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January 2006 Pre and Post Dinner Presentaion

Emotional Intelligence

The typical meeting format was abandoned as Lynn A. Moline, president of Lynn Moline Associates, Inc., and Richard Gillen, Director of the Knowledge Center at Medtronic, Inc., collaborated to present a two-hour program on Emotional Intelligence. Goleman defined Emotional Intelligence in his book by that name as the ability to reflect on experience to generate and make choices, and to comprehend emotional as well as factual content of experience and to act on it.

Richard defined Emotional Intelligence, or EI, simply as our experience in moving through moments of each day of our lives. An emotionally intelligent person has the ability to step out of the situation for a few seconds and ask the questions “What is happening with me right now emotionally?” and "What do I want?"

Lynn used a powerful, in-your-face example to illustrate using emotional and factual knowledge to make a decision. She showed an audio clip of a snarling tiger with its fangs bared. Everyone’s first reaction was to jump in fear. Almost instantly after that, our brains registered that it was just an audio picture that cannot hurt us, and we all laughed. We used emotional intelligence to register and react to our mental fear of the tiger, then factual intelligence to register and react to relief that it was just a visual picture. Learning how to use the combination of emotions and facts in our work environment will help us deal more effectively with our coworkers.

Lynn and Richard presented compelling arguments for how understanding EI concepts and practicing techniques to improve EI can lead to increased success in the workplace. Emotions are part of our neural wiring. To ignore them is to ignore a major resource at our disposal. They can heighten our senses, focus our energy and help us generate new ideas. Emotions can make us smarter or, if not managed, they can make us dumber. They can tell us whether someone is lying or telling the truth, likes us or not, is safe or threatening. Alternatively, as blood flows from our brains to our limbs in a “fight or flight” response, we can become stronger, but dumber.

Richard used the example of a day-long meeting. He gave us a statistical fact that around 10:30 am, there will be a lull in energy and motivation. An emotionally intelligent person will step outside the situation, be aware energy will typically rise given time, and manage his own emotions to avoid despondency.

Richard and Lynn were primarily focusing on being aware of our own emotions and actions, but the ability to read others’ emotions also can lead to successes in the workplace. We need to ask ourselves a few questions about our coworkers. What are their feelings? What is their perspective of the situation? What is their point of view? How will they react to it? Then ask yourself “What should I do next?” Will my decision help or hurt the situation? We need to realize what our feelings are about others. We need to deal with what we think our coworkers are feeling. Lynn related a story of a barrier-breaking conversation with a former boss that arose out of her observing and commenting on his out-of-character relaxed demeanor one day. The conversation would not have occurred had she not stepped out of her own prior anxiety about approaching her boss with an unpopular request. Lynn shared another situation where a team was having their final meeting before presenting recommendations that had been worked out over a long period of time. As the results were being reviewed, the other team members were unusually silent. As an emotionally intelligent team leader, Lynn became aware of the situation and sought out the reason, to avoid finding the rest of the team withdrawing support or even sabotaging the efforts of the team.

We took part in an interesting exercise to explore emotions in certain work, or personal, relationships using a Venn diagram. In discussing these relationships and emotions with each other, the typical reaction is support and empathy as we all have common problems. As Richard stated, disclosure builds trust. Disclosure and asking a person for help can elicit buy-in from individuals we need to influence.

Richard and Lynn gave a great summary to help us use emotional intelligence:

In final remarks, Richard pointed out the huge amount of power in engaging each other in conversation. The ability to respond to someone in an emotionally intelligent, productive way is free and will change emotional dynamics.