and nervous about danger that may come from anywhere. Their extreme sensitivity to their surroundings may make it difficult for them to relax and sleep well. Their subconscious is constantly anticipating danger: they may keep checking doors and windows being locked at home; they may fear crowded or noisy environments.
At work, they may overanalyse situations and believe them to be worse than they are, they may overreact if they misinterpret a colleague’s statement, and may have persistent worries about what could go wrong. They may also be suspicious of other people’s motives and have chronic doubts about themselves and others.
Some people may have a natural predisposition to have a hyper-vigilant saboteur, which could be intensified by a particular childhood, e.g. a traumatic event such as the death of a loved one, exposure to violence or to a life-threatening event, a parental separation with an unstable and unreliable father figure.
This constant state of alertness about something bad potentially happening in the future can cause fatigue, physical and mental exhaustion, a huge waste of personal energy and negatively affect relationships in social situations. It can be tiring to spend time with an individual with a strong hyper-vigilant saboteur, and other people may become frustrated by the intensity of their anxiety.
At work, overestimating the chances of a bad thing happening and sending false alarms for danger may undermine the credibility of subsequent valid claims, i.e. the ‘crying wolf’ phenomenon. As a result, huge amounts of personal energy can be wasted.
How strong is the hyper-vigilant in you?
What’s the biggest impact of the hyper-vigilant saboteur on your business or career?
Luca Dondi is a certified professional coach, helping people enhance and realise their unexpressed potential, by leveraging business experience and accredited training. Get in touch for a free coaching session.
What’s the biggest impact of the hyper-achiever saboteur on your business or career?
Do you have overly ambitious tendencies that can lead to workaholism?
Do you seek fame and being the best at all costs?
Do you have a burning desire to impress others with your efficiency and effectiveness?
Are you overly concerned about your image and what others think of you?
Does achieving results make you lose sight of your emotions, deeper feelings and interests?
Does your focus on external success adversely affect your relationships and make you disconnected with your significant other?
Does your competitive nature sometimes lead you to arrogance and contempt for others?
If your answers to most of these questions is yes, you may have what Shirzad Chamine refers to as a hyper-achiever saboteur in his Positive Intelligence book (2012). People with a hyper-achiever personality tend to be driven, success-oriented, pragmatic, self-starters and often image conscious. They need to feel successful and valuable through their achievements, challenges met, obstacles overcome. They strive to develop their talents and capabilities and so may come across as competent, energetic, hard-working and committed.
Whilst these personality traits are often encouraged in certain cultures, they can be problematic when accomplishment is the condition for self-love, self-acceptance, and ultimately self-identity.
People who have a hyper-achiever temperament can lose touch with their authentic selves early in childhood, for example if their school performance was the condition for acceptance and love from others, perhaps from an ambitious and intelligent mother with an underprivileged background who wanted her son or daughter to succeed. When the child grows as an adult, their hyper-achiever saboteur becomes a fearsome beast, allowing only brief celebrations of achievement because the focus is constantly on the next performance.
In their quest to be productive, achieve success and avoid failure, these people neglect important relationships and may feel empty inside. In order to see themselves as successful, they may go on starvation diets, be driven to exhaustion by workout programs, or indulge in excessive cosmetic surgery. At their worst, they can be overly competitive, narcissistic and vindictive.
At work, these individuals tend to work within a very rigid framework with little space for non-work-related activities and for time off. They may take too much caffeine or other substances and often succumb to workaholism. If problems occur, and they always do, their self-identity is at risk. When stressed, people with a hyper-achiever saboteur may develop performance-related anxiety and waste a lot mental and emotional energy. They become alienated from their true selves with their extreme focus on thinking and action.
People leaders with a hyper-achiever personality may keep their direct reports at safe distance and struggle to generate loyalty from them, with a leadership style that is neither inclusive nor inspiring. If people intuitively sense that they are only serving their boss’s goals, in the long run their hyper-achiever boss will achieve less and not more.
How strong is the hyper-achiever in you?
What’s the biggest impact of the hyper-achiever saboteur on your business or career?
Luca Dondi is a certified professional coach, helping people enhance and realise their unexpressed potential, by leveraging business experience and accredited training. Get in touch for a free coaching session.
Is your hyper-rational saboteur holding you back?
Do you have a powerful analytical mind capable of deep mental concentration, leading to great insight?
Are you anxious about preserving your time, energy and resources against distractions?
Do you sometimes feel disconnected, alone and aloof with people around you due to mental concentration?
Do you have a drive towards great expertise in an area of knowledge?
Do you have a tendency to analyse abstract concepts rather than wanting to experience real-life situations?
Do you tend to consider feelings and emotions as distractions from an objective approach to problem solving?
In a conflict, do you tend to be focused on proving your point right from a data analysis perspective?
People who answer yes to most of these questions may have a hyper-rational saboteur. As Shirzad Chamine has highlighted in his seminal bestseller Positive Intelligence (2012), saboteurs are sources of negative energy, they overuse and abuse a great strength that you have, in this case a rational mind, by taking rationality to an extreme, until it becomes hyper-rationality. Individuals with a hyper-rational saboteur are (often unconsciously) worried about their irrational side taking over at any time, so they tend to repress it, since it may go out of control once it is allowed to express itself; so they take refuge in reason.
In western society, there is a cultural and gender bias towards hyper-rationality, especially among males who are encouraged to consider feelings and emotions as distracting and causing them to be weak and to have less of an objective approach to things.
There is neurological evidence that reason cannot and does not function on its own. Emotions are integrated into our most rational decisions and thoughts. Hyper-rationalists are escaping from their emotions, often because they fear them, or maybe because they may be unable to handle them, or possibly because emotions bring uncertainty and doubt.
The impact of the hyper-rational saboteur is that all decisions are made with the rational process of the mind. However, human beings are emotional and not rational and logical machines. If you are a people leader, it’s all about emotions, connection, inspiration, loyalty, trust, caring, empathy, it’s how you respond to people’s feelings. As a result, by not paying attention to people’s emotions, the hyper-rational makes worse decisions, not better decisions. Your direct reports feel judged and disconnected and ultimately leave because they cannot bear you for the long term.
How strong is the hyper-rational in you?
What’s the biggest impact of the hyper-rational saboteur on your business or career?
Luca Dondi is a certified professional coach, helping people enhance and realise their unexpressed potential, by leveraging business experience and accredited training.
Why Emotional Intelligence matters – Part 2 (self-awareness, relationship management and social competence)
How can we develop Emotional Intelligence (EI)?
Self-awareness
Self-Awareness is your ability to accurately perceive your emotions and stay aware of them as they happen. People with high EI balance empathy, good manners and kindness with the ability to assert themselves. During conflict, emotionally intelligent people remain balanced and assertive by steering themselves away from unfiltered emotional reactions. This enables them to neutralize difficult and toxic people without creating enemies.
You receive a call from an associate asking you to work on a task at short notice, which will divert your attention away from your current project priorities. How do you respond?
- Do you agree, but feel guilty because you have moved other commitments out of your schedule? (your underlying motive may be the need to achieve approval, you worry about pleasing everyone).
- Say no because you have commitments? (you are prepared to assert your needs to achieve your goal).
- You will see what you can do and then get back to them (you already know you will say no)? (you are engaging in avoidance behaviour).
Believe your behaviour, it will reveal your true intentions. When you are enthusiastic about something, it is because you want to do it. If you are delaying getting started or avoiding a task, ask yourself if this is something you really want to be doing.
Trust your feelings and be honest with yourself. When you are happy, satisfied or content in a certain situation, it is likely that you are in alignment with your inner and outer self. You are doing what you want to be doing, referred to as being congruent. If you have agreed to undertake something and you feel resentment, it could well be that your intention is in conflict with some underlying goal.
Relationship management and social competence
Relationship Management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions and the others’ emotions to manage interactions successfully. Social competence is your ability to understand other people’s moods, behaviour and motives in order to respond effectively and improve the quality of your relationships.
Relationships are vital for personal growth and development. Whereas once the psychological contract was set on expectations of a job for life, today’s job market is characterised by transactional relationships, which are transitory. Flatter organisational structures and the need to manage our own careers mean that it is vital to develop an effective internal and external network of relationships based on reciprocity, listening, trust, empathy.
People with high EI are curious about other people. This curiosity is the product of empathy, one of the most significant gateways to high EI. The more you care about other people and what they’re going through, the more curiosity you’re going to have about them.
Why Emotional Intelligence matters – Part 1 (managing emotions, self-motivation)
According to Peter Salovey and John Mayer (1990), Emotional intelligence (EI) is “a learned ability to perceive, understand and express our feelings accurately, and to control our emotions so that they work for us, not against us”. EI can be developed throughout our lives, by tuning into our senses, getting in touch with our feelings, and knowing our goals.
“75% of careers are derailed for reasons related to emotional competencies, including inability to handle interpersonal problems; unsatisfactory team leadership during times of difficulty or conflict; or inability to adapt to change or elicit trust” (The Centre for Creative Leadership).
Developing EI means accessing all the resources we have available, either in our left brain (logic, reason, maths, analysis) or right brain (visual imagery, creativity, dreams, symbols and emotions). So how can we develop our EI?
Managing emotions
Managing our emotions effectively means controlling unproductive behaviour that doesn’t get us anywhere. By understanding the link between our interpretation of an event and our responses to it, we can choose an alternative way to feel. This is key to EI capability: we can choose how we see a situation. Our beliefs, values, drivers and the rules we live by create our map of reality; change the map, and we change how we see, hear, feel and behave in the world.
People with high EI master their emotions because they understand them and use extensive vocabulary to describe them. Instead of describing themselves as simply feeling “bad”, emotionally intelligent people may feel “nervous”, “irritable”, “anxious” “or frustrated”. The more specific our word choice, the better insight we have into exactly how we are feeling, what caused it, and what we should do about it.
Self-motivation
Being self-motivated means pursuing our goals with commitment, passion, energy and persistence. In order to achieve high levels of motivation, overcome setbacks and perform at our best, we need to be able to manage our own internal states, harness our emotions and channel them into a direction that enables us to achieve our objectives.
One way to do this is to adopt positive self-talk and quash negative self-talk: the more our negative thoughts run through our mind, the more power we give them. Most of our negative thoughts are just that — thoughts, not facts. Write down affirmation statements (always positive and not negative), e.g.:
I am beautiful, talented, intelligent and creative.
I am growing cleverer, happier and fitter each day.
I have much to offer and others recognise this.
I have a lovely sense of humour that others appreciate very much.
Identify what we need to have around us to feel motivated. To create an environment that is conducive to high EI, our environment should be healthy, clean, well-lit, organised (clear your desk, clear your mind), with helpful sounds, with motivators we can surround ourselves with (pictures, people, phrases).
To become relentlessly positive, let’s focus our energy on what we can control, i.e. our attention and our effort. Numerous studies have shown that optimists are physically and psychologically healthier than pessimists. They also perform better at work.
Are you accepting or ignoring your intuition?
What role does intuition play in your life? When you are faced with a decision, do you usually listen to your gut feeling?
Sometimes our logical minds are not enough, we need to connect with our subconscious minds through our intuition, which will point us in the right direction, regardless of what looks logical at the time. Logical people may have difficulty following their sixth sense, because they do not trust it will lead them in the right direction.
Intuition uses past experiences and signs from ourselves and the environment to help us make sense of the world around us and make decisions. The more information we can collect from the environment, the more our subconscious minds will have data to process to inform our decisions. Pay attention not just to words but tone of voice, pitch, pace, melody, volume of speech, body language, they all give us cues about our interactions with people.
Intuition is a quiet force with a life-changing potential. Sometimes through repeated signs, our subconscious minds are trying to tell us something about what would make us happy. Are you having recurring dreams about an activity in particular? That is probably your subconscious mind talking to you.
When you applied for a new job, what outcome were you hoping for, a job offer or a rejection? Your intuition, often coming out of the blue, is trying to tell you something: pay attention to what you hope will happen, because it often gives you an insight into the decision you actually want to make. If you ignore it, this often comes at a price and leads to regrets: I knew I should not have accepted that job offer, if only I’d followed my instincts.
Of course, you should be using a blend of rationality and intuition to make the best decisions. And negative emotions will cloud your intuition and therefore your judgement, so in those moments, it is best to refrain from taking important decisions. But do not dismiss your instincts; instead, learn to listen and trust them.
Should we be afraid of making decisions?
People often dread taking decisions and spend considerable time agonising over choices. Overanalysing and overthinking about decisions can result in analysis paralysis, costing us a lot of time, energy depletion and decision fatigue. And the higher the number of options to evaluate, the more likely our limited daily mental resources will be strained, leading to loss of productivity and mental exhaustion. The abundance of information readily available on the Internet has led to greater anxiety and indecision, the so-called ‘Paradox of Choice’.
Why are people so afraid of making decisions? In the past, a wrong decision could lead to permanent damage; in response to traumatic events such as wars, famines or illnesses, survivors would become suspicious, distrustful, afraid of failure, afraid of making mistakes.
So, we are culturally conditioned to be afraid of making decisions. However, Ruth Chang, Professor and Chair of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford, in her research on hard choices and decision-making, explains that frequently we make choices difficult, because we assume that an option must be better or worse than another.
Let’s assume we need to make a choice between a career as an interior designer or as a finance professional; how can we rationally choose between these two very different career paths? Instead, what we can do is to shift our perspective and commit to one of the two alternatives and make it our best choice. So, if we decide to go for a career as an interior designer, we will create valid reasons for it to become our best choice. This is exactly what we do when we commit to a relationship with someone: when we first started dating X, we could have chosen Y, W or Z as potential partners, but when we chose to commit to X, we created valid reasons to be with him, and in doing so, we transformed him into Mr. Right.
So, difficult choices are often turning points and great opportunities to transform ourselves into actors, to create our own motivations and to actively choose in line with our values to become one person rather than another. When we keep changing our mind, this is a sign that we haven’t yet come to a decision over what to commit.
Although decision-making is often disliked and risk aversion is so deeply rooted, when we commit to one alternative, we open ourselves to be creative, to be able to deal with the unknown, to accept risk-driven experiences and to celebrate mistakes as opportunities to get out of our comfort zone, to learn and grow, with optimism, trust in the world and in the people around us.
Does coaching work?
What is the Return on Investment (ROI) of a coaching program? What are the outcomes of effective coaching on individual performance, work attitudes and general well-being? Research has shown a positive effect of coaching in the following categories.
Physical and psychological wellbeing
Evidence from health coaching organisations indicates positive individual outcomes in terms of weight management, quitting smoking and stress management. For organisations, this translates into healthier staff and increased productivity due to lower absenteeism. On an aggregate level, society benefits due to healthcare-related savings.
Transformational leadership
Having a coach can transform lives: “80% of people who receive coaching report increased self-confidence, and over 70% benefit from improved work performance, relationships, and more effective communication skills. 86% of companies report that they recouped their investment on coaching and more” (source: ICF 2009). Compared with self-leadership and development courses, which are typically one-off activities where employees learn new skills, a coaching program over an extended period of time results in long-lasting behavioural changes through a space for personal development, in which the individual will actively participate, receive feedback, be challenged to work on what needs improvement, and immediately apply new habits. Higher levels of employee resilience, assertiveness, engagement, commitment and ultimately happiness deliver higher levels of profitability.
Goal attainment
Coaching sessions help the individual analyse and structure ideas, thereby generating learnings and awareness on objectives and subsequent focus on action plans. By designing actions, the individual states their willingness and commitment to grow in new areas and to take risks. By setting specific deadlines and concrete activities, the coach will support the individual in developing and maintaining an effective action plan with SMART objectives (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-oriented), and explore any reluctance (perhaps due to insecurity) and analyse any obstacles. This will result in an improvement in performance, increased openness to personal development, increased ability to identify solutions to specific work-related issues, greater ownership and responsibility.
What are the essential skills a good coach needs?
A coach will assist the coachee in managing the inevitable change which we all come across in our lives. So, what tools does the coach have to help the coachee deal with a transformation?
1) Language. The coach will focus 100% on the coachee’s use of language, tone of voice and body language. Active listening requires concentration; to ensure clarity of understanding, a coach will often summarise or rephrase what is being said by the coachee, to allow time for the coach’s brain to process meaning from words and sentences. During a coaching session, the coach’s talk time will typically be less than the coachee’s talk time; the role of the coach is not to impose his / her own agenda, but rather to facilitate reflection through customised questions and observations.
2) Powerful questioning. The coach’s questions will often reuse the coachee’s language and will be designed to collect information. By asking primarily open-ended questions (rather than close-ended questions which may limit the client’s thinking), the coach will stimulate the coachee to create new possibilities and move him / her to action. Whenever we face change, this generates fear, doubts, insecurity, because we think we do not have the necessary resources to deal with it. In those circumstances, we make choices. We can either dither, resist change and prefer to stay in the comfort zone, or embrace change, transforming challenges into opportunities to move towards an ideal situation. The role of the coach is to help the coachee choose with awareness.
3) Intuition. Once the coachee’s situation has been analysed, a coach may be guided by their intuition to decide what to explore, in line with the coachee’s agenda. Intuition is likely based on past experiences; a trained coach trusts their insights and may share them with the coachee, without any attachment about them being right. If they turn out to be right, they will help the coachee move forward and have a positive effect on them.
What are the key ingredients of a successful coaching relationship?
Forming a coaching relationship
For a healthy and spontaneous coaching relationship, what are the key ingredients to create a connection between coach and coachee?
1) Trust. The coach needs to create a supportive and respectful environment, so the coachee can feel encouraged to fully express himself / herself, and safe knowing that the coach will never make judgements about her / him. Building trust requires integrity, apologising when one makes mistakes, honesty, generosity, keeping your promises. Whenever the coach senses that something may upset the coachee, the coach requests permission before asking difficult questions. The coach’s approachability will gradually result in the coachee slowly revealing who they really are, i.e. what’s underneath certain behavioural patterns. In my experience, this is rarely achieved during the first session; trust is built over time and requires patience.
2) Confidence. The coach needs to be confident in his abilities and in the power of the coaching process, avoiding any anxiety or worries which may undermine his/her performance.
3) Presence. The coach needs to be 100% present with body, mind and soul, and create a bubble environment in which the coachee can express his/her feelings. The coachee’s verbal and non-verbal behaviour will be analysed, including what is not being said.
4) Relatability. Although the role of the coach is not to be an expert in the coachee’s profession or industry, the coach’s unique mix of background and skills may enable them to better understand the coachee’s situation and achieve their coaching objectives.
5) Flexibility. A coach needs to be flexible in working with the coachee, whether it’s in person or online. In my experience, it is best to let the coachee decide where to hold coaching sessions; the surroundings do matter in making coachees feel psychologically safe. I have tried coaching by walking: exercise helps our brain deal with anxiety, tension and stress, and walking stimulates meditation and generation of creative ideas.