BLOG 235 - Emotional Intelligentsia

"Emotional Intelligence is the single most important personal quality that each of us must develop and access to experience a breakthrough in performance"  

Dave Lennick, Executive VP, American Express Financial Advisers

When asked the following questions we all routinely answer YES 

• Are you a good person? 
• Do you have a good sense of humour? 
• Would you agree you are not ugly? 
• Do you have compassion? 
• Are you fair? 

Of course NONE of us are in anyway equipped to answer any of those questions... do you want to know why? Well, it is obvious... these questions can only be answered by external forces.. it is for others to judge if you are good, if you are funny, if you are pleasant to look at, if you are compassionate, or if you ar fair. You can try to be all of those things... but at the end of the day the rating of your success in those areas is down to others. 

The hardest one of all of these questions has to be  - are you fair? We all like to think we treat people as they deserve. We all like to think we are fair. But do we ask the relevant questions about another persons circumstances before we hand out our version of fair treatment? Do we even bother to listen when they answer? Are we observant as to the incidents that happen under our noses? 

If you don't know …. well you don't know. And if you don't know when you COULD know... then you are not being fair. In British Law at least, there is no defence for ignorance.

This is why sourcing circumstance is so important. Before you pass judgement... you should always take into account cirumstance, and judge accordingly.  

I recall a country and western singer when I was in Nashville. She sang this hick song about lurve and struggled a bit on the high notes. But no one booed or complained - she got a standing ovation that night. CIRCUMSTANCE: she had gone out to perform, all boufant and spangled up... with 4 cracked ribs. So what'd you do ...judge her by the excellence of her recording of the song...or by the fact she performed for the fans when truly she could have begged off with a sick note. A tick box exercise would have damned her for not performing to the max... an emotionally intellgent person would have commended her for performing while in pain. 

Thinking back to Nashville, I recall a review of that concert in an out of state newspaper. The journalist clearly felt that the singer had no business putting on a show when she was unable to perform at her "known best." For days that newspaper was belegured with calls and correspondance about how unfair the commentary was and how even at her worst that singer was better than some consistantly average performers. The backlash spread to other media and for a while it seemed there was little else on TV and Radio. It doesn't matter that the "unfair" journalist no longer writes for it - that Newspaper now has a reputation of being rather unfair and judgemental. It STILL doesn't sell too well in the Southern States as it once did. 

Being fair is about taking the circumstances into account. It's the best way to be considered fair and to avoid the use of the most avoidable and stupid sentence in the English language: 

"All I meant was" 

You HAVE to understand how your judgements will be received. Because at the core of every argument is "All I heard was". 

This is where Emotional Intelligence (EI) comes in. EI is a fancy schmansy way of saying empathy. It is the ability to backburner YOUR point of view and try for a moment to encounter what another person feels. To do this you can't use stereotypes, or guesstimates... you have to get inside of their experience and ask your self the tough question: "Given their experience is it REASONABLE to expect them to act in any other way". When judging if "doing the best you can", it IS the only fair way.

For example. There is a neighbourhood cat that has befriended Skyla [new JaxWorld readers WELCOME! and to bring you up to speed Skyla is my 10mth old Catten] . Skyla's pal is called Jet, and appears to be about 2yrs old. At first Jet was a little nervous about being around humans but we are now at the stage where she comes in and allows us to pet her. However, while Jet doesn't mind being stroked or even picked up...some days for apparently no reason she will cower away from touch or even hiss. Now I could just assume Jet is unbalanced/dangerous and steer clear incase she goes mental and claws me. After all she is not MY responsibility, she is just this random who turns up in my garden to play with Skyla. 

But using EI it became clear that her nature is to WANT to be petted, but something in her history  makes her mistrust humans. On checking with her owners guess what... Jet is a rescue kitty. Lord alone know what horrors she had to put up with before she finally got a good home. If I want the cowering/hissing to stop, then I should not act if she is about to attack me - I should reassure her that with me...she has nothing to fear. It's not a road to quick wins, some times she still cowers and hisses... but she is learning Skyla's people will not harm her. 

As  I type... Jet a few feet away asleep. It appears I am earning her trust .

Now if EI... also called asking the relevant question and taking the relevant answer into account meant that I could understand a two year old cat I do not even own... it strikes me as odd that humans do not routinely use it with each other. 

It is the best route to avoiding conflict. 

Years ago I worked in a call centre where EI was never used. Lunatics ran the asylumn. Bullies did as they wished and even when under invetsigation for acts so stomach churning  I cannot mention them here, they were given ever more power and influence by the lunatics. One day after a found a grown woman curled in a ball crying in the toilets. It transpired that the lunatics were demoting her because she couldn't handle being bullied (it did not occur to them that if they removed the bullies the place would become a better place to work). The woman was distraught, and felt alone because even though everyone was having a hard time with the bullies - no one would speak up. I made the decision there and then to whistle blow. The conflict that followed was HUGE.

Anyone who has read my book knows what happened next. I am pleased to say that call centre has long been shut down. I however... am still here.

I cannot understand those who do not value fairness. Treating people fairly does not mean treating people all exactly the same. It means taking into account circumstance.

When you can do that routinely... you have joined the Emotional Intelligentsia.

You WILL be fair.

Because you can't punish a human not hitting the high notes with 4 broken ribs, or being overwhelmed by the transgressions of others  - anymore than you would a rescue kitty for occassionally not being the fluffy goregous cat it could be if only terrible things hadn't happened to it.  It just is not reasonable. And YOU WILL have to account for your unfairness.

Believe me... 

YOU

WILL

The Chinese  have a proverb about not judging how well a man walks till you have tried a mile in his shoes. 

Emotional Intelligence exsits to save you the shoe leather. 

Use it.

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