If emotions are infectious, then you want to catch his cold!

Emotional Intelligence (EI) as articulated by Goleman spiked great interest in the concept. Suddenly it was cool to talk about emotions at the work place. 

As someone with scientific and personal interest with EI, I found the model difficult to understand. Peers in the LnD community who also facilitate EI sessions agreed and we have had many discussions around how someone can do 'anything' under the guise of EI. The sheer number of competencies included in the EI framework can be overwhelming:

Self Awareness: 

• Emotional self-awareness 

• Accurate self-assessment 

• Self-confidence 

Self Management: 

• Self-control 

• Trustworthiness 

• Conscientiousness 

• Adaptability 

• Achievement orientation 

• Initiative 

Social Awareness 

• Empathy 

• Organisational Awareness 

• Service Orientation 

Social skills 

• Influence 

• Leadership 

• Developing Others 

• Communication 

• Change Catalyst 

• Conflict Management 

• Building Bonds 

• Teamwork and Collaboration 

The competencies mentioned reads like a checklist of every desirable trait in a person, a super human who I doubt exists. The list when shared with managers geared to become more ‘emotionally intelligent’ really has an intimidating effect.

I understood early on that while Goleman’s work had really helped all of us in making the business case for creating more emotionally aware employees, his model was not the easiest to understand.

I have created my version of EI based on the work of Albert Ellis and his very powerful psychotherapy framework. Ellis’s Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy helps us to examine our basic beliefs and resultant emotions and provides practical tools to dispute irrational beliefs that lead to negative emotions. I do draw on Goleman’s work especially his synthesis of so much psycho-neurological research.

Recently I came across the work of Shirzad Chamine from Stanford. He talks about Positive Intelligence and has simplified Goleman’s model beautifully. Here’s his TED talk about his work. Sincere, passionate communication of positive emotions is rare among academics, but Shirzad manages to do just that. If emotions are infectious, then you want to catch his cold!

PS: I encourage you to visit his website and take this free assessment here:http://positiveintelligence.com/assessments/