Acting with Collaborative Intelligence: Your 10 Step Guide

Collaboration is a result of people working together to reach a mutual answer to a challenge or opportunity.  As our world becomes more integrated and boundaries become more blurred the need and desire to collaborate is heightened.  We see this on the internet, such as with Wikipedia, in organizations of all sizes and shapes, such as the better efforts at the United Nations and in performance goals for individuals and leaders, such as the Executive Core Qualifications (ECQ’s) that leaders in the federal senior executive service are to meet.

Organizations frequently list collaboration as part of their mission or vision statement or as one of their values.  With all of these forms of embracing collaboration, we know it’s something good, the key question is how do we collaborate and when is it useful? We’ll answer this question for individuals by exploring 10 steps for individuals to follow in order to act collaboratively and briefly review how teams build collaboration.

Collaborative Intelligence™ is a key outcome teams can reach as they build their skills.  Collaborative intelligence is a result teams profit from when using the seven skills measured by the TESI^® (Team Emotional and Social Intelligence Survey.  When teams build their skills in forming a strong team identity, engaging with motivation, building emotional awareness, enhancing communications, supporting one another in work life balance to manage stress, growing their conflict resolution skills so they can benefit when conflict occurs and act with positive mood they will be engaging multiple strengths and acting collaboratively.  Developing these seven skills helps team members learn how to be collaborative and to use this outcome wisely.

Collaboration is a communication and problem solving process that is based on a structured engagement style and process.  Those who collaborate well pay attention to personality styles, behavioral engagement strategies, and timing of the decision making as well as who is invited into the discussion, often referred to a stakeholders.  Individuals and organizations can act in a collaboratively style informally and accomplish a great deal.  More formal collaborative process can be deliberately engaged in more challenging situations and may benefit from engaging a facilitator.  Because the process can be slow and deliberative it may be the wrong formal process to use in an emergency, when a quick decision is needed or when the stakes are low, such as choosing where to have lunch.  Even in these circumstances when individuals act with a demonstration of inclusivity and intentionally listen to others and incorporate their suggestions as appropriate, they can build buy-in and loyalty that expands their base of support. The following 10 steps will help individuals and leaders be successful in their collaborations.  These skills can be integrated into one’s natural behaviors so the benefits of collaboration abound with minimal effort.

 10 Steps to Act with Collaborative Intelligence

1.     Be aware.  Notice what is happening so you can choose how you are involved.  Breathe deeply to benefit from adding oxygen to your brain, to your heart and to feel calm and resilient.

2.     Apply Intention and Attention.  Form your intention so you know specifically what you want to accomplish and how.  Then decide what steps in the process you will pay attention to in order to keep yourself on track.  Intend to collaborate, which means intend to work together, to listen and to respond in order to accomplish your goal together.  Clarify your own purpose and goals; this is not a process you can accomplish on auto-pilot.

3.     Commit to the process.  Collaboration takes time, energy and patience. If you’re hesitant about using the process you’ll hold back, be protective of “your” information or rush through the process.  One way or another without commitment you are most likely to minimize the potential for success.  You may end up feeling annoyed or antagonizing others or both.

4.     Attend to others.  Create a foundation for engagement by creating a personal connection.  It’s out of little personal discussions where you find you have things in common that form the basis for trusting one another.  You might find you both have daughters who sell Girl Scout cookies or you might both climb 14,000 foot mountains. Continue paying attention to other participants throughout the process.  Often there is a valuable message behind the specific words someone is using; paying attention will help you discern the real message.

5.     Mutually establish goals and other criteria. Be sure you are headed in the same direction!

6.     Express your opinions and share your knowledge.  If you keep what you know close to your vest you undermine the ability of everyone to make a good decision, you role model that the process isn’t fully trustworthy and neither are the people involved.  Remember your actions speak louder than your words.

7.     List commonalities and differences.  It’s amazing how often people struggle over principles they already all agree on because they didn’t take time to recognize the agreement. If you clarify where there are differences and where you agree then you can begin gathering information to move towards a mutual solution.

8.     Apply divergent thinking.  Be willing to listen to other people’s perspectives even though they may be very different from yours.  At attitude of curiosity will be helpful.

9.     Be appreciative.  Keep noticing what works and through this positive process explore what seems to be off-center, to just not work.  Explore these inconsistencies with curiosity to find points of agreement.

10.  Make decision(s).  At this point everyone comes to a convergent answer and agrees to support the one answer.  Before you sign off though, apply some hearty reality testing.  Future pace by imaging it’s sometime in the future and you’re observing how well the decision works.  Is anything askew?  Did you take on too much at once?  Does anything else need adjusting?  If so make the changes now.

The result of collaborative decisions is that you have tapped into everyone’s smarts, built trust and have gained mutual commitment to success.  What’s not to like about that scenario!

Leadership Development: The Four Corners of Empathetic Assertiveness

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

–George Bernard Shaw

 Successful leaders exhibit skills that may look natural and easy yet are truly the result of paying close attention and being responsive to the whole environment.  To do so, they learn to be emotionally literate and employ a complex set of skills in ways that may seem innate though in fact are the result of a willingness to work, learn and improve.  Leaders often believe that their cognitive intelligence is the threshold for their success, and they do need solid IQ smarts and a good education to get in the door and to keep up with technical and professional developments.  To move beyond that threshold they need to be adept at relationships, influencing and leading staff and teams effectively.

The path for exhibiting this excellence is based in emotional intelligence:

“a set of emotional and social skills that influence the way we perceive and express ourselves, develop and maintain social relationships, cope with challenges, and use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way.”

The most powerful and sustainable way to build those relationships requires using the four emotional intelligence skills demonstrated in this graph.

The artful use of these four skills creates a resilient environment and is well supported by using the EQ-i^2.0 with the leaders.  We also find considerable value by measuring team skills as well with the Team Emotional and Social Intelligence Survey^®.  Together these two assessments present a powerful picture that supports developing leadership capabilities.

In a real-life case, Carl (his name is changed to protect privacy) became the new CEO at a large hospital and faced big challenges such as leading the medical staff, the administrative staff and various boards to work together.  Carl is one smart IQ person and he needs all those smarts!  He is leading new change initiatives, changing reporting relationships and strategizing on how to meet financial challenges that have built up over several years.  He also needs to build loyalty, solid relationships and a desire among a staff of many different backgrounds from neurosurgeons to administrative staff to work together and build a new future together.  Every day he exhibits skills in all four dimensions of this success diagram.

Empathy
 – People know he understands how hard they are working and that change can be painful, they feel his compassion and genuine interest in them.

Assertiveness
 – He is assertive, there is no doubt that the changes are to be made.  His staff knows that they are expected to perform to the new standards and will be held accountable if they don’t.  When actions are unacceptable he makes it clear; however, this isn’t necessary often because he communicates what is needed up front and the requirement of accountability is clear.

Impulse Control – 
His expert use of impulse control is reflected by his measured responses when something goes wrong and his thoughtful engagement on complex matters as he helps all involved recognize that big problems take time to resolve successfully.

Optimism
  – He leaves no doubt about his belief that they will be resolved, thus exuding consistent optimism.  His staff gains hopefulness and inspiration, they know he cares about them and will hold them accountable.  It is a healthy proactive structure that is gradually turning a big ship around since he started six months ago.

When leaders seek to guide and influence others we know they need to communicate – but how?  The choice that gets the desired results taps into the four corners of empathic assertiveness.  These are four of the fifteen skills measured by the EQ-i and the good news is they can be developed and improved in all motivated leaders.  It is best for the leader and his/her coach to review the results from taking the EQ-i and create a game plan that calls for these skills to be used in synch.  If a leader one day pats an employee on the back and praises him or her. Then the next day the leader impulsively yells about a mistake, it can be difficult for the employee to trust the relationship. The leader needs to learn to bring those skills together in a cohesive message.  Let’s assume a leader, I’ll call Mary makes one of the following two communications:

“Nancy, I’m so disappointed with the errors in your report, we worked with you so hard last time and here you are making the same kind of mistakes again.  Now, do it right and have the memo on my desk by 10 a.m. tomorrow!” 

OR

“Nancy, I appreciate your desire to get this project completed on time, but quality has to matter just as much as timeliness.  Please take time to correct the errors, get help from others on the team as you need, and give me your proposed final memo by tomorrow at 10 a.m. I know you can get this done well just like you did with last month’s project.” 

If Mary was just assertive and didn’t manage her impulses her irritation at the poor quality could cause Nancy to be less resourceful, Nancy is likely to move away emotionally from the project and from Mary rather than moving toward the project and rolling up her sleeves to accomplish even more.  The second message incorporates all four skills and is more likely to lead to success.

How to be successful with the Four Corners model

Empathy is demonstrated by understanding the emotions people are communicating and responding to them.  This is key to building trust, engagement and passion.  Demonstrating empathy can take just a moment, if you see that someone is surprised, worried or perplexed, acknowledge the emotion, connect it with a reason you believe is related and give the person time to correct you if needed and to respond more.  “You feel perplexed because these two goals seem contradictory.” Also, be sure to give the person time to speak.

Assertiveness is demonstrated by the ability to speak up, to make your points, to say no when called for.  Leaders can develop their skills with assertiveness by intentionally saying what is important to them and by practicing saying no by being clear about their priorities.  A leader’s staff and teams want to hear from him/her, but the way that the assertiveness is communicated will make all the difference in how it is accepted.

Impulse control includes the ability to manage impulses, be patient and to control the desire to be angry. Howard Book writes in his chapter “When Enhanced EI is Associated with Leadership Derailment” (The Handbook for Developing Emotional and Social Intelligence, Hughes, Thompson and Terrell, 2009) that impulse control is a primary skill upon which all other cognitive and emotional skills depend.  Leaders with poor impulse control make haphazard and poorly thought out decisions.  Rich Handley in his chapter “Advanced EQi Interpretation Techniques” in the edited volume presented his research on the relationship between the fifteen EQ-i skills in which he found the EQ-i skill that supports the most successful use of an identified EQ skill, e.g., for emotional self awareness that supportive skill is impulse control.  It turns out that impulse control is the most influential of all the skills.  If someone overuses impulse control they may be risk adverse and just play things too safely.  Someone low in impulse control at best will irritate others and at worst will burn many bridges.  Leaders can develop their impulse control by finding ways to stop and think before they speak.  We often suggest a leader use stair therapy – if they are feeling impulsive or even explosive we urge them to go climb a set or more of stairs before they say anything.  There is no doubt that getting oxygen to their brain and incorporating physical movement will be helpful.

Optimism is the demonstration of hopefulness.  When leaders help their teams believe they will find an answer even when the going gets tough, they are building optimism.  Plentiful research is demonstrating the power of positive mood.  Leaders can build optimism through the way they talk about challenges.  Speak of challenges in limited ways, frame the concern so it’s not so global or big that it can’t be handled and say, “we just haven’t found the answer yet.  The word “yet” creates a presupposition that the answer will be found!

The art of developing successful leadership is created by bringing the right skills together so leaders can experience a resilience that is sustainable even when tested.

Leadership Development: The Four Corners of Empathetic Assertiveness

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

–George Bernard Shaw

 Successful leaders exhibit skills that may look natural and easy yet are truly the result of paying close attention and being responsive to the whole environment.  To do so, they learn to be emotionally literate and employ a complex set of skills in ways that may seem innate though in fact are the result of a willingness to work, learn and improve.  Leaders often believe that their cognitive intelligence is the threshold for their success, and they do need solid IQ smarts and a good education to get in the door and to keep up with technical and professional developments.  To move beyond that threshold they need to be adept at relationships, influencing and leading staff and teams effectively.

The path for exhibiting this excellence is based in emotional intelligence:

“a set of emotional and social skills that influence the way we perceive and express ourselves, develop and maintain social relationships, cope with challenges, and use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way.”

The most powerful and sustainable way to build those relationships requires using the four emotional intelligence skills demonstrated in this graph.

The artful use of these four skills creates a resilient environment and is well supported by using the EQ-i^2.0 with the leaders.  We also find considerable value by measuring team skills as well with the Team Emotional and Social Intelligence Survey^®.  Together these two assessments present a powerful picture that supports developing leadership capabilities.

In a real-life case, Carl (his name is changed to protect privacy) became the new CEO at a large hospital and faced big challenges such as leading the medical staff, the administrative staff and various boards to work together.  Carl is one smart IQ person and he needs all those smarts!  He is leading new change initiatives, changing reporting relationships and strategizing on how to meet financial challenges that have built up over several years.  He also needs to build loyalty, solid relationships and a desire among a staff of many different backgrounds from neurosurgeons to administrative staff to work together and build a new future together.  Every day he exhibits skills in all four dimensions of this success diagram.

Empathy
 – People know he understands how hard they are working and that change can be painful, they feel his compassion and genuine interest in them.

Assertiveness
 – He is assertive, there is no doubt that the changes are to be made.  His staff knows that they are expected to perform to the new standards and will be held accountable if they don’t.  When actions are unacceptable he makes it clear; however, this isn’t necessary often because he communicates what is needed up front and the requirement of accountability is clear.

Impulse Control – 
His expert use of impulse control is reflected by his measured responses when something goes wrong and his thoughtful engagement on complex matters as he helps all involved recognize that big problems take time to resolve successfully.

Optimism
  – He leaves no doubt about his belief that they will be resolved, thus exuding consistent optimism.  His staff gains hopefulness and inspiration, they know he cares about them and will hold them accountable.  It is a healthy proactive structure that is gradually turning a big ship around since he started six months ago.

When leaders seek to guide and influence others we know they need to communicate – but how?  The choice that gets the desired results taps into the four corners of empathic assertiveness.  These are four of the fifteen skills measured by the EQ-i and the good news is they can be developed and improved in all motivated leaders.  It is best for the leader and his/her coach to review the results from taking the EQ-i and create a game plan that calls for these skills to be used in synch.  If a leader one day pats an employee on the back and praises him or her. Then the next day the leader impulsively yells about a mistake, it can be difficult for the employee to trust the relationship. The leader needs to learn to bring those skills together in a cohesive message.  Let’s assume a leader, I’ll call Mary makes one of the following two communications:

“Nancy, I’m so disappointed with the errors in your report, we worked with you so hard last time and here you are making the same kind of mistakes again.  Now, do it right and have the memo on my desk by 10 a.m. tomorrow!” 

OR

“Nancy, I appreciate your desire to get this project completed on time, but quality has to matter just as much as timeliness.  Please take time to correct the errors, get help from others on the team as you need, and give me your proposed final memo by tomorrow at 10 a.m. I know you can get this done well just like you did with last month’s project.” 

If Mary was just assertive and didn’t manage her impulses her irritation at the poor quality could cause Nancy to be less resourceful, Nancy is likely to move away emotionally from the project and from Mary rather than moving toward the project and rolling up her sleeves to accomplish even more.  The second message incorporates all four skills and is more likely to lead to success.

How to be successful with the Four Corners model

Empathy is demonstrated by understanding the emotions people are communicating and responding to them.  This is key to building trust, engagement and passion.  Demonstrating empathy can take just a moment, if you see that someone is surprised, worried or perplexed, acknowledge the emotion, connect it with a reason you believe is related and give the person time to correct you if needed and to respond more.  “You feel perplexed because these two goals seem contradictory.” Also, be sure to give the person time to speak.

Assertiveness is demonstrated by the ability to speak up, to make your points, to say no when called for.  Leaders can develop their skills with assertiveness by intentionally saying what is important to them and by practicing saying no by being clear about their priorities.  A leader’s staff and teams want to hear from him/her, but the way that the assertiveness is communicated will make all the difference in how it is accepted.

Impulse control includes the ability to manage impulses, be patient and to control the desire to be angry. Howard Book writes in his chapter “When Enhanced EI is Associated with Leadership Derailment” (The Handbook for Developing Emotional and Social Intelligence, Hughes, Thompson and Terrell, 2009) that impulse control is a primary skill upon which all other cognitive and emotional skills depend.  Leaders with poor impulse control make haphazard and poorly thought out decisions.  Rich Handley in his chapter “Advanced EQi Interpretation Techniques” in the edited volume presented his research on the relationship between the fifteen EQ-i skills in which he found the EQ-i skill that supports the most successful use of an identified EQ skill, e.g., for emotional self awareness that supportive skill is impulse control.  It turns out that impulse control is the most influential of all the skills.  If someone overuses impulse control they may be risk adverse and just play things too safely.  Someone low in impulse control at best will irritate others and at worst will burn many bridges.  Leaders can develop their impulse control by finding ways to stop and think before they speak.  We often suggest a leader use stair therapy – if they are feeling impulsive or even explosive we urge them to go climb a set or more of stairs before they say anything.  There is no doubt that getting oxygen to their brain and incorporating physical movement will be helpful.

Optimism is the demonstration of hopefulness.  When leaders help their teams believe they will find an answer even when the going gets tough, they are building optimism.  Plentiful research is demonstrating the power of positive mood.  Leaders can build optimism through the way they talk about challenges.  Speak of challenges in limited ways, frame the concern so it’s not so global or big that it can’t be handled and say, “we just haven’t found the answer yet.  The word “yet” creates a presupposition that the answer will be found!

The art of developing successful leadership is created by bringing the right skills together so leaders can experience a resilience that is sustainable even when tested.

Using Emotional Intelligence For Messaging Up and Across

Managing up or messaging up are goals frequently raised in executive coaching sessions.  We add messaging across – that is to peers – to this imperative goal.  Messaging up and across refers to intentionally and deliberately communicating well with your boss and those above your boss and with your peers.  It is a deliberate effort to bring understanding and collaboration to relationships between people who may have different perspectives.  The point is to convey respect by taking the time to communicate strategically.  Remember your communication can be empathetic, compassionate, strategic and engaging all at once.  In fact, this comprehensive packaging should be your goal.

If you are a CEO with a Board governing your organization, messaging up is vital.  It’s also vital if you are a team lead, reporting to your supervisor.  In fact how we communicate with others throughout the organizational chart is essential to notice.  We know communications with your direct reports is fundamental to your success; this article will focus on a different dimension of communications.  It’s a form that can be all too easy to miss when you get in the trance of accomplishing your every day list of tactical jobs.  And that’s why good interpersonal relationships with those in higher organizational positions and with your peers requires purposeful action.

The potent emotional intelligence skills triangle of Assertiveness, Empathy and Impulse Control is your key to success, especially if you pepper your engagement with Positive Mood (happiness and optimism). With assertiveness you first need to be assertive with yourself by doing whatever it takes to make sure you take the time for this engagement. Put it on your calendar, have lunch or coffee with a peer once a week, meet with your boss regularly give feedback and take a few minutes to ask about his/her life and talk about yours.  Create a personal connection; it’s the path to building trust.  It’s what it takes for people to want to “get your back” to help you out in times of challenge.  It demonstrates engagement, loyalty, and commitment, but more importantly it makes your job more fun. Assertiveness includes the ability to communicate your perspective, to stand up for yourself and to say no when necessary.

Empathy and impulse control govern the effectiveness of your assertiveness.  When you demonstrate empathy the recipient of your assertiveness feels that your communication is made with their best interests in mind.  That makes all the difference in whether your suggestions are considered self serving or made with their best interests in mind.  And you know that deeply influences the response to your communication.  Your skills in impulse control help you decide when to speak up, what tonality to use, and how to pace your engagement.  Communicate with your peers with impatience and they will reciprocate – directly or indirectly.

Balance is your goal too little of any of these three skills can obviously can get you in trouble.  Note that too much of any of these can get you in a lot of trouble.  Too much assertiveness feels like aggressiveness; too much empathy feels like the boundaries are failed; too much impulse control turns you into a risk adverse person missing opportunities.

Here are key steps you can follow to message up and across effectively:

• Be intentional and purposeful
• Don’t confuse false humility with your poor communication if you don’t speak up for yourself
• Be aware of and respond to your different personality, communications styles, and conflict resolution styles
• Acknowledge others
• Be a team player
• Let your peers know you value them
• Be honest and trustworthy
• Provide solutions, not problems
• Request feedback, feedback, feedback – ask for it directly
• Work with strengths and weaknesses – yours and theirs

Messaging up and across is a powerful tactic for getting more interesting work, more responsibility, and enjoying your engagement at work.  Use it well and it can help you improve your work/life balance as it increases the ability to set boundaries and have those boundaries understood and supported.

The Full Circle of Collaborative Intelligence

In this final week of October we will wrap up our discussion on Collaborative Intelligence (CQ, CI). In the previous two blogs we evaluated motivation, team identity, emotional awareness, and communication. These are skills and behaviors that successful teams seek out when improving CQ. The circle isn’t complete without these final three. In this blog stress tolerance, conflict resolution, a positive mood are examined.

Stress tolerance is the skill of holding the world’s parade of unpleasant surprises at bay. Using other skills such as emotional awareness, conflict resolution, and communication will allow a group to deal with stress earlier in the development and thus make it more manageable. Dealing with adversity and turning challenges into opportunities is the best outcome of stress tolerance.

Conflict resolution is the process employed by individuals and teams facing confrontation. What team do in the face of adversity can define the group. when you’re willing to entertain change and conflict, giving up much of the illusion that you’re in control, you and your team can actually find powerful new levels of success.

One attribute that can effect conflict resolution and stress tolerance is a Positive Mood. Optimism and simple happiness have a lot to do with this type of attitude. As a leader, when people look to you during adversity and you can reflect a positive mood the results are exponential.

These skills and behaviors are the first steps needed to raise the collaborative intelligence of a group. When analyzing a group be sure to recognize your own deeds first. Leading by example has always been the most effective way to create a positive a environment.

Building Collaborative Intelligence with Emotional Awareness and Communication

On the last post we began discussing what it takes to enhance a team’s collaborative intelligence (CQ, CI). On that post we discussed motivation and team identity. On this post we will highlight emotional awareness and communication as fundamental skills in developing with a team’s collaboration.

Emotional awareness is one of the most underutilized of the qualities. Emotions are a rich resource of data and good data leads to good decisions. Understanding emotions improves performance, which drives results.

What makes communication effective is a vast topic; it is the everyday infrastructure that defines our career paths and our most cherished relationships. For a collaboration to be brought to its fullest potential all the participants have to have the ability to relate and respond to their ideas and observations.

Build CQ with Team Identity and Motivation

Build CQ with Team Identity and Motivation

Does your team or group struggle with productivity?  Come at it with a new twist.  Instead of deciding to fix a little part go for the gold and build Collaborative Intelligence (CI or CQ). Developing Collaborative Intelligence (CI or CQ) within a group or team takes effort and recognition of the value CQ brings to the table. Some degree of collaborative intelligence may already exist in a group, however without acknowledging its effect and attempting to utilize that intelligence, inefficiencies and redundancies will plague the team. Honing key skills and behaviors with the direct intention of improving your team’s CQ will improve their partnerships and productivity.  The 7 key skills measured by the TESI http://theemotionallyintelligentteam.com are the indicators of a team’s capacity to build CQ.  Those 7 begin with:

Team Identity through which team members find a purpose for their work. This might seem a bit elementary, but it remains critical that everybody within the group finds a personal reason to engage and a reason for the whole team to exist.  How else do they measure success or feel proud?

Next comes team motivation, which measures the commitment to mobilize their three basic resources: time, energy and intelligence. When every member understands and stands behind the goals of the group the more likely they are to be motivated. Building this feeling in people is what makes great leaders.

Exploring Collaborative Intelligence

Collaboration – a word increasingly used, a goal set by organizations of all types – governments, for profit, and non-profit – yet what is it?

You know collaboration is a popular concept, but do you know when you’re being collaborative?  Do you do it well?  Does your team?  How about your organization?  Signs of the desire to collaborate increase daily and the challenges on our planet that call for high level collective actions are indisputable.  So let’s help one another know how to collaborate and how to do so intelligently!  This is an invitation and a challenge we hope you’ll join!

We’re launching the discussion; and you know the only way for it to be truly collaborative and intelligent is by bringing our collective wisdom to the front.  Your voice is needed! So join the blog discussion!

The Collaborative Growth Team Model demonstrates the process to building collaborative intelligence through effective team work.  Team’s can measure their functioning and strategically improve through using the TESI® and you can learn more through The Emotionally Intelligent Team.

Let’s explore root concepts that lead to Collaborative Intelligence.

What is Collaborative Intelligence?

Collaboration involves working with one or more people in order to achieve a resilient result.  Intelligence is the ability to learn and apply facts and skills; we especially consider a person or an action intelligent when the ability is highly developed.  Collaboration is a composite skill that emerges from the masterful use of your ESE skills. The members of a football team collaborate when they huddle and agree that they will each do their part to execute a particular play. In the middle of the play, except in the face of an unexpected opportunity, the fullback won’t decide to change the play because he’d prefer to run the ball rather than block! Team loyalty is unquestioned.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional Intelligence is the name of a discipline which studies the physiological and behavioral aspects of effective emotional communication. It could be called the art of influence, because any time we need to persuade someone to follow a specific course of action we need to influence their thinking and decision-making processes. This, it turns out, is accomplished through how effectively we interpret their emotional signals and respond with our own.

Over the past 20 years psychological researchers have developed scientifically validated and reliable assessments for measuring the accuracy of our emotional perceptiveness and how skillfully we send and receive emotional energy patterns. Extensive research has now proven how critical the so-called “soft skills” of managing human relationships are to the bottom line, and inaugurated a new era of emotionally-based personal and professional development.

We refer to emotional and social effectiveness (ESE) and refer to it as the ability to recognize and manage your own emotions and to recognize and respond effectively to those of others.  It includes understanding your social community from the “big picture” point of view and the ability to direct change as well as adapt to change.

How to Meet Financial Worries: 10 Steps to Maintain Your Emotional Well-Being

Without the strength to endure the crisis, one will not see the opportunity within. It is within the process of
endurance that opportunity reveals itself. – Chin-Ning Chu

In these economic times….. How many times have we heard that phrase recently? Quite a few and it isn’t
going to stop soon. Being reminded of the current financial situation personally, nationally and world-wide is
useful. It is important to be informed personally and as a citizen. However dwelling on it by making financial
concerns the focus of your day or shutting down and getting downright cranky won’t help.

Managing financial responses is critical for yourself, your team and your organization. As professor Sigal
Barsade emphasized in the New York Times on October 19, 2008:

“It is very easy to “catch” anxiety through a process known as emotional contagion.”

Individual, managers, organizational leaders, in fact all of us, need to take responsibility to respond with a
focus on responsibility, opportunity, and possibility in order to move through this challenge with grace and
success. This behavior will also shorten the length of the hardships as it calls for building effective teams and
community as we find effective answers.

Healthy responses to your own financial challenge:

1. Start by taking care of yourself, turning to that which nourishes you and provides hope and perspective.

2. Second reach out and help someone who is less fortunate than you. Giving is healing.

3. Express gratitude on a regular basis – at least five times a day, notice what works and comment on it
out loud.

4. Take stock financially with an intention of acting with creative intention rather than with the plethora of
negatives that are available, such as anger, fear, anxiety, guilt, and so on.

5. Consult with your financial advisor or someone in your life who can help you think things through, put
this challenge in perspective and provide a reality check on your plan of action.

6. Tell yourself the truth. Stay informed and then bring in a healthy dose of optimism and another one of
reality testing. Be insistent on hope without being unrealistic. Your optimism will be more credible for
yourself and others when you include a plausibility check.

7. Take response – ability. Begin developing a plan of action. Pace yourself, give yourself time to
understand, consider options and then act.