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A Q&A with CEO Mark Murphy
Q: Why does Emotional IQ matter?
MM: Emotional IQ is one of those touchy-feely kinds of issues that leaves a lot of leaders asking: Why do I even care? And the quick way I would respond to that is this: Would you be even more successful than you already are, if you could control your emotions? I’ve yet to meet a manager, or an executive, who says “No, that wouldn’t help me at all.” Because if you had more control over how your feelings and emotions direct your reactions, and if you could read other people’s emotions more effectively, then of course you’re going to see a big improvement in all your relationships. Leadership is a highly interpersonal endeavor. And if you know how to manage the emotional side of things, you are going get much better results.
Q: What is Emotional IQ?
MM: That’s a big question, but when you distill it down, Emotional IQ is essentially three things: 1) Self-Awareness, which is the ability to identify and understand our own emotions. 2) Other-Awareness, which is the ability to identify and understand other people’s emotions. And finally 3) Emotional Management, which is how we control and influence these emotional states in ourselves and in others.
And, of course we all have different strengths and weaknesses. So we develop our Emotional IQ by determining where in those three areas we have opportunity for improvement. Our upcoming webinar focuses on developing Emotional IQ and includes a downloadable Emotional IQ Assessment that helps determine these strengths and weaknesses.
Q: What if I am strong in Self-Awareness but I’m weak in Other-Awareness?
MM: If you’ve got a pretty clear idea of what makes you tick (and that includes knowing the things that tick you off), then you’re off to a good start at controlling yourself and your own emotions and the reactions you have to those emotions. You also want to have a fairly well-developed emotional vocabulary. But then you really do want to start to develop Other-Awareness. If you just stay with being strong at Self-Awareness, you run the risk of becoming narcissistic. And that’s going to result in some problems when you go to lead and influence and interact with other people.
There are two components to developing other awareness: observation and interpretation. Observation is being able to key in on visual and auditory signals like tone of voice and body language. You notice everything that is going on. Then you take those observed signals and turn them into a correct interpretation. So if, for example, you see a twitch at the corner of somebody’s mouth, you are able to translate that signal into an interpretation that makes sense in the situation. It’s not an interpretation based on assumptions and untestable things, but rather you’ve got a broad database of possible hypothesis, and you test them out to find the right one.
Q: So is Other-Awareness just observing other people?
MM: It does sound pretty simplistic, doesn’t it? And I know most of us think we are pretty darn observant. But the thing is, developing Other-Awareness actually takes some work. For example, consider a quarter, or any coin you handle a lot. I know we have a lot of readers globally, but for this example, I’ll use a quarter. Without actually taking that coin out of your pocket and looking at it, tell me: whose face is on that coin? What direction are they facing? What does it say on the back of the coin? Most people can’t tell you, and yet, this is an object that we handle every day, that we’ve been handling our whole lives. And the same thing happens at work. We stare at our colleagues all day long and we don’t pick up any of the cues that they’re giving to us. This is why it takes practice. And I’ll be sharing some pretty fun exercises, especially if you like watching movies, which you can use to develop Other-Awareness on the upcoming webinar.
Q: Is there any quick hint you can give us now to develop Other-Awareness?
MM: Meetings are great for developing Other-Awareness because there are a wide range of emotions that you can typically observe. Ideally you want to observe someone with whom you can talk with after the meeting and say, “Hey, were my observations right?” The first thing you want to do is to key in on every visual data point you can get your eyes on. Like facial expressions: raised eyebrows, open or closed eyes, startled looks, etc. And gestures: hand ringing, putting the hand over the mouth, rubbing the face, etc. And body display: breathing changes, coughs, are the shoulders up or down, that sort of thing. Make copious mental notes of all of it. Then come up with a few interpretations, some hypotheses, as to why this person is doing these things. And it can’t be “This is why I would do it.” Other-Awareness is about the other person. We have to forget everything we know related to our own Self-Awareness and put ourselves in the other person’s shoes. And this is when we actually start to develop true awareness of what’s going on with other people. And we just get better and better at it the more we do it.
A professional corporate writer with over 20-years’ experience crafting just the right words for executives to use in challenging situations, Lyn is a passionate and adept qualitative researcher. Her seasoned skills as an interviewer make her quick to identify the unique attitudes and behaviors that define an organization. Lyn’s extensive expertise in public relations and persuasive communications translates strongly in her contributions to Leadership IQ’s custom-training programs.
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