Emotional intelligence – let go and move on…

I’ve not been blogging here for a little while with my focus on building the content over at The Success Zone. Thing is, I had a useful personal lesson today. About my past, my future, and the application of emotional wisdom, not just emotional intelligence.

As is the case with many of us, I have a past, that while providing me with absolute joy (i.e. my daughter) comes also, some baggage. Dare I call this my old wrinkly suitcase? Clearly, I am talking about a past relationship (indeed now long past) that did not manage to survive. When life moves on, and people don’t, vindictiveness and obsessing about new information are hallmarks of staying stuck. This week, on the 10 year anniversary of the cessation of that relationship, I have discovered again frenetic google searching, bogus client calls to access information about my business and who knows what else.

While this level of detail might seem indulgent, it does serve a purpose. You see, my first response was indignation, the second violation and the third sadness. My initial thoughts, I will admit, were to serve the same kind of behaviour in return. Clearly, a Red Zone response. It took some distance from the situation, some reframing, some labelling and permission to move on from these feelings. These four methods of thinking about your emotions have been shown to manage down unwanted emotions, and in my case allowed me to move on from staying stuck in around an hour. Not years, months, days even.

So if you in the middle of a strong Red Zone reaction, try:

1. Being a fly on the wall to your thinking and emotions – distance gives clarity. Ask yourself – will I remember this in a year’s time? If not, move on…
2. Give yourself permission – life has its ups and downs, and the downs are neither permanent, nor define you.
3. Label how you feel – in my language, it is the Red Zone. Whatever language you use, make it symbolic (not detailed). Symbolism helps (hence the reference to the suitcase above), detail just re-triggers the emotion. Fun, but disabling language really helps. A friend of mine refers to the fruit salad in her head, symbolic for the confusion she often feels.
4. Reframe: retell the situation in a way that reduces the impact for you. In this case it was “she just hasn’t found happiness yet”. This keeps you out of all of the accusatory self-talk that, again, just re-resonates all of the damaging thinking/feeling.

Practicing these cognitive tricks to manage your feelings builds your emotional intelligence and moves you towards being emotionally wise.

What if you are the one who is stuck? Magically, the same four strategies work for you too…

Related articles by Zemanta

• Emotional Intelligence for Personal Growth (dare-to-dream.us)
• Emotional Intelligence (slideshare.net)

More on this over at The Success Zone, blog and book…

Enabler or Disabler? How calm are you under pressure?

When we detect a Red Zone trigger – usually unfairness, confusion, reduced choice or a threat to our safety (physical, social, emotional), the more primitive but exceedingly more efficient parts of our brain come into play. This efficiency means that being in the Red Zone is a relatively easy thing to do. Worse, the intrusion of the Red Zone competes with brain resources that might normally be used to, solve complex problems, pay attention and focus, and even manage emotional stages themselves. Ironically, the more we engage the Red Zone, the less we can manage the Red Zone, resulting in the downward spiral that we often see end in arguments, road rage and even violence. Not such an emotionally intelligent state.

Conversely, being in the Blue Zone takes some effort, but the rewards are worth it. We innately admire folk who can stay calm under pressure, against the odds and against circumstances. We often label such people as being emotionally intelligent. Indeed, staying cool under pressure keeps vital resources essential for the solution (or resolution) available to part of your brain that needs it most. As a bonus, your Blue Zone, your calm zone perhaps, also enables the same state to be replicated in those around you.

Staying calm is simple, but not easy. You can enhance your chances of managing down any Red Zone intrusion before, during and after any event or trigger.

Before: good sleep, good nutrition, fitness and good oxygenation all help the brain be at its best. Think of how you respond to triggers or crises when you are tired, hungry and run down… By the way, three deep breaths is more than just slowing your response down, it increases the oxygenation to the brain, resulting in better Blue Zone activation.

During: reframing, acceptance, distance, observation and labelling are all methods used by those who remain most calm. A worksheet on using and practicing these methods will shortly be in the resources section of this website.

After: reflection, observation, acknowledgement and a solutions focus all help the calm person move forward, even when they lapsed into a moment of not-so-calm.

Calm is a state that enables as much the opposite state disables.

How do you spend your attention?

How aware are you of how you spend your attention? For most of us, we are little aware of where our attention goes on a minute-by-minute basis, let alone hour-by hour. Shame, given that our attention is, in my opinion, our most precious resource.

Attention, and it’s more effective sibling, focus, are the currency of engagement (it is the X-factor of the influential and charismatic), change and growth. Consider the analogy:  if you pay little attention to how you spend your money you can have little chance of wealth or prosperity. Similarly, if you are not at least sometimes strategic with your attention and focus, you have little chance of creating anything better for yourself.

Today, I have been using a wonderful tool for exposing where my business attention should be going: the IMPACT-EASE tool. I am not a list person, nor am I good with detail. This tool is brilliant for providing clarity on what it is that should be done. Little surprise, then, that getting back to my blog and writing a post was high on my impact-ease analysis today!

Download the impact-ease-worksheet (with instructions) to do your own anaysis.

I am yet to find who to attribute this file to – please let me know if you know who the author is.

Great Hollywood Teachers

What great movies about teachers come to mind? Dead Poet’s Society, Mr Holland’s Opus, and, strangely enough, School of Rock are some that people mention to me, and all have a consistent theme or storyboard:

1. Students with some sot of disengagement, or social or other disadvantage
2. Most, if not all other teachers not connecting, caring or (most importantly) believing in the said students
3. The eccentric, out of the box or even accidental teacher believing in, listening to, challenging and  yet unconditionally respecting the students
4. Hitherto disengagement is replaced with inspiring outcomes

As Hollywood as this is, it is a formula still replicated in schools around the world. By enlarge, and in spite of working as hard as ever, large numbers of teachers are crunching curriculum crowding, battling behaviour and facing decreasing time resources.

This is not the fault of teachers: indeed, school systems currently act to disengage teachers from students what with the intensity of curriculum measurement and accountability. Still, about 5% of teachers are able to replicate the Hollywood greats with a strong sense of presence and connection with students. Listening to, unconditionally respecting and believing in students.

It’s more than a shame that it remains so few – it’s a tragedy. Our world is starving for engagement, for engagement is the key to managing the complex and time-critical learning needed in our fast changing (and seemingly, degrading) world.

The Ten Best Questions for Growth or Change

10 Best Questions for Reflection, Clarity, Insight and Growth

The list of questions below are proven questions to help another person, or yourself, find reflection, clarity and insight around an issue. The intention is to show the general structure of these questions as examples, rather than ‘exact’ questions that you would quote verbatim. Shape them to your needs as required, considering the content and context.

You can use these questions as individual points of reflection, or as a sequence.

1. If things were perfect tomorrow (with regard to the issue), what would be different (in what you see and how you feel)?
2. What aspects of this situation are you happy with?
3. How would you rate your effectiveness/satisfaction here, say out of 10?
4. What rating would be pleased with, or would help you meet the current challenge?
5. What do you need to do to move towards your preferred/needed rating?
6. How is your current thinking or feeling impacting on the outcomes, results or goal?
7. What thinking or feeling do you need to have to meet your goal(s) or challenge?
8. What learning emerges for you (either from your experience, the situation or these questions)?
9. What are the implications for your next steps?
10. What are your next steps or actions?

Bonus Question Group: Johari Question Set

Based on the Johari Window concept, the following four questions are powerful and can be asked in many contexts (reflection, conflict management:

1. How do I see myself? (skills, behaviour, attitudes, thinking)
2. How do others see me?
3. How would I like to be seen?
4. How do I need to be to be effective? (or to find resolution, or to meet the challenge)

In the blender – traps for second marriages with children

Have you seen the statistics for second marriage failures? Try these from the US National Center for Health Statistics (2002):

Second marriage failure rates for women in the US:

After 10 years of remarriage, the probability of that marriage ending is

• 32 percent for women with no children at remarriage
• 40% for women with children, but none of whom were reported as unwanted
• 44% for women with children, and any of whom were reported as unwanted (slightly higher, at 47 percent, among white women)

The presence of children from a previous marriage for either partner increases the chance of this second marriage failing.  These statistics are replicated in most western cultures, with second marriage failure rates seemingly higher than first marriage stats, particularly where children are involved. Clearly, other factors contribute to second marriage breakdown, though most of this have similar hallmarks to the issue of children.

You see, our brains are good at spotting patterns, and applying assumptions. Further, our brains actively seek evidence for held assumptions and beliefs, preventing us from seeing the complete picture.

For ‘blended families’ – second marriages where children are present from the previous relationship of one or both of the partners – the assumptions, judgements and beliefs in play can erode the primary relationship. All the more so given that often these assumptions and beliefs are not obvious. Some of the traps here include:

1. “Love me, love my kids”…I must love my partner’s children as much or in the same way as I love my own.  Once you uncover this assumption and give each other permission to feel differently about own and step children, then the shackles of expectation are released. I would argue it a biological condition to love your own child at least in a different way, if not a more intense way.
2. “Love availability” is limited, not abundant.  Because attention is limited we sometimes assume our love is equally limited. In reality, we have, or can have limitless love for each member in a family, with that love being possibly quite diverse in nature and type. A key question for discussion or reflection: how can I distribute my attention so that love/respect is felt unconditionally.
3. Conditional vs unconditional: particularly prevalent in the step-parent relationship is the limiting/undermining element of conditionality. “If you behave then…”, “If you respect me then …”. Strong setp-parent/step-child relationships are built on unconditionality: in spite of you not yet connecting with me (or doing what I want etc) I will listen to you, respect you and believe in you. Quite literally, children today live by “if you don’t listen to me, why should I listen to you?”. Listening is the key here. Listen, don’t judge or assume.

The secrets to building a lasting blended family sit with the following list:

1. Accept ‘love diversity” – it’s OK to love biological and step kids differently.
2. Start by unconditionally respecting your step-kids. Listen to them, believe in them. Most often, unconditional respect will grow into unconditional love.
3. Know how to stay calm under pressure.
4. Be aware of your attentional biases
5. Have a consistent plan of behaviour expectation that you as co-parents talk about, agree upon and implement
6. Accept conflict as it occurs – in spite of it being uncomfortable, when it is managed through a calm, listening and observational position, it is the indicator of growth. Conflict will occur, how you manage it is the key.
7. Talk with your partner – ask yourselves what are we assuming, what are we not seeing, what are we judging?

Blended families are like a plane – some have both parents up the font as true co-pilots, some have one as the pilot and the other as passenger, and some even have the kids flying the plane. The only lasting option is the first – which one are you?

Ten ways to kill a conversation …

There are many ways that we can disengage another buy applying conversation-killing habits. Oftentimes we don’t even know that we have reduced the engagement. The secret element of connection with another person is attention. Not just any attention – authentic attention on them for them.

Each of the conversation killers listed below act in some way to drain your available attention, or allow you to use the available attention for yourself, not the other person.

Killer #1: Distraction: attention on your own thinking, activities or needs.

Killer #2: Assumption: assuming where the conversation is going, what they need or finishing sentences for them.

Killer #3: Judgement: making value judgements on them, their thinking or actions

Killer #4: Interruption: not allowing them to finish

Killer #5: Not listening to them: listening for your chance to say something, listening to yourself

Killer #6: I have the answer: a common form of assumption

Killer #7: You must be wrong: a common form of judgement

Killer #8: Total Control: you need to steer where the conversation goes

Killer #9: Dominate: you do more talking than listening

Killer #10: Focus on yourself: you are more concerned for your outcomes than theirs

Ways to combat these conversation killers can be found in the book “The Success Zone“.

A book in the hand is worth…

Last week Global Publishing Group held a book launch for its current crop of authors. A number of authors launched books, and The Success Zone was amongst them. The book you see is a print on demand pre-production copy – the ‘real’ one is due back to us in 3-6 weeks.

Darren Stephens (Global Publishing), Andrew Mowat, Daryl Grant and Andrew Grant

For those colleagues, friends and clients who have ordered books, we expect to have them shipping in early December. This gives you a head start on when the book is expected to appear in book stores (as distributed by Dennis Jones and Associates) throughout Australia and New Zealand.

Andrew Mowat and Geoff Higgins from Dennis Jones and Asscoiates

Stay posted for updates – the publishing game is very much a roller-coaster ride! Until then, may your Blue Zone rule!

The irony of influence…

Most people I know would like to think that they are influential. Anything from being able to influence the decisions of their children to wanting to influence whole populations. You may not want to be a President or Prime Minister, but what would being able to influence others more effectively be worth to you? How would it change your world?

The thing is, the more you try to influence, the less you actually influence. Influence is passive, not active. It emerges more from who you are and what you do (which stems from who you are) than what you say. Take, as an example, the person who has influenced me most this year. Matt Church is a Sydney based entrepreneur, author and public speaker. His message, his content is first class. His influence comes not from the quality of his content, but his attitudes and behaviours. Indeed, his content is validated by his authenticity. Through this combination of a powerful message and high integrity, I learn much more than his content. I learn from his generosity, from his family and community orientation, and I learn from his commitment to adding value to others.

Your most influential teacher will have had this dual ‘channel’ of connection: great content/content delivery and great people engagement skills. Like Matt, the clarity of integrity allows them to listen, believe in, unconditionally respect (or love) and challenge. One of the quickest and most effective ways to create ‘influence capital’ with others is to listen well. We use optimistic and observational listening as training models to help others re-learn their listening skills for greater influence.

Influence can only be achieved by consistency, integrity and unconditional respect. Trying to influence is really only coercion. Are you a coercer or an influencer?

Love is blind, they say, but what about anger?

When were you last in your own “heat of the moment”? Take a minute to remember this state. Was your attention tightly focused on the object of your ‘heat’, or did you have wide peripheral vision? Was you thinking, similarly, broad or narrow?

For most people, their Red Zone causes a narrowing of awareness in more than one dimension. Think of being in your Red Zone as being in a small room. In a strong Red Zone state, you only experience the room, not you being in the room. Ironically, in this state, your awareness focuses increasingly on the ‘objects’ that keep you in the room, not those that can help you out of it.

Imagine, then, that while in this state you began ’scoping’ the room. Rotating slowly, seeing things you might have missed. This simple (but often not easy) shift in perspective allows you to both experience the room, and you in the room. Don’t be fooled – this is not a small shift, but a quantum change in perspective. It is the first and necessary step to creating an alternative outcome.

Amazingly, as you move more from being immersed in the Red Zone to observing yourself and your surrounds, your perception widens. The more you observe, the greater the distance you can observe from. To continue the metaphor, you now begin to see the room in house-plan view, along with other connecting rooms, even the whole building.

Observation is the key here: observation of yourself and of the ‘object’ or your Red Zone. the more you observe, the more you disengage your hard-wired habits of judging and emotional responses. The more you observe, the more you actually see (not what you were assuming you were seeing).

Try this with someone at work that you normally don’t have time for. In your next interaction with them, watch for expressions, inflections and emphases. Look for things that, until now, you had not seen before. Your old habitual thoughts and judgements might still be there, but let them come and go without ‘jumping on board’ with any of them.

Don’t be blinded by your emotions and habits. Think of an flight attendant saying “the exits are here, here and here”. Observation will illuminate your exits.

Further reading:http://healthmad.com/mental-health/physiology-of-anger/