Every morning I walk with my dog through the Calgary snow and where we walk no one else goes, so every morning I have the opportunity to try to walk in my own footprints. Funny, I don’t think Jonah has this same compulsion. ;-) Have you ever tried to do this? It’s really difficult to do. You will invariably step outside the previous print. This got me thinking about life and no matter how we try to repeat the exact same actions in the exact same way that previously brought success, circumstances change which require us to change. No moment is ever the same. To me, this highlights the idea that there are things/forces/shifting realities outside our control.

I mean, I wear the same boots. I have the same stride. It’s the same walk, but as much as I’d like to leave the beautiful untouched snow unmarked by a new set of prints, I cannot put each step neatly within the previous print. So, I must accept that I will mess up the snow and carry on. We’re humans and perfection is an unrealistic goal. Progress, however, is a realistic goal and much desired. Okay, so I might not do life perfectly, but I can do it better than I did it last time. Progress not perfection…mmm Just might help give me the strength when I’m feeling ‘perfectionistic.’ What do you think? Please comment below.

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.

by Catherine Burdett, Senior EQ Coach, EITC

This past weekend was an extraordinary experience.  For two full days, I was able to observe people in an environment chock-a-block full of opportunities to practice emotional intelligence.

PICTURE THIS: Over “2000 athletes, coaches, parents and volunteers gathered at Calgary’s Talisman Centre to stage the Alberta Summer Swimming Association Provincial Championships, where athletes who qualified for the top 16 positions in each swim event, vie for the coveted podium placements.  Plenty of hard work, focus, persistence and dedication to earn the right to compete on this final defining weekend for the season.

At 7am on Saturday morning, the level of energy, enthusiasm and sound were already reaching extraordinary proportions.  The heat and humidity (a lot of HOT air!)  in the building rising to peak levels as a result of the multitude of bodies jammed into what seemed like an airtight building.   People scrambling to get the best seats in the house to watch and cheer their children, athletes, clubs and regions onto victory.

FREEZE FRAME:  What amazing behaviors emerge when groups of people are collectively feeling pressure for their own reasons.  Some of the more ambitious spectators worked hard to “save seats’ for viewers, not yet arrived, hoarding large areas of real estate on the benches by strategically placing coolers, towels and whatever else they could get their hands on and then pretending not to notice those in the crowd, including elderly folks seeking a place to park themselves.  Apparently, turning a blind eye and expecting someone else to give up their seat was an easier solution..  A complete lack of empathy and social responsibility at play; “clearly the rules don’t apply to me” seemed the motto in many cases.

The volunteer bleacher patrols were clearly under significant stress in trying to do their job of freeing up space to accommodate additional spectators.  When advising spectators there was no “seat saving” they received responses in harsh tones and defensive manners which further aggravated an already tough job.  It clearly impacted one of the “bleacher patrol” in a negative fashion.  One row in front of me, there was a family of 3 taking space for clearly more people.  The patrol advised the family, that there was no seat saving.  The father of the family advised that they had been in the stands for 2 hours and his wife had to use the facilities.  To which he received a highly agitated, impatient and frustrated retort, “I don’t care where she is or what your story is, there is no seat saving – didn’t you understand me?  The father then proceeded to tell him how ridiculous a request that was” to which the bleacher patrol demanded if he “wanted to take this outside?”  This dialogue went back and forth at escalating levels of anger and tone.  Wow – talk about Emotional Hijack – stress tolerance going out the window.   Both of them succumbed to behaving badly and neither of them chose to operate differently.  While at first glance, the bleacher patrol was clearly suffering from a lack of stress tolerance, flexibility and impulse control, they both contributed to the escalation due to their personal lack of self awareness and expression.  Had they both been more self aware, stopped and taken a deep breath, perhaps they could have accessed better reality testing and problem solving for a different outcome. No doubt everyone in the “combat zone” who witnessed the episode would have felt good about what happened instead of left scratching their heads and wondering what just happened? Have you ever witnessed this type of interaction? Please comment below.