EQi offers a
profound way to enhance self-understanding. This understanding covers our
capacity to know and manage our emotional state and our capacity to know and
interact effectively with the emotional state of others. The EQi self-assessment
is a handy tool for gaining more self-knowledge – keeping in mind the
limitations of any assessment of the self, by the self.
What EQi workshops
generally lack is a methodology for developing our competencies in emotional
awareness and management related to self and others. Tips like count to ten or
take a break when you are high-jacked by your amygdala, the place in the brain
that controls fight, flight or freeze, are helpful but hardly revolutionary.
Possessing a
healthy level of EQi is extolled as an essential capacity for inspiring
leadership. “People may not remember what you said but they will remember how your
words made them feel.” While experts
agree that we can develop our EQi over time, there is scant agreement about the
most viable means.
The paucity
of methods for developing EQi are both cultural and personal. Western culture values
the intellect. Our schooling stresses analytical methods that assign numeric
values.
While this objective approach has been the mainstay of technological advancements the more subjective approaches of spirit, emotion and physical sensation have been marginalized. We can land people on the moon but we can’t inspire people to get along with each other on earth.
While this objective approach has been the mainstay of technological advancements the more subjective approaches of spirit, emotion and physical sensation have been marginalized. We can land people on the moon but we can’t inspire people to get along with each other on earth.
Fortunately,
new methods of conscious leadership are emerging that will enable us to develop
our EQi. These methods are based on a deeper understanding of how we interact
with our inner emotional landscape, the impact of hot buttons and trauma and
the influence of family systems. If we
use and practice these methodologies our leadership capacities that draw upon
our emotional and creative intelligences will deepen. We will have more access
to the creative impulses that enable us to inspire in others collaborative and
productive actions.
The first
step of EQi development is understanding our emotional landscape. There are six
basic emotions; anger, fear, sadness, joy, sexual (which is associated with
creativity by some experts) and shame. The first five have been a part of human
behavior from the earliest days of mankind.
More complex emotions are combinations of the basic six. For example,
guilt could be mix of anger and fear. The emotion of shame was a more recent
development. It has the function of stopping action that is considered socially
unacceptable. Shame seems so toxic because, according to Robert Bly, we only
need a thimble full yet end up with buckets of it. Those who pour the most on
others do so to avoid looking at their own inner burden of shame.
Our emotions
and the sensations in our bodies are related. If we can sense somatically what
is happening internally we more accurately sense our current emotional state. Emotions
are energy. Energy wants be in motion. If we unconsciously contract and tense
up when anger arises that energy stays bottled up. At some point, if the
pressure is too great, it releases in an uncontrolled manner, an explosion, and
causes harm.
Mastering
this mind/body connection take practice. Being able to identify and express
what we are feeling and the associated sensations develops one of the primary EQi
competencies; emotional self-awareness. As we become more skilled in accessing and
moving the internal energy of emotions our ability to connect with our innate,
creative intelligence deepens; enhancing our ability to innovate and respond to
our environment.
The second
domain of EQi, relating emotionally to others, requires we go deeper in our
journey of self-awareness. Hot buttons, blind spots, compulsions and addictions
are places where we operate on automatic pilot. This pilot is not intelligent.
It does the same thing, responding the same way to a stimulus, no matter what
the results. Mastering this domain calls upon the competencies of self-reflection
and personal responsibility.
Examining
those automatic reactions to a certain stimulus is difficult. It is much easier
to blame the stimulus, that annoying person who cuts you off in traffic, then
take responsibility for the road rage that emerges. If we are willing to look
deeper, through self-reflection, we might find a disowned or forgotten part of
our self that is seeking attention. Those parts may have at one time a positive
function that helped us cope or even survive. Like old software they were never updated. Now
they only manage to clog up our operating system; producing automatically and
unconsciously the opposite of what we want and hope for.
One sign of
obsolete software is a “hot button;” a small behavior or incident that triggers
a disproportionate emotional reaction within us. We don’t decide to react. It
happens automatically. Later we regretfully wonder why we “lost it” and
overreacted. Somehow, the adult in us
disappeared and a raging or frightened or grieving or placating childlike
sub-personality took over. If we hold a safe space for our emotions and
sensations the door to our subconscious open might open and reveal the source
of this button. Often we will find a disruptive event. The button was a
reasonable even intelligent response to what happened in the past. Bringing all
this to conscious awareness also brings about an updating of the person’s
operating system. To paraphrase Carl Jung, what was hidden in the subconscious
and how it played out in our life is no longer considered fate. New
possibilities and choices become accessible.
Ironically,
this personal dynamic for change also shows up in groups and organizations. The
mind can propose all kinds of reasons and motivations for change but little
happens because the emotional context and its relationship to the subconscious
are overlooked. If change, personal or collective, was a democratic process
with a hundred votes; the conscious mind would have ten votes and the
subconscious the other ninety. The boss can give orders to the conscious mind,
however the subconscious decides on the extent they will be complied with. This
begs the question; are we always at the invisible mercy of the individual or
collective subconscious mind?
Thankfully,
no. There is a way we can bring to awareness
and work with this hidden context. The
way is called systemic mapping. It is also known as organizational or systemic
constellations. Moving material from the subconscious to conscious awareness is
a significant competency that often takes outside assistance. Without that movement
most change efforts don’t go very far or soon return to where they started. The
competency of “seeing yourself” is akin to waking up. When people gain enough
psychological space to see how the component parts of themselves and others interrelate
something shifts.
This process
makes what has long been unseen, seen. It starts with a clear and concise
statement of the issue or problem being explored and the desired outcome. Developing this statement is a significant
intervention in itself. Keeping the statement in mind the problem or issue is
discussed and the key components of the system it resides in are identified.
Representatives are selected for those components and positioned spatially to
illustrate how they relate to each other. Most issues or problems are symptoms.
They call attention to and even may have even been a way to cope with a past
trauma or a disruptive event. As mentioned before, hot buttons, blind spots or
addictions show up as ways to cope. Using systemic mapping the relevant events
are identified and the associated feelings are addressed. Word or phases are
provided that restore the harmony between the different parts of the system.
When inner harmony is restored energy in the form of emotions can move more freely;
enhancing our EQi and enabling more intelligence, insight and relatedness. Dysfunctional
ways of coping loosen their grip.
We can try these concepts and tools on our own but the most effective way to master them is engaging with others in a structured and facilitated learning environment. We believe we are isolated individuals and it up to us on our own to resolve our dilemmas and issues. That sense of isolation feels as hard and real as any rock on the road, yet there is the more encompassing truth of our connectedness and how we co-create reality. The anchor points of our problems and limitations are not only in us, they exist simultaneously in our family, linage, group and society. In a group setting we can access those multiple anchor points and facilitate insight and change with greater efficacy and ease than struggling on our own.
Harrison Snow (yours truely) offers a two-day training in conscious leadership in the Washington DC metro area and other locations. His most recent book about this work, published by Regent Press, is The Confessions of a Corporate Shaman: Healing the Organizational Soul. For more information visit: http://leadconsciously.eventbrite.com
