If you’ve attended one of my presentations, you will have heard this one before. Whenever someone asks me, “how can I change my boss?” My reply is always in the form of a joke, “how many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb? Just one, but the lightbulb has to want to change.” The principle is that one can’t change another person as much as one might want to. It doesn’t mean there is nothing we can do. We can point to the evidence of the need to change. Ultimately, it is the individual themselves who must decide to make the change.

In my ‘Balance’ coach training course with fellow Vancouverites, Signy Wilson and Joni Mar (the two most authentic and fun co-facilitators I’ve ever had the pleasure of learning from ;-) I really learned a lot from the concept of the relationship between “co” and “active” in “co-active” coaching (the model CTI uses). I learned that one can ‘go through the motions’, but if that isn’t grounded in the ‘essence’ or who one is or grounded in one’s core values, it’s not going to ‘stick.’ Real commitment to change comes when you connect the desired change to your own core values.

I have always been bogged down by disorganization. And, in a way, it’s been my ‘dirty little secret.’ Despite my ‘best intentions’ for getting organized, it’s never been successful. Now that I’m choosing to ground my getting organized in my core value of “Integrity” (the “co”), I feel much more empowered and motivated to take action (the “active”). For me, it doesn’t feel good to talk about taking leadership on various issues in the corporate world when I don’t take leadership on what I know needs my attention.

What about you? What do you need to ground in your essence or connect to your core values?

How do we EI/EQ professionals make the ‘business case’ for EI/EQ and communicate it to people who don’t see the connection between EI/EQ and business success? One thing I know is that the old adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” may act as a type of barrier. If things are going well, why would anyone look at something like EI/EQ? Now, I know what you’re saying, “are things really going well or is there a lack of awareness of the problems that exist?” I mostly think that I could find some problems if I was allowed to dig around a little but, what if the former company is full of task oriented people quite happily going about their tasks and not encountering any issues that they can’t surmount with another task? Here I am preaching the gospel of emotional intelligence and how it can help people to increase their effectiveness while facing the everyday challenge of getting new clients and there’s this company making money hand over fist by being task oriented! Maybe it doesn’t matter how well you treat people as long as you treat them well enough. Maybe a lack of people skills are not that bad as long as everyone involved has bad people skills so they don’t really notice.

These guys are successful CEO’s, so they are really good at task orientation and they really know how to ‘gitterdone.’ And they are very financially successful and quite happy people. My question has to be, “at what cost?” Who pays the price here? I think one group that pays the price may be the employees who are lower in the hierarchy who ‘gitterdone.’

Two questions, “are they paying a price and if so, do they know they are paying the price?” That is living with the anxiety and stress that comes from having to respond to the demands and pressures that come from an environment of task orientation or are they themselves task oriented individuals who ‘fit’ with a task oriented environment in such a way as to ‘thrive’ on the stress and pressure?

Some are and some aren’t a fit for that workplace culture and my guess is that the ones that are stay and thrive and the ones that aren’t stay and are miserable and affect a company’s productivity and service quality. Maybe it’s more important to get employees who fit your culture, whatever it happens to be. What do you think?

It’s fascinating to think about such topics as Facial Aging, Facial Attractiveness, Facial Deception and The Face in Health and Disease among many other topics available here on the website. There is a lot to this website, click around and you’ll find some really interesting things like the sale of the Facial Action Coding System Manual (FACS)  created by Paul Ekman and Joseph Hager and Wallace Friesen.

Also take a look at the Library, where you’ll find reference materials, which despite the fact that the site hasn’t been updated in a long time – it looks it, still remain relevant works today.

Do you have some favourite references regarding emotions and the face or body language? What are they? Comment below.

I always taught about the importance of balancing EI in the EQ-i certification course, but it really took experience and practice to be able to pick out problematic imbalances and determine how they acted as barriers to clients moving forward. Now, it’s right there in the report itself. Not only does it indicate the imbalance, but it points out why it’s important for the two competencies to work together.

Additionally, there is one page of the client report devoted to each of the 15 EQ competencies with such sections as, “What Your Score Means”, “Impact at Work”, “Strategies for Action”, and finally, “Balancing EI.” The coaches report still has all the validity indicators you have grown to know and love, but they are more ‘loveable’ now ;-) They have been made much more simple and easy to understand. There are no more confusing correction factors and comments about possible lack of validity based on Negative and Positive Impression Scale scores. There are still Negative and Positive Impression indicators, but it’s accomplished in a much simpler way that provides more interpretive assistance to the coach.

One of my favourite features is having the items with responses right in the Coaches Report. I, and I assume many others as well, had been requesting this feature for many years and now it’s a reality. No more additional support tools and having to transfer responses from the back of the report to an ‘analysis guide.’ It makes me smile when someone makes the comment that the EQ-i is a ‘self-report’ assessment, as if that is a criticism, when really, it’s what makes it so special.

What do you think of the new EQi-2.0®? Please comment below.

by Catherine Burdett, Senior EQ Coach

I find myself at the grocery store almost every day, in the summer months, when impromptu visitors arrive, the weather is awesome and the time feels right to sit on the patio and enjoy great company, food and drink.

There I was, again this week, at my local food purveyor, having collected my BBQ foodstuffs, surveying the checkout lines in order to find the “fastest way out of Dodge”. Apparently everyone had the same idea, for the lines were deep and not moving that quickly.  A perfect time to step back, breathe and observe what’s happening around me.  In my younger days, I’d have just gotten upset about the situation. I would have huffed and puffed, rolled my eyes, tapped my feet and demonstrated a general level of frustration indicating that I wasn’t at all pleased with the situation.  Thank goodness I have evolved in my EI competencies a little since those days.  So – having time on my hands to observe the goings on in the store, here’s what I observed in Lane 7.

The customer service gal, let’s call her Cathy Clerk, executes the checklist of “to do’s” required for her position.  She greets each customer, asks for the loyalty and points cards, runs the items through the checkout efficiently, bags the items with care to not crush the eggs, asks if the customer is aware of their fuel discount and bids them, “have a good day.”  Trouble is, she never once looks the customer in the eye, never once smiles, never once changes the tone of her voice, never once just stops to see or hear the customer in front of her or even ask a question.  She demonstrates a complete lack of genuine interest in or  connection with the person on the other side of her till.  She is a perfect ‘human robot.’ While she is completely efficient in doing what she is supposed to do she is not effective in delivering a great service experience.  It’s an empty ‘transaction interchange’, devoid of any warmth, caring, authenticity or humanness.  You could call it a non-experience and one I am sure, is replicated many thousands of times a day in customer service interactions across the country. If I wanted fast and efficient, non-engagement of any kind with a human – I would have chosen the no conversation, no connection, do it yourself check-out machine (or drive through banking, online banking, self pumping gas – we have a propensity for DIY stuff these days) seemingly saving ourselves time, while sacrificing any semblance of human connection…and so my turn approaches at the check-out stand.  I am curious about whether or not the “repertoire” will be different for me.  Alas, I receive the exact same speech delivered in the exact same way.   Cathy Clerk’s inability to see how she operates with anyone who happens through her lane has a net negative impact to the customer service experience.  It’s a missed opportunity to really drive customer loyalty.  If there were other choices of grocery stores in my area, I’d be inclined to try my luck there.  So, next time in the store, I will be careful to seek out a real ‘human being’, not a ‘human doing’, in my checkout lane.

This month’s website will appeal more to readers who enjoy the theoretical and academic aspects of emotional intelligence. The article displayed on this Stanford University website is all about emotions from different philosophical perspectives. I’m very interested in our graphic designer’s opinion of this article (Sherwin’s master’s degree is in Philosophy ;-)

I don’t expect all of you to read all of this article – that’s a big expectation, but have a go and feel free to comment below. My personal opinion is that it is important for us ‘EQ practitioners’ to know about emotions and that this continuing education helps us in our professional roles. What do you think?

Have you noticed all the hype about back to school? I was at an office supply store yesterday and kids with their parents were everywhere frantically buying up school supplies. It was a little strange. August doesn’t seem like ‘back-to-school’ month! Well if you watch TV ads you might think it started in July. Why is it that marketers are starting earlier and earlier to advertise their products? Some might say it’s good planning. I think it’s another one of our societal ills. We just can’t seem to be in the moment and enjoy what’s here now.

We seem to have a need to be “there then” and not “here now.” What’s wrong with this? What’s wrong is the danger of missing what is contained in the here and now. In the here and now are how we think and feel about the people that we’re with and the situations we’re in. Also in the here and now are the emotions of the people we’re with. When we are not attending to the present, we are in danger of missing this information. Contained within this information are opportunities to deepen and strengthen relationships – with ourselves and with others. These opportunities are missed when we do not strive to be present in every situation and that is not emotionally intelligent.

Where is your focus? Are you primarily here now or there then? What is hard about being present and in the moment versus being future oriented and do you experience any ill effects of either one? Please comment below.