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?

Once again, I have chosen to review a local Calgary author I met at the Calgary chapter of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers. Her name is Judy Arnall and her book is entitled, “Discipline Without Distress” (3rd Edition, 2010) and can best be described as an emotionally intelligent parenting book. The subtitle is “135 tools for raising caring, responsible children without time-out, spanking, punishment, or bribery.” Without bribery? How is that possible? ;-)

But seriously, I really like the focus on how the parent is feeling and how the child is feeling. This consistent theme throughout the book makes it, as I said, an emotionally intelligent parenting book. The five keys of discipline, according to Judy are:

• Teach not hurt.
• Stay with your “no” and honour your word.
• Look for the need or feeling (NOF) behind the behaviour.
• Separate your anger from your discipline.
• Be the person you want them to be.

Judy goes into why we have come to believe what many of us believe about discipline and then goes on to make a very compelling case for changing our traditional (irrational) beliefs for more contemporary (rational) beliefs about how to discipline children.

Judy claims we can help our children gain:

• Strong communication skills
• Healthy self-esteem, confidence, and greater emotional intelligence
• Assertiveness, empathy, problem-solving, and anger management skills
• a respectful, loving connection with us as parents.

I highly recommend this book to all parents and would be parents. Here’s to ending, as Judy says, “resentment, frustration, anger, tears, and defiance and moving to a more loving, respectful, teaching and fun connection with our children.” Check out Judy’s website at http://professionalparenting.ca/

I just love a good quotation, don’t you? ;-) Please comment and leave me one of your favourites.

Albert Ellis

The EQ tool for April that I would like to share with you is a wonderful tool for looking at the self-limiting beliefs we hold onto. Looking at beliefs is a critical part of emotional intelligence and fits with the EQ competency of emotional self-awareness. It’s called the 12 Irrational Beliefs created by Albert Ellis, considered to be the father of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) who based his therapeutic approach on the fact that people act based on what they believe to be true about the world, themselves, and others. It’s really fascinating to think that beliefs can be changed to better serve us, but we must first become aware of how these beliefs are operating in our lives, see the irrationality and then replace those irrational beliefs with rational ones. Easy to say – hard to do! What’s been your experience in helping people to change their beliefs? Please comment. Click to download the tool.

At EITC, we are re-thinking how we offer our services. This should be an ongoing process, but what happens is we fall into comfortable patterns of operating and don’t stop and reflect on whether we are doing things in the best possible way.

We are re-thinking the courses that we offer. We have only ever offered the EQ-i and EQ-360 Certification Courses as public offerings. So now we’re trying a new course called “Emotional Intelligence for Success”, a more hands-on, practical applications ‘workshop’ to increase EQ. We are considering adding additional courses as well like emotional intelligence for newer managers and emotional intelligence for senior executives (we currently offer this course through our training partners overseas, but will soon be offering it in North America as well).

We are putting extra effort into promoting our EQ coaching services and linking it to training. I’ve decided I want to do more key note speaking, which I love, and we’ll be launching a new website dedicated to speaking. As those of you who work on your own know, it can be lonely, so we also have a new emphasis on working together as more of a team to create synergy. We are also looking at which information products and training tools make sense for us to offer for sale to our clients and customers.

Personally, I’m looking at what might be next for me in terms of professional development to take me to the ‘next level.’

What about you? What are you doing to renew yourself or your business activities? Drop me a line and let me know.