Why is this topic important?

Exploring and developing emotional intelligence not only makes us happier and more successful, but it helps us motivate ourselves, manage stress more effectively, and resolve conflict with others. It gives us the skills to be able to encourage, comfort, discipline, and confront different kinds of people appropriately in different situations. It determines how effectively we express our emotions within the cultural contexts of our family, our workplace, and our community. It determines how well people listen to us and how well we are heard.

What can you achieve with this book?

As an easy-to-use informational reference to the key components of emotional intelligence, this book is unsurpassed. The forty-six cross-referenced exercises serve as an invaluable resource for trainers, coaches, facilitators, HR professionals, managers, and anyone who needs to build emotional intelligence competencies in their work with individuals, teams, or groups.

Several books are available that discuss this topic, but very few provide exercises and learning scenarios to help build emotional intelligence skills. This book breaks new ground in providing a cross-reference matrix that maps the exercises to the four leading emotional intelligence models—the EQ-i® or EQ-360™, ECI 360, the MSCEIT™, and EQ Map®—making it easy to use with all the models.

How is this book organized?

This book is organized into three parts. Part One provides an overview of using emotional intelligence to create real change. It includes sections on why emotional intelligence is important and how to best use this book. It also contains the cross-reference table that maps the exercises to the four leading emotional intelligence models. Last, it discusses the integral connection between thinking and emotions. Part Two gives a synopsis of fifteen components of emotional intelligence. Part Three features forty-six exercises to help build effective emotional skills. Each exercise includes a purpose statement, summary, description of the outcome/ desired results, estimated time, intended audience, skill level needed by facilitator, step-by-step instructions, and reproducible handout sheets for participants.

About Pfeiffer

Pfeiffer serves the professional development and hands-on resource needs of training and human resource practitioners and gives them products to do their jobs better. We deliver proven ideas and solutions from experts in HR development and HR management, and we offer effective and customizable tools to improve workplace performance. From novice to seasoned professional, Pfeiffer is the source you can trust to make yourself and your organization more successful.I.

Essential Knowledge Pfeiffer produces insightful, practical, and comprehensive materials on topics that matter the most to training and HR professionals. Our Essential Knowledge resources translate the expertise of seasoned professionals into practical, howto guidance on critical workplace issues and problems. These resources are supported by case studies, worksheets, and job aids and are frequently supplemented with CD-ROMs, websites, and other means of making the content easier to read, understand, and use.

Essential Tools Pfeiffer’s Essential Tools resources save time and expense by offering proven, ready-to-use materials—including exercises, activities, games, instruments, and assessments—for use during a training or team-learning event. These resources are frequently offered in looseleaf or CD-ROM format to facilitate copying and customization of the material.

Pfeiffer also recognizes the remarkable power of new technologies in expanding the reach and effectiveness of training. While e-hype has often created whizbang solutions in search of a problem, we are dedicated to bringing convenience and enhancements to proven training solutions. All our e-tools comply with rigorous functionality standards. The most appropriate technology wrapped around essential content yields the perfect solution for today’s on-the-go trainers and human resource professionals.

Essential resources for training and HR professionals

This book is dedicated to all those who help others enhance the quality of life by developing deeper, more profound business and personal relationships. Their actions, which add richness, strength, and meaning to life, resonate throughout the world and transform our lives.

Foreword

Everyone can profit from enhancing his or her emotional intelligence, because this important construct has a positive impact on human performance, leading to personal effectiveness and eventually to overall well-being.

The activities in this book are designed to be applicable to those who favor any one of the three major approaches to the emotional intelligence construct. The authors have focused on the Bar-On approach in defining and measuring emotional intelligence as the backbone of this book, but the activities are easily applicable to the Salovey-Meyer and Goleman/Boyatzis models as well. In addition, they are also readily applicable to a wide range of EI assessment tools, including Esther Orioli’s EQ Map and other closely related instruments. This wide applicability across the major EI conceptual and psychometric models makes this workbook unique.

This method supports what I have referred to as “the multi-modal approach” in describing, assessing, and enhancing this construct. When this specific approach within emotional intelligence is combined with factoring in the impact of cognitive styles and personality traits, as the authors have uniquely suggested, the ability to assess, predict, and improve human performance is expanded exponentially.

Although the authors have targeted primarily organizational trainers, facilitators, executive coaches, and other closely related practitioners, these activities can be used by a wider range of individuals in a variety of settings. Those who are involved in parenting children at home, educating students at school, or counseling patients in clinical settings can all benefit from this workbook.

Emotional Intelligence in Action is well-written, interesting, and enjoyable to work with. The read is not merely a passive experience, but rather actively engages the reader from beginning to end. The activities and experiential learning scenarios (“workouts”) are easy to understand and fun to do.

This workbook fills an important niche in developing emotional intelligence, representing a genuine contribution to the field. I would like to express my gratitude to Marcia Hughes, Bonita Patterson, and James Terrell for making this important contribution to emotional intelligence. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the didactic material, experimenting with the activities, and noticing the effect that they have had on me. I highly recommend Emotional Intelligence in Action to all those who are interested in enhancing this vitally critical component of human intelligence and performance.

Reuven Bar-On
November 7, 2004

Dr. Reuven Bar-On holds a research position at the University of Texas Medical Branch and is affiliated with the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. He is the author of the Bar-On EQi, the co-author of EQi-YV, EQ360, EQ-Interview, and Optimizing People and the co-editor of the Handbook of Emotional Intelligence.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge and thank:

Reuven Bar-On, Peter Salovey, John D. Mayer, David R. Caruso, Daniel Goleman, Richard E. Boyatzis, Esther Orioli, Robert Cooper, Cary Cherniss, and Marilyn K. Gowing, for their pioneering emotional intelligence work, Robert Carkhuff for his substantial contribution to the field of interpersonal communication.

Lois Hart, Ed.D., for guiding us down the publishing path; Elaine Biech for opening the door; Martin Delahoussaye, senior editor at Pfeiffer, for being there to welcome us in and guide us with such good cheer; and Susan Rachmeler, Kathleen Dolan Davies, Laura Reizman, Dawn Kilgore, Jeanenne Ray, and Karen Warner at Pfeiffer, for guiding us with gentle insistence to the quality we most desired to achieve. Our thanks also go to Ken Hultman for valuable input.

Michael Snell, our agent, for creating an excellent interface with our publisher, orchestrating a win-win process, and continuing down the publishing path with us.

Danielle Hughes, Sherrol Horner, and Jake York for their much-needed assistance in editing and document preparation.

All of our parents, families, teachers, mentors, clients, and adversaries, and the grace and pluck that have gotten us each this far along the crazy paths we call our lives.

Introduction

Getting the Most from This Resource

PURPOSE

Emotional intelligence research and experience validate its importance as a critical factor in personal and business success. The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations provides a business case for emotional intelligence that lists nineteen success stories that resulted from developing or expanding emotional intelligence skills. They note:

“Optimism is an emotional competence that leads to increased productivity. New salesmen at Met Life who scored high on a test of ‘learned optimism’ sold 37 percent more life insurance in their first two years than did pessimists.” (www.eiconsortium.org)

The need for emotional intelligence increases with higher levels of responsibility, such as management or parenthood, and becomes even more important with groups, such as work teams. Recognizing the importance of emotional intelligence is a great starting place, but how do we develop competencies in the actual skills that empower us to function more effectively at work, at home, and in the community? The Guidelines for Best Practices for training and development in EI created by the EI Consortium emphasize the critical need for experiential practice to learn and enhance EI competencies. This book addresses that need by providing experiential learning scenarios drawn from real life to enhance emotional intelligence competencies.

AUDIENCE

This book is designed for coaches, trainers, facilitators, HR professionals, managers, and anyone who wants to help others improve their emotional intelligence. The in-depth description of key elements of emotional intelligence is supported by easy, practical, and impactful exercises, which we call “workouts.”

For individual coaching, the primary audiences are leaders, managers, supervisors, and employees whose job success requires improved interpersonal skills. The exercises will also be useful in clinical applications with clients who need to develop emotional intelligence to achieve therapeutic goals.

For group development, the primary audiences are management teams, intact teams at any level, and cross-functional teams. The exercises will also be an important resource for those providing public workshops for people interested in developing competencies in social and emotional intelligence, improving relationships, and expanding their career development opportunities.

ASSESSMENTS

The exercises contained in Part Three of this book may be used with or without assessments. For those who use assessments, we urge you to consider using multiple assessments whenever possible. No one measure can tell everything about a person. Multiple data sets provide the opportunity to corroborate results, to better understand the feedback, and to understand the interrelationships among multiple factors. Dr. Cary Cherniss, professor, author of pivotal books on EI and co-founder of the EI Consortium, stated in his presentation at Collaborative Growth’s 2004 EQ Symposium that many organizations are increasingly requesting the use of multiple assessment tools and finding more validity in results when they do so.

Assessments one might consider using in accompaniment with any of the four EQ measures discussed in this book include the Myers Briggs Type Indicator ^® (MBTI), Emergenetics^®, FIRO-B^®, the Center for Creative Leadership’s Benchmarks, the Disc^®, and the Campbell Interest and Skills Inventory. One interesting explanation of the combination of assessment interests is found in Pearman (2002), where he discusses MBTI and emotional intelligence.

HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED

This book is organized into three parts. Part One, Using Emotional Intelligence to Create Real Change, explains the rationale for developing emotional intelligence (EI) and highlights four key EI measures. The first section outlines the case for emotional intelligence. It explains why EI has such a powerful impact on personal effectiveness. The next section introduces the four most significant emotional intelligence measures and presents a matrix for cross-referencing the individual exercises (what we call workouts) in this book with the specific competencies for which each measure provides instruction. If you are working with one of the four major measures—the EQ-i^® or EQ-360™, ECI 360, the MSCEIT™, or EQ Map^®—you can look up your measure of choice in the cross-reference matrix and find the workouts that apply. These workouts will help you develop the competencies important to you for whichever measure you use.

Perhaps the best part is that you don’t have to be working with a measure at all! You can use these workouts independently to strengthen any competency that is needed. For example, if you wanted to work with a team or individual to help him or her develop flexibility, you would look in Part Two for the in-depth description of the competency and then go to Part Three, where, under the heading Flexibility, you would find your three choices—Workouts 12.1, 12.2, and 12.3. Just choose the one that is best suited to your situation.

Part Two, Exploring Fifteen Components of Emotional Intelligence, provides an in-depth description of each of fifteen emotional competencies to help you and your clients become thoroughly familiar with the dimensions of each skill.

Part Three, Emotional Intelligence Workouts to Build Effective Skills, contains the experiential learning scenarios we call workouts. The first three sections of each workout—Purpose, Thumbnail, and Outcome—explain the following: Purpose answers WHY you would have the people do this workout ; Thumbnail tells you HOW participants will engage with the instructional material to generate the learning experience; and Outcome explains WHAT your target is—the desired results that can be achieved. The workouts and the companion CD contain reproducible handouts that you may copy for your participants. in

The book closes with a list of resources for finding additional useful information.

Note to coaches: Most of the exercises can be used in individual coaching situations as well as with intact teams and groups. The thumbnail summaries and instructions usually are written for the team and group experience. If you are coaching an individual, simply reframe the instructions for the one-on-one environment and the workouts will be effective for you and your client.

KEY TERMS

EI is an acronym for emotional intelligence.

EQ (emotional quotient) is a measure of the degree of emotional intelligence development, similar to IQ. The term was coined by Reuven Bar-On.

Workout is what we call the exercises, activities, and experiential learning scenarios included in Part Three.

ICONS

We have developed a set of icons to highlight specific parts of each chapter to which you may want to give special attention. They are meant to be fun and informative landmarks that help you navigate the material efficiently and make the best use of it.

The treasure chest icon is the first one you will encounter. It appears in the in-depth description of each specific competency, where it highlights a helpful tip or insight about that skill, how to develop it, qualities that make it important, or how applying it effectively can make a difference in the quality of your life.

The star performer icon indicates a biographical note about someone in real life who is an excellent model of that specific competency. Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Hans Blix, and Oprah Winfrey are among the examples you will find.

There are many excellent examples of emotionally intelligent behavior in the movies, so we have done our best to utilize some of the more popular films to illustrate each of the competencies. You will find Lilies of the Field, Remember the Titans, Erin Brockovich, Whale Rider, and The Wizard of Oz among our favorites.

The purpose of the thumbnail is to let the coach or trainer quickly know how long he or she will need to allow for the workout and what sort of an experience he or she will be facilitating.

The CD-ROM icon indicates a full-size version of the material is available on the accompanying CD-ROM.

FACILITATOR COMPETENCIES

This section is designed to show the coach or trainer how skillful he or she will have to be in order to successfully conduct the workout. There is generally also a significant relationship with how sophisticated the learning experience will be for the participants. If participants’ skills tend to be less developed in an area, then starting with an easier workout will provide better results.

Three levels of facilitator skills are identified:

EASY

MODERATE

ADVANCED

FACILITATOR GUIDELINES

Preparation

• Read the “Introduction: Getting the Most from This Resource” section to familiarize yourself with the icons used in this book.

• Review the appropriate section in “Part Two—Exploring Fifteen Components of Emotional Intelligence” to better understand the emotional intelligence aspect on which you will be working.

• Read applicable material from the Resources list and the References at the back of the book.

• Ensure the room size and table arrangement are conducive to the type of workout you will be leading.

• Make sufficient copies of the reproducible participant handouts that are included in the workouts (full-size versions are available on the enclosed CD) and gather other needed materials.

• Consider playing music during the reflective phases of the exercises when participants are asked to think about their behaviors and responses. We recommend calming instrumental music that is played at a soft volume. (If you do use music, be sure to abide by any copyright restrictions.)

Materials

• The “Materials” section of each workout contains a list of materials you will need.

• Reproducible participant handouts are included in most workouts.

• Full-size versions of the handouts are available on the enclosed CD.

Debriefing and Reflection

• Debriefing is one of the most important phases of the workout. It gives participants a chance to reflect on and synthesize their experiences and to share what they have learned. It provides one of the best opportunities for introverts to be heard.

• Ask questions that help the participants uncover what they learned and surface any “aha’s.” Your mission is to lead them on a journey of self-discovery. The learning is more powerful when they recognize for themselves how they benefited from the workout, versus having you tell them what they learned.

Selection

• Refer to the cross-reference matrix in Part One of this book to identify the workout(s) you want to use.

• Look up the potential workouts you identified from the cross-reference matrix, and refer to the purpose, thumbnail, outcome, audience, estimated time, and facilitator competency information to help you identify the best workout(s) for your situation.

PART ONE

Using Emotional Intelligence to Create Real Change

In Part One we explain the rationale for developing emotional intelligence (EI) and highlight four key EQ measures. In the first section we outline the case for emotional intelligence and explain why EI has such a powerful impact on effectiveness. In the next section we introduce the four most significant emotional intelligence measures and present a matrix for cross-referencing the individual exercises (workouts) in this book with the specific competencies in which each measure provides instruction.

If you are working with one of the four major measures—the EQ-i^® or EQ-360™, ECI 360, the MSCEIT™, or EQ Map^®—you can look up your measure of choice in the cross-reference matrix and find the workouts that apply. These workouts will help you develop the competencies important to you for whichever measure you use. The first three measures are reviewed in the newly released Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology (Cherniss, 2004).

CHAPTER 1

The Case for Emotional Intelligence

Would you like to be more effective in your work and in your personal life? Would you like to be able to better understand what you are feeling and why? Would you like to be able to participate more consciously in what you feel and how you respond, rather than just reacting in the same old patterns that you always have? Would you like to have more friends or be able to be closer and more open with the friends you have now? Would you like to be able to better monitor and motivate your progress toward your short- and long-term goals? Then you’ll Love exploring the world of emotional intelligence!

Exploring and developing our emotional intelligence not only makes us happier, it makes us able to motivate ourselves, manage stress in our lives, and resolve conflict with others. It gives us the skills to be able to encourage, comfort, discipline, and confront different kinds of people appropriately in different situations. It determines how effectively we express our emotions within the cultural contexts of our family, our workplace, and our community. It determines how well people listen to us and how well we are heard.

EMOTIONS: WHAT ARE THEY?

To effectively introduce the topic of emotional intelligence we need to start by talking a little bit about emotions and what they are. We like to say that emotions are about what we touch . . . not just what we touch with our fingers or our skin, what we touch with our eyes and ears, what we touch with our taste buds and the olfactory nerves in our noses. Emotions are how we feel about what we touch with our imagination, from the dread of a loud scary noise in the dark to those fifteen minutes of fame when you know you’re at the top of your game and everyone else gets to see. Emotions are what move us and motivate us. All three of these words—emotion, move, and motivate—share the Latin root emovare, which means to move. Emotions are what sustain us through our struggles and crown us in our victories. In fact when you really think about why we do anything that we do, there is always a feeling involved—something that we are avoiding and moving away from or something that we want and are moving toward. Fear and desire are two of our strongest emotions and have long been considered the most powerful motivators in the animal kingdom.

Research at the National Institute of Mental Health by Candace Pert has shown that emotions are very closely associated with neuro-peptides, long chain protein molecules that circulate throughout the organs of the body and act like “messenger molecules,” conveying information about what is happening in one part of the body throughout the entire system. In her book, Molecules of Emotion (1997), Pert considers emotions to be a transformative link between mind and body, the mysterious quantum mechanical interface where information turns into matter and our bodies synthesize the chemicals of consciousness.

Recognizing that our feeling responses are grounded in our biochemistry is an important understanding. Emotional states such as anger, sorrow, depression, and joy can be influenced and even directed by us, but this does not mean they can be turned on and off like a light bulb. It takes our body time to metabolize these chemical components—such as the adrenaline that is released when we feel frightened. The chemistry of emotions can help us change our viewpoint and see the world through different attitudinal lenses depending on how we are feeling. When we create and maintain positive thoughts about ourselves and our world through our self-talk, we support positive emotional states such as resourcefulness, optimism, and motivation.

A good way to imagine emotions is as an invisible link that connects people with each other and to some extent with all living creatures—they constitute a field of specific information that we sense and decode using the ancient instinctual languages of facial expression, smell, body posture, and the whole realm of nonverbal language. On top of all that, human beings are able to add another layer of sophisticated interpretation. Through our use of cognitive intelligence and semantic language, we are able to label our feelings and give them a wide variety of symbolic meanings with subtle degrees of texture and nuance.

Intelligence

Early in the 20th century psychologists began to devise tests for measuring cognitive ability and intellect in human beings. The eventual result was what we know today as the standardized IQ test. As research into human intelligence continued along these lines, it began to appear as if it was an inherited capacity and was not greatly influenced by any amount of educational effort. Adults did not necessarily have higher IQ scores than children, and over the course of their lifetime they didn’t seem to develop more. The view that intelligence was what was measured by IQ tests and that it was controlled by genetics generally prevailed into the 1970s. Yet when Weschler developed the IQ measure, he stated that there are other forms of intelligence besides the IQ he addressed.

Other scientists agreed with Weschler and were not satisfied with a static, one-dimensional definition of intelligence or the way in which it was measured. In the 1980s Howard Gardner published research that validated his work on “multiple intelligences,” demonstrating the importance of expanding that definition, and Reuven Bar-On coined the term “emotional quotient” in an attempt to differentiate emotional competencies from intellect. Leading research by John Mayer and Peter Salovey was instrumental in developing a theory of emotional intelligence that consists of four domains: perceiving emotions, facilitating thought, understanding emotions, and managing emotions. They were joined in their efforts by David Caruso and together developed the MSCEIT (Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test), a reliable, valid, ability-based assessment of emotional intelligence with a normative database of five thousand people.

Their definition of emotional intelligence emphasizes “intelligence” and differs significantly enough from others that we will include it here:

“‘Emotions’ refer to the feelings a person has in a relationship. For example, if a person has a good relationship with someone else, that individual is happy; if the person is threatened, he or she is afraid. Intelligence, on the other hand, refers to the ability to reason with or about something. For example, one reasons with language in the case of verbal intelligence, or reasons about how objects fit together in the case of spatial intelligence. In the case of emotional intelligence, one reasons with emotions, or emotions assist one’s thinking. That is, emotional intelligence, as measured by the MSCEIT™, refers to the capacity to reason with emotions and emotional signals, and to the capacity of emotion to enhance thought.” (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2001, p. 2)

For more information on their description of intelligence within the concept of emotional intelligence, see the discussion of the “concept of an intelligence that processes and benefits from emotions” in Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso (2000, p. 105).

The idea of having an ability-based emotional intelligence test with right and wrong answers may seem foreign to those who think emotions are too subjective to be quantified, but here is a simple explanation of how it works:

“Emotional skills can also be measured in an objective way through the use of ability, performance, or knowledge tests. Such tests would ask a series of questions like these:

• What is the cause of sadness?

• What is an effective strategy for calming an angry customer?

The MSCEIT™ (pronounced mess-keet) asks people to solve emotional problems, and the correctness of the answers is evaluated. In turn, a person’s scores are compared to a large, normative database to compute a sort of emotional intelligence quotient, or EI score.” (Caruso & Salovey, 2004, p. 75)

The Brain

Processing emotion is a non-conscious event. It is something we do intuitively that allows us to anticipate others’ behaviors in a more direct, immediate fashion than language can. Emotional intelligence is all about immediacy. The circuitry in our brains is set up to process emotional responses without having to consider them rationally. How am I feeling right now? How are you feeling right now? How are our feelings affecting each other and the actions we are choosing to take in this moment? These are the kind of critical comparisons that the limbic system, or emotional brain, is making for us constantly, most of it below the threshold of conscious awareness.

When sensory input enters our brain, it first is processed in the thalamus, which scans information for familiar patterns that may have been especially significant to us in the past. Such patterns are then forwarded to the hippocampus, which further screens them for threatening content before the amygdala’s final decision as to whether it should trigger the fight-or-flight response. If it turns out there is no precedent for fear, the information is then passed along to the neo-cortex, which is able to analyze it for meaning in a rational process.

The emotional circuits in the brain also regulate the balance of two critical hormones throughout the body, cortisol and DHEA. Cortisol plays many positive roles in bodily functions; however, it is often known as the “stress hormone” because stressful situations cause it to be secreted in excess, and then it can have very negative effects on many aspects of our health. DHEA, on the other hand, is sometimes known as the “anti-aging hormone” because it counteracts the negative effects of cortisol that tend to wear the body out and cause it to age.

The Heart

But the brain is not alone in governing our emotional intelligence. In fact, recent research at the Institute of HeartMath (Childre & Martin, 1999) has revealed the heart to be a major player in the process of understanding and responding to our world. Our heart communicates chemically to the rest of our body by producing mood-enhancing hormones. Perhaps even more remarkably, the electromagnetic signal it sends to the brain (and every other cell as well) is the most powerful signal in the entire body! It produces an electromagnetic field that can be detected several feet away from the body in all directions. The heart also communicates mechanically with the rest of the body through pressure waves that are conducted through the vascular system. What is it sending in all these different channels of communication? It is giving the entire body feedback about how the whole system is functioning.

Research by Antonio Damasio (2003) has determined that human beings cannot make any cognitive decisions without also processing emotional information that incorporates how we feel about the situation. It turns out that emotional intelligence is actually the synthesis of both heart and brain functions, weaving together thought and feeling into the marvelously rich fabric of human experience.

EMOTIONS AND IDENTITY

Emotional intelligence also plays a critical role in conflict resolution. In their fundamental book, Getting to Yes, Fisher and Ury (1981) characterize the process of resolving conflict as one of helping people move from “No” to “Yes.” What makes this difficult is that we tend to identify with our position, so in order for us to change it there has to be a change in our identity. In other words, if we think that we are the ones who deserve the promotion and the corner office because of our length and quality of service, we will have to change our sense of who we are and what those rewards mean to us symbolically in order to be able to accept another (equally good) solution. That change in identity may also come from the process of working through a deep disappointment and discovering that our competencies in flexibility and reality testing can truly help us transform.

Emotions play a critical role in identifying ourselves—in knowing who we are in the world and distinguishing “self” from “other.” In addition to governing the fight-or-flight process, the limbic system also manages our immune system. The critical task of the immune system is to be able to distinguish what is part of us and what is foreign. Even the process of understanding who we are once again turns out to be grounded in our biochemistry. Our cells have self-receptors that are “read” by immune cells to determine whether or not they are part of the self or invaders that pose a threat to the health, wholeness, and integrity of our system.

My very sense of “I-ness” comes from recognizing familiar sensory patterns in the environment and experiencing the same emotional responses that were originally generated throughout my body/mind and recorded in my memory. After enough memories have been stored (generally around age two), this sense of familiarity undergoes a profound transformation. The billions of bits of data crystallize and initiate the advent of self, the recognition that it is “I” who is having this experience—“I” who is hungry and wants to eat, “I” who feel safe, or threatened, or curious, “I” who is powerful and can make things happen in the world!

Over time, sophisticated menus of preference and aversion come to be developed through this same process of associational memory. “I” discover that I know what I like and dislike and, depending on my level of confidence, am able to express that effectively to the people whom I depend on for survival. If I have lived in a cooperative environment, family, or culture that requires me to get the approval of others for my decisions and actions at every level, then my need for interdependence will tend to overshadow my need for independence. If I have lived in a competitive environment in which I am only able to satisfy my desires through continuously creating and asserting new behavioral strategies which satisfy but the letter of the law, my need for independence will tend to overshadow my need for interdependence.

My ability to remodel, update, and even upgrade my identity, to resolve problems and conflicts, and consequently my ability to move myself and others from “No” to “Yes” will be dependent on how consciously or unconsciously I process my emotions. If I am unconsciously embedded in the automatic sequence of stimulus-response conditioning, I will tend to be a creature of habit and be liable to perceive myself as a victim of the world. If, through self-reflective processes, I have been able to lengthen the amount of time between stimulus and response, in other words to make my self more conscious of the processes that determine my behavior, then I will be more flexible and tolerant, and have available to me a more robust repertoire of behaviors and be able to generate better decisions and more creative solutions to the problems I encounter in my daily life. This is perhaps the truest measure of our emotional intelligence.

EMOTIONAL POWER

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