Emotional Inteeligence in the Workplace

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Introduction by Richard Farson It is a pleasure to introduce our leader for this conference, Susan de la Vergne. The hot new topic, Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace, is best addressed by someone who has extensive experience in management coupled with an education in the humanities and a particular interest in the human relations aspect of organizational life. Susan brings all of that. After twenty-five years of management experience in the information technology industry, Susan shifted her interests to the development of innovative education and training methods. She now teaches such courses for major companies, gives lectures, and has a new book coming out next month, "You Can't Manage Time." We are fortunate to have someone with her credentials to lead us through this emotional maze. Welcome, Susan.

1:1 Susan de la Vergne
I'm pleased to be a part of this discussion because I'm fascinated by this topic. I came across Emotional Intelligence a few years ago, just as I was getting ready to make a break from my 25-year career in management, where I'd worked primarily leading Information Technology departments in large companies. When I began to read about Emotional Intelligence, the ability to not only read and understand emotions but also to use them in decision-making, I realized what a shortcoming it was in every business setting I had ever been in.

Emotional realities in the workplace have long been downplayed, even denied. It's considered "professional" to be matter-of-fact, dispassionate, left-brained, unsmiling. These are characteristics we encourage on the job. How people feel about work about co-workers, clients, goals, process, and all the rest, we don't examine very often, and when we do, it's usually to put them in their proper place: In the background.

When conflict erupts at work, management's advice is "Get over it" and "Don't go there," meaning "Whatever you do, stay out of the emotional fray." "You just pay attention to what you need to do and don't worry about them," is another misguided attempt to help employees address whatever emotional currents are obviously in play.

And then there's my personal favorite: "What's wrong?" when something is obviously wrong, and the inevitable answer: "Nothing."

Managers steer employees away from emotions because emotions can't be predicted, contained or manipulated (for very long). In short, they can't be controlled. Yet they are powerful forces in the workplace. Even professions that are thought to be dispassionate, left-brained, sober bastions of unsmiling, rational thinkers (engineers, for example, or financial analysts) are, in fact, very much not so.

So then along comes Emotional Intelligence (E.I.), a collection of interesting discoveries about the emotional functioning of the brain as different from its cognitive function. Neuroscientists and psychologists have linked their findings in this area to recognizable aspects of behavior and interaction, aspects like self control and trustworthiness, initiative, optimism, empathy and collaboration. Dr. Daniel Goleman, whose books popularized emotional intelligence, has an E.I. model that includes personal and social characteristics: Resilience, Influence, a Service Orientation, the ability to Build Bonds, Understand Others, be Adaptable, Conscientious, to Manage Conflict and Leverage Diversity. These qualities, and others like them, have been deemed the "competencies" that comprise Emotional Intelligence.

E.I. researchers have examined aspects of brain chemistry directly related to how we process emotions and have learned, among other things, that the emotional part of the brain "learns differently from the thinking brain," says Dr. Goleman. It grows and develops in us more as we age. Good news, finally, for anyone facing nearsightedness and back pain. At least your E.I. can improve with age, even if other biological systems do not!

But more seriously, in a world of business leadership that's dealt with powerful, uncontainable emotions ineptly for about as long as anyone can remember, Emotional Intelligence has come along to lend credence to the role of emotions in the workplace. It's attempting to be the hard science behind the soft skills.

Of course now there's a bandwagon with eager consultants aboard who claim to have methods for instilling E.I. in the ranks. It's the latest remedy for what ails corporate culture.

But is it possible to instill elements of character in others? Can we, in fact, train others to be compassionate or trustworthy or innovative? Should we expect to instill in others adaptability or a sense of commitment or to teach others to be influential?

Or do we even need to? Some might argue we've created quite a thriving economy without any of these elements playing a significant role.

How do these ideas and objectives resonate with your experience in leadership?

1:2 Raymond Alden
Thank you for being here, Susan. I'm delighted to have us discussing this topic, and in particular to having it defined so clearly yet succinctly -- "The ability to not only read and understand emotions but also to use them in decision-making". I've heard the term "Emotional Intelligence" recently, and also something called the "E.Q." (as distinct from "I.Q.") which I take to be the same thing, and have wondered what they actually mean.

I do take partial exception with the idea that engineers are a good example of the problem, as it doesn't quite match my own experience. The problem is all around us, and we've known about it for years. What we've known about it, however, is mostly nonsense! We have thought of it as requiring the magic touch of an artist to handle deftly, rather than something to be understood as associated with a rational brain, behaving as it was designed to behave.

So much that we have learned recently about the way the brain works is making sense out of classical mysteries.

Can we "train others to be compassionate or trustworthy or innovative"? I don't know, yet, but I hope so. In the meantime, I think we can achieve some of the same results by teaching others HOW the brain works, and any intelligent person who knows HOW something works, will be better able to achieve good results by using that knowledge.

1:3 Richard Farson
Ray, in the area of human affairs we can know a lot about how something works, but that doesn't seem to mean that we will then know how to work it. If that were the case, we psychologists would be really good at human relations, but if you know many psychologists you probably know that we are pretty bad at that. Indeed, it could be argued that knowing gets in the way.

That's probably why you engineers have such good marriages.

1:4 Susan de la Vergne
I think we're in agreement, Ray, about engineers. While their reputation pegs them as emotionally detached work beings, I've found them often to be openly passionate professionals, although sometimes better and sometimes worse at wielding those emotions well on the job.

I'm with you in the hope it's somehow possible to "train" others in some of these characteristics, even if it's accomplished only through leading by example, which is perhaps not the shortcut that management hopes comes to them from E.I..

Do you think there are some "kinds" of people, people who perhaps end up in certain types of jobs, say, or departments or who come from particular backgrounds, who might be more successful at inspiring such qualities in others? Or is it really pretty much unfathomable how some people do this well and some don't?

1:5 Gary Hinkle
Susan, regarding "kinds" of people who might be more successful at inspiring such qualities in others, one thing I’ve noticed in the workplace is that there are many people who appear to care much more about "things" than they do about people.

For example, some people seem to be focused primarily on money and material things. Others seem to place aspects of their job such as the technology, mental or physical challenges, or the fun factor above connecting with people. People who don’t appear to value human relationships probably aren’t the best candidates to improve their E.I., even though they may be physiologically capable.

Is there any data that roughly indicates the percentage of people, globally, who value human relationships above other benefits of working?

1:6 Richard Farson
Welcome, Gary Hinkle, a professional associate of Susan's, and thanks for your comments. All of psychology was built on the basis of individual differences, but in recent decades we are paying much more attention to the power of situations, group composition and the like. If you measure the amount of talking individuals do in small discussion groups, and then take all those who said almost nothing in their groups and make a small group out of them, they all talk so you can't tell the difference between that group and the other groups.

I suspect that increasingly we will see design or social architecture emerge as a major interest in management.

1:7 Richard Farson
The American way is to technologize everything. When we hear about some new evidence showing how something may work, we immediately want to apply it, work it, technologize it. But it often is impossible to translate our knowledge into actionable programs. We know a great deal about how children grow, for example, but nobody knows how to grow one. So we may be learning a lot about kinds of intelligence that we have ignored before, and it will surely make us wiser as we consider these new dimensions of ourselves and our human environment, but our rush to immediately translate it into training applications is the problem, not the solution.

We need to fix situations, not people.

1:8 Douglass Carmichael
What an interesting and timely topic!

"Emotional Intelligence: Starting with the book (disclaimer: I wrote my doctoral dissertation in the Berkeley Psych Department on "irony" in 1965, looking at rhetoric for its blend of the emotional and logical before they split (Descartes, etc)) Goleman looked at the long forgotten emotional life of humans, but treated emotions as things we needed to know about because the interfered with projects.

But for me the question is not emotions as the negative to 'rational" but the ability to live an aesthetic and emotional life, positively, as an act of choice.

The tendency of our culture to replace relationships between people (truth is the same as troth) with relationships between people and things, and then to thing relationships only, is part of our technoid economy. (see Mirowski: Machine Dreams: How economics became a cyborg science).

The cognitive rational types in the academy have been operating with the following logic: humans are rational, rational is logical, logic is mathematical; math can be programmed hence the human machine interface problem is really a machine interface problem.

Rational for the Greeks meant thinking in the service of life. Rational now means logical connections of means with means, often in the service of anti-life.

The resurrection of the emotional life is a great project.

1:9 Richard Farson
Emotion has always had a bad name, especially in management and decision making, but that's of course because we associate it with the interference that Doug mentioned. But if we could embrace emotionality in its many salutary forms, appreciating the aesthetics of leadership, for example, we might legitimize the appearance of highly effective dimensions of human interaction.

Hear, hear, Doug.

1:10 Richard Farson
I'm afraid my unexplained use of the term social architecture might be a bit cryptic. Increasingly I see leadership and management as the design of situations, much in the same way that a good host or hostess arranges a party--not by fixing the people who will attend, but arranging the circumstances where they will be at their best. The simplest, and well researched example, is to build on the difference between a discussion at an oblong table and a round one. The time, agenda, personnel may be just the same, but the interaction is completely different. The round table is more participative, junior people more likely to speak up, members other than the leader are addressed, the interaction is more informal and personal, it's harder to tell who the leader is. Nothing has changed except the shape of the table. That's social architecture.

1:11 Susan de la Vergne
Doug, I love that: "Living an aesthetic and emotional life, positively, as an act of choice." If its okay with you, I may just quote you again and again. That is really what is at the heart of this: We are living emotional lives in every aspect of what we do and are, and at our best we do so positively. That includes our lives at work.

We spend a lot of time at work, in a workplace, where we are encouraged to repress emotions or deny them. Not that we should necessarily let it all hang out and be wildly emotional beings on the job, but the current approach, where management sidelines emotional realities, overlooks the positive role of emotions. The tendency you describe here, to replace relationships between people with relationships between people and things, and then thing to thing, seen in the workplace may just be a way of trying to contain these emotional forces.

So a formula for that, a repeatable, re-usable model of how humans are emotional, such as Emotional Intelligence, would be attractive to individuals in leadership who are squeamish about emotions, who need to "thingify" them.

I’m not suggesting that is a good reason to turn emotions into objects, just that it’s a reason, and one that is attractive to business leadership. Even more attractive, then, would be E.I.Q. (Emotional Intelligence Quotient) which attempts to measure individuals emotional competence. You know what they say: "Can’t measure it? Can’t manage it!"

1:12 Kip Winsett
I first read Antonio Damasio's book Descartes' Error about a year and a half ago and found it immensely interesting. He presents a rich and profound neurological view of humans as primarily emotional creatures--not rational ones.

Even seemingly "rational decisions" have their basis in emotional foundations.

It occurs to me that one of the reasons emotions tend to be ignored in the workplace is that they are to some extent helter-skelter. Often there's no obvious reason for why one feels as one does and how one feels can change dramatically with no warning. This makes interaction difficult for others unless they have some training in objectivity.

1:13 Susan de la Vergne
Kip, I think you're right that "rational discussions" have their basis in emotional foundations. I agree, too, that it's just that uncontrollable, helter-skelter character of emotions that make people--especially in the workplace--duck when they see them coming.

1:14 Raymond Alden
Descartes. Was he the guy at the pub who, when asked if he wanted a second flagon of ale, said: "I think not", and disappeared?

Susan asks: "Do you think there are some "kinds" of people, people who perhaps end up in certain types of jobs, say, or departments or who come from particular backgrounds, who might be more successful at inspiring such qualities in others? Or is it really pretty much unfathomable how some people do this well and some don't?"

I think it isn't unfathomable, and I'm puzzled at the suggestion that emotion doesn't have much of a role in the workplace. How about in marketing? Advertising? How about Professor Harold Hill who couldn't make his big sale until he aroused fear in River City?

Or how about the person with an idea who manipulates (dirty word?) the situation until others either think of it themselves, or buy in to the idea with some sense of ownership.

Are not these examples of emotion being used, consciously, in the work place?

1:15 Susan de la Vergne
I’ve been humming "76 Trombones" for the last few minutes thinking about "Professor" Harold Hill. He was certainly an effective manipulator, but that wasn’t what we liked or respected about him. We liked his genuine side, the Harold Hill who fell for Marian the Librarian.

If I met a Harold Hill at work, someone who, let’s say, lied about past performance on the job (remember Hill wasn’t really a professor) and who played upon group vulnerability, I’d agree he was using emotions in the workplace. And of course we’ve all seen that at some time or another. I remember when a company I worked for was being acquired, the management team of the acquiring company used similar tactics. They, too, consciously used fear as a manipulation method, though they used it to gain control, not buy-in.

I agree emotions have a role in the workplace, but I’d rather see them have an honorable role and a meaningful one. In my observation, the way emotions show up at work are either as ways of overtly manipulating others (advertising, controlling) or in the kinds of eruptions (conflict, anger) management tries too often to suppress.

1:16 Richard Farson
In my interviews with employees about their bosses, the moments they value most are when the boss is revealed in some genuine, surprising, out-of-character and often vulnerable way...sometimes breaking rules.

We use the term "displaying emotions" to refer to their use instrumentally, but that's not where the payoff seems to be. Paradoxically, they are most valued when not under complete control...as when someone chokes up when saying something important.

1:17 Richard Farson
Love your Descartes joke, Ray.

In the sixties we changed that line to "I feel, therefore I am."

1:18 Mary Boone
Thanks for spending time with us, Susan.

As the mother of a 4.5 year old, I certainly HOPE that emotional intelligence can be taught. Otherwise look out for all of these 4 year olds who think they are the center of the universe.

If you'll indulge me here for a moment, I will use my son as an example. This morning he was very angry with me for putting him in time out. He yelled "You are NOT going to be my mother anymore" and promptly got his time in purgatory extended. The end result was that he was late to school and had to (very reluctantly) explain to his teacher why he was late. In the car on the way to school, I reminded him of what I always tell him when he loses his temper. "Alex, it's ok to be angry but it's not ok to speak in a disrespectful way. You can tell me you're very angry, stomp your foot, tell me how frustrated you are, etc., but you can't say something rude or hurtful." And he said "Oh, I didn't think of that." Ummhmmm.

In the end, he was very concerned about getting to school on time and really didn't like explaining himself to the teacher and I'm finding that this kind of exchange is less frequent as I continually remind him of acceptable expressions of anger and frustration. My point is that in my personal experience I am working on teaching him several things: 1) The impact of his actions on others, 2) The different between a thought, a feeling and an action, and 3) The possible ramifications of acting on emotions in different ways (e.g. disincentives for expressing emotions in hurtful ways).

And of course, one slip up in my own expression of anger can undo 100 of these little psychological speeches. Modeling is perhaps the most powerful way of teaching so I continually remind myself of the same lessons I'm sharing with him.

However, in the end, you just can't predict how individual human beings will act on this type of knowledge. Some will learn, others won't. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

1:19 Kip Winsett
You ain't seen nothing yet, Mary. Wait until he's a teen! My son is 13 now and what a trip it is to help him adapt socially in ever more refined ways.

Back to the workplace. It's been my experience that people are lugging tons of emotional baggage with them. In the workplace there are bullies and sad sacks, cheerful extroverts and arrogant introverts plus a ton of other emotional "styles".

Trying to figure out the other's emotional style can be a challenge. Dealing with it even more of one. I don't know if this is a skill that can be "learned". My own style of coping with all of that is to "be with them". It's not always pleasant, and there's the challenge of being with them without becoming them.

I find it's helpful if I'm willing to be intimate with the other. That requires that I first see them and their behavior. That sounds obvious but truly, many people are so caught up in their own trip they don't see the other person and have no idea at all of how their response might affect the other person.

The next step in intimacy (for me) is to accommodate their trip, to go on it with them. That's tricky for me because I have a personal need to be authentic. My "authentic response" isn't set in stone so I might react to another person's anger in a variety of ways. Sometimes I might respond emotionally from my own current state of being (irritated, relaxed, threatened, etc.) or I might consciously choose a specific behavior of my own with the end goal of eliciting a specific behavior from the other. In general I prefer not to do that but with some people it's critical to be able to do it.

I really try to avoid behaviors on my part that fail to acknowledge the other person's state of being. Pretending that the other isn't distressed or gloating or preening or what have you.

1:20 Richard Farson
The term "management" certainly seems to imply handling people, but handling behavior is seldom welcomed in relationships that really matter--friends, patients, spouses, children, leaders, employees, etc. And making the assessment necessary for handling seems often to be counter-productive when one seeks true engagement, the relationship that characterizes better management. Indeed, evaluation and engagement may not coexist all that well.

We learned this first from Carl Rogers who transformed much of psychotherapeutic practice, and many other relationships, by taking them out of the evaluative mode into a nonjudgmental, more empathic mode, to good advantage.

1:21 Susan de la Vergne
Parenting does offer endless opportunities, doesn’t it! Thank you, Kip and Mary, for your observations. I have a 15-year-old son, in whom I hope a few such lessons are already instilled. But with a teen-ager, sometimes it is hard to tell.

Kip and Mary both make a point that I’d like to explore further: that it’s "being with them," as Kip says, and leading by example, in Mary’s story, which is certainly tricky territory with a young one who’s watching you all the time. Demonstrating to young people one or two ways to respond to emotionally challenging occasions is, it seems to me, one means of encouraging good, emotionally intelligent acts now and later in life. It’s hardly a quick fix, as Mary points out, since modeling good behavior and explaining how and why takes time and requires being consistent over time.

As adults, do we continue to learn about emotional responses and actions the same way? In my own experience, I’d say I have. My most recent boss in corporate life was an exceptional example of genuine commitment, and watching him follow through on even the most difficult work (technically, politically and emotionally) inspired me to be better in those ways. Watching him operate in emotionally charged situations taught me ways of doing so I hadn’t thought of or tried before. At earlier times in my career, I’ve worked with and for people who have led by example in other ways that I’ve been able to adopt, at least in part. This, however, is not the sort of quick fix that corporate America is usually hoping for.

Once upon a time (it seems to me), mentors in the workplace emerged from relationships. Now, many companies have mentoring programs that set up relationships where junior people are partnered up with more senior people (the assumption here that it’s the senior people who have more to impart). Yet it’s often the case that managers can learn emotionally intelligent responses from subordinates. Not all managers are open to that.

I’m interested to know whether--and how--you’ve learned on-the-job lessons in this area from others who’ve been mentors. And do you think there is value in partnering employees with other, more senior, employees with the idea that they’ll develop better responses and behaviors? Is that an effective, or at least reasonable, approach to improving emotional intelligence?

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